out the older episodes we've done together uh Luke what do you think wow making this about me again why why are we able to like speak like this and uh like it's intention bro I mean what what's the big deal about not speaking about sex the intention over here is so pure there's so much I have learned to it so people think I'm talking about it because oh Luke must have had so many women and stuff and he's talking about it it's not that I've had my I've done my stuff that doesn't make me an expert I've learned from my profession because every second or third person is a problem with sex problem with understanding and relationships so I learned from them I'm sharing it over here because that's what's going to grow that's the change we're gonna make so today one guy out there can say like [ __ ] I'm gonna reduce my Pawn we've made impact we've changed someone's world yeah it's as simple as that and that's all that matters right you're


as that and that's all that matters right you're a gift to this world man so you bro I'm just glad I get to create content which I am I'm forget the content bro you know what I'll go back I know it may sound cheesy but everyone is a gift to the world but the sad part is everyone's not using that gift everyone's a gift to the world every child born is a gift to their parents a gift to the world people should be encouraged to find a gift and go out there and use it that's what your purpose that's what your life purpose is if you've been given a gift and you're not using it you've wasted a life you wasted a life so everyone's a gift but sadly people are not using that gift that they've been given everyone even a disabled physically challenged person has a gift and you'll see that musicians who are deaf have created the most beautiful music that people who have their urine cannot create today gift they chose to use it rather than


create today gift they chose to use it rather than sit there and say I don't I'm victimized and stuff so everyone's a gift I just want people to find that and use it that's when the world is going to change automatically automatically yeah so um so much more to create with you man so many more questions uh I again every time I speak to me I get overwhelmed and that's why I'm probably just going to end this particular podcast look if there's one content piece that you and me have created I know you're conscious of everything we've created we had the the first interview which was just a brief look into your mind yeah the second one which was about someone fasting yeah uh yeah we we did one more we did the LSD and Ayahuasca one Ayahuasca yes yes we did that as well uh we just did one right before this which was a deep look at your life and mental toughness yeah and this is our fifth piece together yeah five out of maybe five thousand coming


together yeah five out of maybe five thousand coming up I don't know but yeah we'll do it of all those pieces which one would you push people towards the most um I I think I would push them to the mental toughness part because see mental toughness is everything if you don't have it you can't intermittent fast you give up in between example so I think you need mental toughness for everything like you know you you give peoples you share so much of knowledge on how to build you share your skills with people you've given them the best content for skill building but if they don't have mental toughness what do they do with it so I would put mental toughness first for your sex life to be better you need mental toughness if you think you're a failure in bed you're never going to be good in bed again mental toughness so I would put mental toughness first okay first yeah and a selfish reason of calling you on this podcast is that your gorgeous mind and a


this podcast is that your gorgeous mind and a gorgeous face and we get more lady listeners on this show and they are honestly driving the growth of this show uh telling their friends telling their family uh request a little lady listeners from one Mr Luke coudini and myself keep watching keep listening keep gaining value look any signing off Note especially for the women I I just think that you know uh I love women who are empowering themselves today you know I just want to say it yeah I mean like I said I honestly you know teach people that it's okay to be disliked and by teaching them that I reassure myself that everyone doesn't have to love you so I'm going to say what I have to say I removed all my masks right at the start of the show an empowered woman stands up her own values she doesn't need to become part of groups you know that push certain points in a way you know you're empowered to gain your own self-respect build your


empowered to gain your own self-respect build your own values do it on your own you don't have to fight to try to change the way men and Society work it's never going to change it's never going to change you know so what I'm trying to say is Empower yourselves I mean in I know incredible women today who were built Empires Empires they're juggling family life I mean my wife Natasha yeah she's a superwoman like everything that I am today I am for what I do with my people but she's running the entire business okay there are so many women out there and you know the difference between these women they followed a path they followed about and there's a whole group of other women who try to become activists not in a negative way and they're trying to make a point and a point and a point and a point I mean you know what about the other women who have built it they said like yep I'll go through these obstacles and I will do it I'm saying


these obstacles and I will do it I'm saying be that woman I'm not preaching to you I'm not preaching to you I'm saying be that woman because there are women who have done that and there are women out there since you asked me a question about women I'm only speaking about women I I think women are just this beautiful source of energy they play such an important role in a man's life in their own life you know I want women to be empowered to build their identities and stuff like that don't go to these extreme groups that try to pull down the male Community all the time yes there are bad male behaviors that need to be corrected and all of that stuff there are a lot of women out there who are hurt in previous relationships Hearts broken doesn't mean you all men are like that that was the problem in your relationship don't pull down all men all men are not just after your body sex don't put yourself on a pedestrian you know Empower yourself instead of


a pedestrian you know Empower yourself instead of draining your energy in this whole feminist thing be a feminist but don't make it extreme don't create hatred between the man community and the woman Community we want equality for y'all we want equality you'll have proven it to us y'all can earn more money than men you can build Empires you can lead Industries you can become billionaires millionaires we respect that value that do it that way don't do it by pulling down communities pulling down other women making women giving them limited knowledge that oh don't do this you know your man said this end a relationship right now no don't do that let them figure it out let them try I'm not saying you're if the woman's being beaten up except that them how to evolve in a relationship don't just say oh he said that it's not going to last get out of the relationship right now men are like this don't do that so as a woman have your own mind have your own mind


a woman have your own mind have your own mind and your own logic look inside get your own power don't look for validation all the time if you need 10 of your girlfriends to tell you to break up with a guy all your relationships are gonna fail take opinions mentorship but what's my heart telling me should I give it a chance should I give in the throne towel be your own woman be your own woman that's my advice beautiful look and I hope that this podcast based on love and sex actually brings the world to a better place honestly that's the intention again from the bottom of my heart brother thank you pleasure bro good seeing you always enjoy this conversation with you always great learning from you man and until next time we will see you guys later with Luke on the runway show again see awesome [Music]


they say that andre agassi's autobiography open is the best sports autobiography ever written the reason is andre's not so normal life has not so normal experiences being one of the best in the world at something he didn't really enjoy growing up how do you even do that how do you become world class something you don't really enjoy this is the andre agassi story especially for those who haven't read open but also for those who have i asked him some of the deepest questions that sports fans would want to know but i also asked him about life about what he's doing after retirement about all the businesses he's creating about all his learnings from the sports world that he's applying in the business world that he's applying in the world of ed tech very interestingly this is andrey agassi on the runway show tennis fans you guys are gonna love this [Music] one andre agassi namaste from india absolute honour absolute pleasure having you on the show it is great to be here i was


the show it is great to be here i was just in india a few weeks back and uh it's nice that we can stay connected now from even a distance if we have to yes and it's great for people like myself i get to be connected to people like you through the internet beautiful times didn't think about this in 2003 when i saw you playing tennis never thought that i'd be speaking to you one day so many questions about you man like i mean people know about your story through open everyone even knows what was happening in the background when we're speaking about that book open it's an autobiography it's considered a heavy autobiography if you had to summarize that entire autobiography into one paragraph how would you do it well i would say that the book was designed for me to understand my own life through a literary lens to make sense of a whirlwind that i could never sort of reconcile all my conflicts and contradictions and the book actually evolved into into a


contradictions and the book actually evolved into into a human journey um that we all while we do have different experiences we all share the same the same journey right it was it was about fear and love being the great motivators it was about um you know taking ownership of one's life even though one didn't choose it you know it's a it's about that coming of age it's a it's in some cases it's a you know it's a it's a recovery it's a recovery story from success to failure to i realized that success book you don't learn about me as much as you learn about yourself then i felt compelled to see it through i believe everyone's born with a purpose everyone's life boils down to a few purposes what's the purpose of your life according to you at this stage that's a pretty broad question but if i had to try to be narrow about it you know my hope in life uh both when i was on the court also my philanthropic work and also my


the court also my philanthropic work and also my businesses and personal life it says if i if i interact with somebody i i want their life being better off for it so i always try to stop in every moment um you know break down every engagement into these moments where you can really maybe it's a kind word maybe it's a it's a life commitment um like what i've done in in in education maybe it's a um you know it's it's but it's always personal it's always meaningful and you always have the opportunity of making somebody's life better off for that engagement so i take it one step at a time knowing that you know the accumulation of that of that sort of engagement really leads to um life-changing stuff oh beautiful do you have any idea about how many fans you have in india well i i felt it when i'm there you know i felt it across the world playing um you know i've ran into many of them over the years and uh yeah i've always felt very


over the years and uh yeah i've always felt very embraced which is a wonderful feeling is there anything you kind of take away from indian culture for your own head of your own mentality uh i do i just i find the culture to be um a very peaceful one you know um and and i don't think anybody's uh process needs to be uh the same if your intentions are are are the same you know and and that's that's what we just talked about so you really feel that spirit when you're there you know regardless where somebody is in life you know there's a sense of peace calm and and stability to it so i've always appreciated that and i think second to that would be would be the food what do you like eating what's your favorite indian dish oh my gosh get spicier the better man i'm going vindaloo all day every day twice on sundays you gotta try lucknawi food the next time you're here have you ever so lucknow is a part


here have you ever so lucknow is a part of north india uh the cuisine was built for kings built as designed for kings so you've got like meat that's as soft as like toothpaste the most complex kebabs fantastic food i'm vegetarian now but that's that one part of you know non-vegetarian food that i really miss lucknawi oh wow this sounds magical you spoke about calm peace you spoke about the spirit within the human honest to god i mean you know i wasn't old enough to see you in the early 90s i was born in 1993 but i have seen videos and what i've picked up is that you had a lot of fire even when you were playing you're flamboyant but you played with a lot of fire and then over the years you kind of learned how to manage that fire even better so would you agree uh if i said that like that as you went forward not just in your career but also in your life like i think peace and stability something


in your life like i think peace and stability something you value a lot as of now but it wasn't always the case so back in the early 90s what was going on in your head well i i think really if you want to go back to the early 90s you almost have to go back to the beginning you know because the beginning was a very strong uh disconnect between me and the and the and the sport of tennis you know i was the youngest of four children you know my father was let's just call him very intense to say the least and he saw tennis as the fastest road to the american dream you know so he was pushing all of his kids without even if it was compromising relationships and you know i was sort of the last one where all the pressure sort of fell onto but i also had the i also had that that lens to see what tennis was doing to the relationships and to the feeling inside the home and i resented that at an early age and i


and i resented that at an early age and i really resented it because i didn't choose tennis you know my father sort of imposed it on me and you know that that disconnect um only grew and continued and eventually morphed into this you know the biggest controversy in my book which came on page one which is that i hated tennis you know with a very dark and secret passion you know at 13 my father sent me away to a tennis academy you know and it was 3 000 miles away from home so it was like a military you know boot camp um you know pecking order depending on how you played and again i felt abandoned i felt left i felt separated i felt more resentment and then the only way to succeed was the only way to get out of that environment was to succeed and so i was always motivated by this by this anxiety and this and this fear kind of based um you know inspiration that um that even when i turned pro didn't go away


um that even when i turned pro didn't go away even when i won didn't go away because here i was on a world stage kind of being told who i was um and and and i didn't even know who i was you know so that that that disconnect with tennis um really gave me a strong resentment you know towards it um so i think my journey overall that i am most proud about was that was that journey through all that fear in the first part of my career um as the motivator to a point where i gave myself permission to quit uh at number one in the world um being getting the number one in the world to a point where i fell and had to make a real strong decision in my life and that decision was either you know retire or or find my reason right and i didn't have anything to fall back on so i think in part of that second half of that journey of finding that ownership and connection to something larger than me that was still connected to


to something larger than me that was still connected to me was the transformation that happened it didn't happen overnight but no question led to a second half of my career that was a lot more successful both from an accomplishment standpoint but also internally i was able to take in a lot more moments through a lens of of of of of that connection not just with my purpose but also you know with the people that were there so it was a win for me all the way around but that transformation was clear and it was played out in front of the world what happened at that point of transformation at that pivot you know what went on in your head was the external influences how did you kind of change your perception of things so as my father used to introduce me to people when i was seven years old as a future number one tennis player in the world you can imagine the pressure that you feel is on your shoulders and and there i was knocking down tournaments and going up


there i was knocking down tournaments and going up in the rankings and winning championships and getting to number one and every time i won um it was such a clear um it was such a clear fact that that wasn't going to do it for me you know it didn't scratch this that disconnect i was talking about and i kind of had in my mind that being number one probably would um at least i hoped it would and then i remember getting the number one and i remember that feeling so distinctly and that that feeling quite honestly was was was nothing you know and and when i had that i knew there was nothing for me to do on a tennis court that would ever um satisfy what i was looking for and i had enough success where i could walk away from the game but instead of sort of stepping up and making that decision then i kind of went on the spiral you know i kind of stopped caring for a couple years i started doing things i probably shouldn't do


years i started doing things i probably shouldn't do um you know i knew i was i was tale of you know i was in a tailspin uh and the world was just watching my ranking fall you know and i got to 140 in the world um which sounds amazing from one perspective but when you go from number one you know you feel like a complete failure and um and i had to ask for wild cards you know for tournaments to let me play because i wasn't ranked high enough to get in and i remember one tournament where i did get in um through a wild card and then i lost first round exactly how i should have really quick and wasn't prepared and you know my coach kind of confronted me you know my coach sort of put me in a room and said you know we're gonna you're too good to do this to yourself we're gonna either retire or we're gonna start over you know and then my mind started spinning and i never hated tennis so much


started spinning and i never hated tennis so much as i did in that moment because i was good at it and then i failed at it i hated it when i was good at it and now i even hate it that much more as i feel like a you know like like i failed and i remember looking at a lot of people you know out through the window a lot of people walking the streets a lot of cars and i remember asking questions of myself you know what do they do and and why do they do it you know and did they choose it you know and it sort of begged the question does any of us really choose our life you know do we really ever choose it do we choose where we're born do we choose who our parents are do we choose what our strengths and weaknesses are do we do we do we choose how they're nurtured or how they're you know they're stifled you know no there's so much that we don't choose in our life but it occurred


we don't choose in our life but it occurred to me just because you don't choose it doesn't mean that you can't take ownership of it that you can find your reason right so that was the that was a confrontational point inside myself that made me say my epiphany is i'm gonna find my reason i'm gonna find what motivates me what inspires me not based out of fear but but but the complete opposite which is love and and and i remember seeing this show on 16 minutes in in america and it was about this um charter school operators these two great guys i gotten to know pretty well over the years dave michael feinberg and david levin it's called the kip program knowledge is power program they have about 200 schools in america um and i remember i seen them taking these children who had nothing who had you know absolutely nothing who are being relegated to an education that was bought by far less than other kids and and these were these were kids that really didn't


and and these were these were kids that really didn't have choice you know i looked at him and i said geez here i am complaining about being number one in the world and here it is because i didn't choose tennis and here it is these kids can't even have a chance in life any hope because of their circumstances and and with with what these guys were doing they were changing generationally that that sort of um you know activity their their their result of not having choice means gangs and means incarceration and means means all sorts of stuff and and it just clicked for me and said you know this is what i need to do i need to take everything that i've suffered everything that i've learned and i need to transfer it into children that really don't have choice and that's it was like overnight when i got into education and doing my own charter school in the most impoverished neighborhood of my city which is a large growing it's a fifth largest school district in america


it's a fifth largest school district in america and uh and that connection i had between using what i suffered for so many years using it to change lives of those kids that are really living circumstances far worse than i lived um i identified and connected with it and as a result that sort of became my my fuel and then when i got out of my own way and put my eyes on something else tennis didn't seem so personal anymore you know it seemed seemed like it was just an opportunity for me to you know not just raise resources and but but also to have a platform to talk about what's really important you know and and that and that that gave me another 10 years in the game with with far more success and far and far more you know connection man um this is your purpose spreading inspiration spreading these kind of mentality based stories i personally feel like every human has two phases when it comes to purpose the first is building your own platform building it yourself with


first is building your own platform building it yourself with the tools that you're given by god by the universe and once you're standing on that platform that's when you do your thing called the higher purpose so maybe that platform you built up for yourself was tennis then you found your higher purpose which is spreading joy in the world making the world a better place well i i certainly hope hope so you know but i i think the one area that i kind of realized is you know we're part of this this journey together whether we choose to accept it or not um you know whether we choose to add to it or or or not um you know what you do whether it's good or bad you know will will um you know dictate a lot of your um you know it will dictate you know the the joy you feel it will dictate the impact you have it will dictate uh you know so many things so it's like if if if we can't help but be a part of this participation you


help but be a part of this participation you know um then why not choose you know making a a an impactful difference even if it's just a smile or helping somebody on a daily basis i mean i've been maybe you could say i've been blessed because i have a platform that can reach more people um but but truly uh reaching one is is just as important and and so that that's what kind of pushes my you know my buttons and education to me is crucial because i think when you expect a lot from a child it means you you think a lot of a child and what greater not to not to reduce children to a commodity but what greater commodity exists in the world than our future right and our future our children so you know there's so much to be said for when a brain is nimble and elastic and the spirit is open and willing to be able to deliver to them um the platform that they have the ability to to change the world to through their talents whether it's


change the world to through their talents whether it's whether it's their artistic skills whether it's their musical skills whether it's their writing skills whether it's their engineering skills you know i mean we're all playing a a a desperate role to to you know the human spirit's not meant to be separated and i think children is a great great example of that yeah i don't think too many people are aware of all the work you're doing in india with squarepanda so i mean i wouldn't want to take people through that let you take people through it but i'd also just want to add this one thing before you begin which is that you know you speak so much about elevating children probably elevating people younger than yourself do you feel like you're trying to do it for that younger version of yourself in your heart you're like you know maybe i was just pushed into this one thing but let's allow children to blossom in multiple directions so is that a part of everything you're doing i


so is that a part of everything you're doing i think it i think my intensity of activity is a result of how much i empathize and connect to those children yes um i also believe my lack of education um was a huge part of my source of angst in my life and my lack of options my lack of feeling self-worth you know that what i feel actually matters right so all those experiences definitely um sticks gasoline on the fire that burns you know within me to to make a difference in those children and and and everything i've gone through as a tennis player because tennis you don't have to be good you just have to be better in one person right so you're always problem solving problem solving and when you take the skill sets that i learned as a tennis player and then you take them the empathy that i have towards children that feel probably even deeper and worse than i ever felt you know you combine them and and it's amazing what you know what how


and and it's amazing what you know what how the story is played out because i built this school in las vegas i had 1200 kids in the school and i had 3 000 on the waiting list so as as a tennis player i sort of say that makes me twice the failure i am the success i mean there's we got to figure out a way to help help help these kids that want want to help and and you know i wasn't an educator i wasn't an operator um but i was a facilitator i mean i really i facilitated this dream for these 1200 children i i need to think outside the box and so you know long story short you know i figured out that we can't wait for the government entirely we can't really wait for philanthropy entirely because it's hard for that to scale but we still have a private sector that can innovate and solve and what i realize is when you have a huge societal daunting problem um going to the private sector is a


daunting problem um going to the private sector is a necessary working component to the scale and sustainability of reaching more children and so what i did is i put together with a gentleman in southern california this this charter school facility fund where we took private dollars we invested it into the best in class operators and built their school because in america the money from the state follows a child to your school so we know we have the demand of the child needing a good education we know we have teachers that want a good learning um friendly environment we know all the components are there everybody all parents want a great educational seat so if we can bring this money and build a school in a tough neighborhood on day one it's going to be filled well there's a certain amount of revenue there and so i put together this business model that doesn't ride the backs of parents doesn't ride the backs of our school system doesn't ride the backs of you know the children but it doesn't ask people to


you know the children but it doesn't ask people to give away their money so it's this nice healthy relationship so it took me 15 years to build one school um and in the last you know eight to nine years we built 125 across america right so it's reaching more kids 100 000 kids more or less but with that and watching all these great operators i saw the central source spot the central sore spot was early childhood literacy and english second language learning every great teacher every great school has to focus on this and they all know it they all know it and because if you when you cross that rubicon from you know learning to read to read to learn you're now processing content so your educational journey takes a huge leap forward while other kids are just trying to learn to read trying to learn to read and they don't speak english at home they need to learn english and so we you know helped build this edtech company about six years ago called squarepanda now it's a digital platform with real


called squarepanda now it's a digital platform with real neuroscience backed information we have the knowledge i went to stanford university i met with bruce mccannis i met with the experts in the neurology space and they know how to individually work with every brain so that we can speed up the learning curve of learning english or literacy right so i'm saying we have this information we don't have a distribution vehicle so put together this technology company that can actually meet every child where they're at in real time with ai learnings get faster and faster to adjust to the topography of every child's brain so that we're working on where they're weak and and and where they're strong we're using it to to speed up that process and every child's brain and every person's brain works differently it's not a staircase where you learn the alphabet you learn these words it's not that we have to figure out phonological awareness we have to figure out you know so many like there's like eight vectors of activity


so many like there's like eight vectors of activity going on and then and i realized technology is a heck of a way to solve for that individualized personalized teaching in a real-time basis to help speed up the the the act of learning english or you know becoming very literate in it you know it's a it's 21st century you know communication skills right learning to communicate i believe everybody should stay in their mother tongue unquestionably but if you can communicate in english you know it only adds to you know your the great opportunities and takes takes people out of a certain walk of life and moves them into the into the next so when i when i when i really saw this the efficacy of what we're doing um you know india was close to my heart because first of all of how much injustice from a volume perspective right how many kids are left are left outside the box right how many kids we can reach and for me that's what it's always been about it's always been


that's what it's always been about it's always been about finding ways to scale and reach more children beautiful i mean i've got to highlight your past again they say that when you're going through that little level of human suffering you're suffering for the sake of preventing the suffering for future versions of yourself that's pretty much what you're doing in your work you know you highlighted the fact that every kid's brain is different probably when you were playing tennis as a kid when you were learning and getting better at it you're like okay i'm getting better at this but i wish i was taught in this different way and maybe that's resulted in this business at this point of your life you know i'm a big fan of learning something that in 10 minutes that took somebody 10 years and i'm even a bigger fan of teaching somebody what's taken me a decade and you know and and to teach them in 10 minutes because i believe that's the way it should be when speaking about teaching


the way it should be when speaking about teaching and learning i have to highlight tennis in your life because that's the activity that you're known for that's the activity that's attached to your name so the overall sport of tennis while i'm sure that it teaches you so many things if you had to highlight three things that changed you as a person what would you highlight well geez uh i think if you if you i thought you were going somewhere with that question but then you you made it so clear at the end what what are the three things that have changed my life it's the same three things that have changed probably everybody's life which is our three three people i mean it's always it's always a person that has the most impact on you you know it's always uh it's always that right so ultimately um my trainer as an example um for 21 years professionally he acted as my father more more than anything although he helped me become a better athlete he was the first one to make me feel like


he was the first one to make me feel like i was worth being cared about you know and then how what kind of price tag do you put on that you know when you grow up not feeling that way right so he would be one my wife would be another you know here's a person that you know has taught me how to live every day what it is you value and how to you know talk less about it and do more about it you know and i mean that's that's that's incredible you know my brother you know my brother through those early years on the road with me i mean if i didn't have him with me on the road i mean you know i i don't think i could have made it through right so it's like it's always people that change you the most but as far as the sport goes i mean it teaches you so many things you know it teaches you as i mentioned the problem-solving aspect you know it teaches you um discipline it teaches you um how to


you um discipline it teaches you um how to um really go within in in the most intense moments because you don't have anybody out there you know you can't talk to anybody you can't pass the ball you know you can't you can't call a timeout you know you you have to just you have to find a way so it teaches you how to kind of be quiet in the most in the loudest moments you know what i mean and it teaches you i mean it's it's remarkable what what you learn from you know from tennis i've taken it and applied it to my mission in in life and certainly all my activities andre do you think that tennis also taught you mental toughness and when you're speaking about mental toughness as a subject do you think that the future children of the world should be taught mental toughness in some form well that's an interesting question you know i mean um yeah i mean i i think it does teach it to you but it doesn't


it does teach it to you but it doesn't teach it to you in a silo you know it teaches it to you because what you end up realizing is you need to understand your identity because if your identity is tied to what the scoreboard says um you you are always going to struggle mentally you know so i think it gets to your mind through your spirit because you can't just teach a kid how to be mentally tough but if you teach a kid who their identity really is who they really are then it gives them the platform to learn how to apply their their mind through their already given identity right so i think without that component you don't it's hard to become mentally tough it's hard to um remove the ego it's hard to um you know to to hear things objectively it's hard to um once once you understand that tennis is what you do it's not who you are um you can then be a vehicle for whatever talent you have and and then your mind is


whatever talent you have and and then your mind is allowed to be at its best you know so i i think it's i think it's a real holistic approach that we need to we need to do you know with our children and that's why i love what's going on you know you know with square panda because it's it's giving every individual child um that that mini success story that they can do it that that they're good it's it it really reinforces all the tools they need from an identity standpoint and from a success step to step standpoint that that being tough mentally is a function of going you know i've been through this before i accomplished this i never thought i was capable of it i can do this now you know and so i think it all kind of kind of works together um andre do you think that your generation was tougher than the current generations because i mean we had social media growing up and that's completely changed the way the human mind operates whether i'm


changed the way the human mind operates whether i'm speaking i'm not just speaking about you as a teenager i'm also speaking about you in your 20s i'm sure you guys had your own set of challenges and your own handicaps compared to this generation but this generation's also got some curses of itself so when it comes to mental health how do you think things were different for you guys as compared to now well i mean it's a lot different um you know social media is a double-edged sword you know and um it's it's a weapon um if you use it wrong um and it's a powerful tool if you use it correctly you know i mean it's it's like it's like a car i mean you can use a car and do a lot of damage or you can use it to be very you know productive and but i think the discipline in it and the the the parameters that you need to stick around it is again tied to you know who you are versus what you're


to you know who you are versus what you're looking to be validated for you know what i mean um and i think social media if you have that sort of deficiency of of of identity whether it's through how you were raised or whether it's through your value system i think social media then becomes highly more important and you become reactive to your life as opposed to proactive so i do think it's a very dangerous um field of land mines um i think it is tougher um these days in many ways because you're you can be so distracted you know and you can underestimate how much energy you're putting in to to to something that isn't isn't that you don't recognize like directly you know so you know in tennis you have to you know you have to train you know you have to rest you have to eat you have to take care of your body you have to you know you have to do so many things that that if in between all this your your mind is focused


if in between all this your your mind is focused on on other things i think i just don't think there's enough room to be the most of yourself without that without that that that peace being you know locked and i know a lot of players these days who were were raised very uh clear on this and as a result um they're not defined by it and then i know other players that are really defined by how they're perceived and that's really looking for validation from the wrong places and i don't think that helps you in the biggest of moments on the tennis court when you're all alone how do you switch off from the fame that you get along the way like have you seen the i'm sure you've seen rocky and you've seen the rocky movies you know in rocky part three where he loses to clubber lang because he kind of becomes soft uh i mean i would assume that happens to like every athlete in the world at some point where you kind of become a little soft so


point where you kind of become a little soft so the question is how do you switch off from the fame and also if you're in the middle of a really important match how do you switch off from the crowd and just keep it between you the ball and your opponent well those are kind of two separate questions although they're very you know they can appear very similar you know when you talk about separating from the crowd uh big moments a lot of distractions you know you you learn this you learn that i have to i can't control everything but there's certain things i can't control and if i control those things better than my opponent then i have an advantage right so but it's the same thing that drives you in training you know you train alone and you're saying to yourself well geez i don't know what my opponent is doing so somewhere deep inside of yourself you push yourself a little bit more so you end up becoming a tortured perfectionist when it comes to those


a tortured perfectionist when it comes to those sorts of skill sets in in you know in in in tennis but you know separating the the fame and and and the work um is is a fundamental uh perspective i mean um it's it's a fundamental engagement in life that that you don't see yourself as as better than anybody else or better off than anybody else you know you see yourself as as part of a tapestry i'm just i'm just part of this and it's a privilege to give somebody a break from their life for two hours and now it's a privilege for me to hopefully change a generation right so it's all about that sort of perspective and i i don't know um you know kids learn more what they see than what you tell them i i know that from raising two children and you know 19 and 17 years old now um and the same thing i think for you know for adults i think you know the mentorships that that that really seem to exist and


mentorships that that that really seem to exist and those that have a healthy value system and perspective seem to be very clear and defined and those that sort of float around more with their own sense of who they are you know you can you can see that there's not any established um really somebody who's walking it out with them on a daily basis you know because that that's where you really learn you really learn by seeing how somebody reacts in certain situations than somebody telling you how you should react in a certain situation you know what i mean it's like that to me is uh you know i've always said you know rules without relationship leads to rebellion you know and that's the way it is in raising children that's the way it is in developing friendships and relationships you know you just can't sort of say this is how we're going to do it you have to you have to be willing to meet somebody where they are understand where they are and then help them take the next


where they are and then help them take the next step and that's i think that's where mentorship coaching i think all those things are need to be very nuanced and what about when you're playing the match in that tennis meditation you know how about like could you describe that a little bit yeah i can i can say that uh the first thing you learn in tennis is the last thing you learn in tennis um which is you know watch the ball focus on the ball move your feet you know i mean these are these are the basic fundamentals the more you can be clear on what you need to focus on um and simple about that activity um the rest the rest comes through right so yeah i've played so many matches and guys have played so many matches that they seem like they're making all these decisions but a lot of them are are sort of seared uh truths that they're just applying you know and and and what they're really focused on is is a basic activity you know and every treating


is is a basic activity you know and every treating and treating every point the same so that every point is important so that when the point really does get important you're not changing anything you're just continuing what you do you know i remember one time talking to carl lewis who used to be one of the fastest man in the world and i asked him why are you always passing people like at 60 meters i mean what like how come like what's your what's your strength that makes you get faster like that and he says i don't get faster he goes i just don't slow down everybody else slows down and i thought that was so fascinating so true and you know in life he says what he's doing is he's just running so perfectly he's taking care of everything he needs to everybody else is sort of dealing with other things and sure enough you know he ends up he ends up you know he ends up winning so that's why i always try to remember if you just


that's why i always try to remember if you just control your controllables you know as much as you can and then focus on the simple things and then let your let your life experiences play out in a very natural way it comes together so do the basics and stay in the moment that's probably what i get from your answer yes the most important point is the next one it's not the last one that's the it's the next one and it's not the one that you're imagining you know two hours from now it's it's the one right here now how was your life after you retired how is it right now and was there an evolution even in that phase because i feel like you're a thinker you're an analyzer you're an observer so i'd love to know what happened and i also see a lot of joy in your eyes at this phase of your life so i'd love to know how you achieve this kind of joy i don't know the beast's alternative i mean i have my moments


the beast's alternative i mean i have my moments right i mean listen some some days i i wake up and i say it's just going by too fast i mean it's just you know it's just going by too fast and then and then that that only is the stimulus for me to say well then make the most of what today can be you know and the best way for me to do that is to care about what we're talking about right now you know that's that's the best way for me to maximize the day right now right so it's i think it's a muscle built um but it's also a discipline of of activation a discipline of application right so um you have to you have to apply it you have to you have to be quiet you have to recognize um moments for what they are and you have to be present in them and and and and and joy can come along on the sidelines you know it's uh um that's kind of how how how it's felt to me okay


kind of how how how it's felt to me okay andre we've got to move to the final section of the podcast which is all the twitterverse questions so this is sort of like a rapid fire round just like quick questions from all your indian fans uh twitter india lost its mind when they found out that andre agassi is on an indian podcast so man from the bottom of my heart firstly thank you uh secondly okay nikita pawar that's the first question she asks what does andre think of the big three dominating the sport right now and when do you think the next gen will finally take over well what i think we're in an amazing time if you think about what we got had to watch i mean i have had the privilege of watching over the last you know 15 years i mean you've watched three guys win 20 40 58 grand slams and what is that 14 years almost of of grandsons where only three guys are winning it and they're having to beat each other so first thing


and they're having to beat each other so first thing that crosses my mind can you imagine if one of these guys uh was playing tennis during an era when the other two weren't there i mean how many would they would they possibly have it's pretty remarkable and to have the best on hardcore the best on grass the best on clay it's like wow and have them in the same generation wow i mean it's um you know it's it's lights out it took 70 years for five people to win all the grand slams i was a fifth person to do it it's it took you know just that generation and then there's three that have done it you know so uh there's there's so many ways to categorize how impressive it is but the next gen's on its way i mean you see even last week with sis pass winning in monte carlo i mean uh you look at memphis pushing knocking on the door of all these slams you look at zarev you look at team i mean


look at zarev you look at team i mean these guys you know they realize that i think they realize now that they can't afford to respect the top three as much as they have been they need to start you know owning it and then pushing themselves to that next level it's a tough task i don't know um when that's going to happen obviously i can't make any predictions but i do believe we're in process of of of seeing um seeing some of those new gen players um push into the into the tub you think it's that cutthroat mentality that they need to kind of embrace you have to believe it i mean i'll give you an example you know i turned pro at 16 and and i broke in the top three in the world in two years when i was 18 years old i didn't win a slam till i was 22. courier pete and chang because i because they saw me do it they just charged right through and won a grand slam before i


charged right through and won a grand slam before i did even though it seemed like they were you know years behind me in in in the evolution of our careers now once somebody when somebody shows that it's not herculean you can actually do it um and people start believing it um then then you'll see a a you know a locomotive train just you know pushing that pushing that direction but you have to you have to you have to believe it yeah i mean you know when you want that big change in life i believe that you've really got to go for it with everything you've got uh lena sony asks a beautiful question one thing that the beautiful steffi graf has taught andre agassi uh i kind of touched on it um the i think the most powerful thing she teaches me uh what is how to live your values on a daily basis because she lives it in the moment she lives in in context of of a journey she's she's not reactive she's very she


journey she's she's not reactive she's very she approaches every tough time in life with the belief that she's gonna get through it um and also with kindness love and empathy and you know and when you see it it kind of calms you down and helps you sort of look at some tough situations through a different lens instead of you know instead of feeling like you have to fight the world so that that i that i just it's a it's just a privilege to to to have in my life on a daily basis okay lots of questions about federer and rafa specifically because this is a very federal and rava oriented country as well but i'm sure that once you've played tennis yourself once you've had a tennis career you're seeing things from another perspective as well you're seeing things from within their minds so the question is what do you think makes them special federer and rafa this is from sanjit keswani oh jeez i mean i don't know how nuanced you


jeez i mean i don't know how nuanced you want me to get with it but let me just say anybody that comes into tennis i don't care if it's pete myself you know uh mcenroe lendl you know i mean any generation the person that comes in to be number one usually brings a couple things to the game that nobody's ever seen before you know uh that's kind of what defines you know when you saw pete come in nobody nobody had a serve like that you know nobody just it just was remarkable he had something that just nobody else so everybody else has to deal with it right i mean mine was ball striking and taking the ball early off both sides you know it's like nobody played that way when i came into the game so you know when you look at when you look at that fed for example i mean i played him in the finals of 2005 us open and and there was no safe place on the court he you know at the time he probably


the court he you know at the time he probably had the best forehand in the world um when he played erotic he always aced roddick more than erotic aced him so you have to give his serve credit you have to give his return credit his movement was was a joke his hands at net were a joke the versatility where he might have had five things individually better than everybody else on a tour you know it's like it's like a golfer who leads in fairways hit greens hit and putts you know it's like hard to beat that guy right um so fed fed that i mean then rafa comes along and he brings such enormous spin to the game that it actually changes the rules of engagement so you have two things with rafa that are clearly stand out to me is that because he can hit the ball and it doesn't it's not in till it bounces right that changes positions in the court where you can play that offsets a lot of you know all those other qualities i


a lot of you know all those other qualities i mentioned about fed and and you know plus his his his uh power of movement his strength and and endurance and physicality is kind of unmatched right so you have you have him bringing that into it and then you got you know you only asked me about those two guys but then novak has his own sort of thing that he brings to the table so you when you look at these great players they always do something that nobody else does uh and that's what gives them the chance to to sit at number one for a period of time you know that the follow-up question is going to be what did andre agassi bring to the table according to himself yeah well it's easy to say in hindsight because i'm only saying it compared to what existed before me right so when i came into the game um you know i i couldn't believe that there were only a few people that had a big forehand you know like glendale had a big forehand and


you know like glendale had a big forehand and then he was pretty conservative with the end you know or who slice the backhand you know or you have somebody like avilander who was just fantastic at not missing for you know six hours you know what i mean and you know but i i just couldn't believe that nobody could stand on the baseline and no matter where the ball was take a full swing at it with confidence knowing that you're going to be offensively minded and and consistent and conservative at the same time so that's what that's what took people's time away you know i kind of came into the game and just took people's time away and part of the reason was my ball striking was a strength of mine um other reason would be that i had fundamentals that allowed me to handle pace and generate pace right so that that allowed me to play against guys that came forward guys that were defensive and allowed me to play through multiple generations when the speed of the game increased and the


when the speed of the game increased and the spin started to change so that gave me a chance to play through four or five you know generations of of players beautiful okay adi salah asks what's your favorite sport apart from tennis favorite sport to watch or um i would imagine to watch um yeah you know this is really strange to say but i'm not a sports watcher i mean i've never been uh you know i've never been i i i look at something i try to understand it um you know but but i it's just it's never been something i gravitate uh towards but if i had to watch a sporting event live i probably would say hockey you know i think hockey is is one of the most exciting sports live to watch a lot of sports are better on tv and there are a handful of sports that are better live hockey to me is the difference between tv and live is remarkable do you pick up things from other sport when you're an active athlete um tennis is


sport when you're an active athlete um tennis is so unique in that it's an individual sport you know um so there's there's there's just no there's just no there's no blaming anybody else right there's no i mean think about it you know even in even in american football if the field goal kicker misses the field goal he can always argue well if you had made that tackle i wouldn't have had to keep that field goal because we would add first down right so it's like you know so everybody has to work together and basketball and all the sports everybody has to work together and then you look at individual sports the only one i draw a lot of um connection to as it relates to maybe learning something would be um would be boxing or you know you know because it's it's really one-on-one and what i do affects what you do while golf is an individual you know activity um you're really just kind of playing yourself in the course right so tennis is unique in that way


the course right so tennis is unique in that way okay this next question is from my mum who's a big fan she she wants to ask you again about childhood that you went that extra mile even when you were a child when it came to discipline so was there some secret formula back then when you were 12 13 year old training were you having some conversations with yourself to push yourself that extra mile well uh yeah my dad was so hard on me that by the time i was seven years old i didn't need him anymore to be hard on me because i was harder on myself that's probably the best way i could frame it so it was just intense self-talk that you've got to do it um yes when you don't have options fear is one heck of a motivator you know and is it ideal no it's not ideal it led to some pretty difficult times if i didn't have it uh would i have done as much hard to say but the truth was that was that was all


say but the truth was that was that was all motivated by fear fear of failing fear of what else would i do if i couldn't do this you know and then the second half was the complete opposite okay uh virat shade my manager asks how have uh your sporting learnings translated into the business world i'd probably highlight other than the problem solving aspect of tennis that you already mentioned what else carries over into business well i mean i'm not i'm not sure how many how many ways it's translated but you know um the problem solving is working backwards from an objective and figuring out how what your path is going to be the discipline is understanding um if you how much momentum you build by just taking one step every day the idea that that you don't have to be good better than one person kind of translates to me in business that um you're always gonna you're always gonna run into struggles and difficulties and and and as a result you need you need that sense of of


a result you need you need that sense of of perseverance you need that sense of big picture contact context and small picture you know um applications you know i mean there's there's there's so many that it's hard to separate in a lot of cases okay and the last one from the twitter section uh snehal pradhanji is a former cricketer herself she says advice for those who are good at things that they don't enjoy doing um [Music] if you're if that means you're forced to do it because you're young if that means you don't know what else to do because it is a talent to yours um you know my my advice would be on the former find a reason find your reason for for what you do um you know i think that's always achievable um you know to connect to something that matters to you and find a way to connect it to what it is you do um you know if you just have a talent that you don't maybe don't enjoy i i would say


you don't maybe don't enjoy i i would say you know you know listen i mean um everybody i believe that we're i mean being good at tennis is weird there were times i stepped on a tennis court and i literally said to myself i can't believe i know how to do this like and so i was i was really outside my own skin kind of going but it helped me a lot to treat myself as just a vessel for something right to get out of my own way and just to let my let what i've been given be a gift to others right so i think i think the the fundamental would be taking your eyes off yourself and putting it on something else um that that helps allowing yourself to do something you don't like so much um to its own ability and it gives you a different value system and and and engagement you know the connection of engagement changes dramatically do you believe in a higher power do you believe in god absolutely and do


power do you believe in god absolutely and do you think that he played through you sometimes when you were on the court well i i you know i think that's a pretty basic way of of of categorizing it in the sense that you know um we we don't have a say what our talents are you know um um you know he doesn't control you know the winning and the losing i don't believe i don't believe guy controls you know how i hit a tennis ball you know i i think i think it's a process and it's a it's a it's a participation and if you if you allow yourself to embrace that uh i think it allows you to be the best that you can you know you can you can be but but again you know i think that that wisdom on a tennis court is wisdom that you can find in in in life by being aware of that presence in every person place and moment man i think uh you know lots of people out there don't believe in


know lots of people out there don't believe in god but most human beings believe in doing good uh i strongly believe in god but what i figured over time is that it's the same thing doing good is the same as doing god's work in this planet i feel like you're an extremely blessed person andre agassi i feel like you were given these gifts for a reason and you are doing a lot of god's work with everything you're doing outside of the tennis world as well so you're using your platform in the best possible way and we're not doing good to try to reach god um we're recognizing him you know at his core yeah hundred percent um you know while squarepanda and every other business that you're doing might seem like a business on the outside i can see how motivated and how passionate you are about these projects when you're talking about helping kids when you're talking about giving kids the best possible mindset specific to them it's just beautiful like i feel like you were


them it's just beautiful like i feel like you were given your life for a reason and as you're growing older you're kind of making the world a better place through all your own experiences well my objective is to finish strong let me put it that way um specifically about square panda uh what do you have to say to the indian audience listening to it well i have to say that it gives me great excuse to come down there a lot which will become there again shortly when when when the environment allows um i would say that um we're investing a lot into um the integrity of um our content uh localizing our platform to the to the native tongue um and and moving into um government schools that allow us to reach the the neediest and the most uh children and um you know i hope i hope you continue to embrace me because you're going to see me a lot india's waiting for you under you you've got to travel a little bit in the himalayas i feel there's a


little bit in the himalayas i feel there's a lot of experiences i don't know if you have already but that's one thing i would suggest to you on a very personal level thank you for that there's so much i want to see over there and um i pray that every time i come down there there's an opportunity to take something in spend some extended time here like spend some time with your family there's i mean again i'm no one to tell you this but i do believe that there's pieces of yourself you'll discover here when you're here for like one or two months continuously and you're exploring the mountains you're exploring the little towns around the mountains there's a lot of self-discovery that happens uh in those little pockets so once the world is done with kovid india is going to be welcoming you well i i believe you wholeheartedly thank you very much god bless you andre agassi thank you for being on the runway show it was a pleasure [Music] you


this is part one of a very special conversation with physicist abhijit chavra even if you know nothing about astrophysics but if you want to stimulate your mind this is the episode for you part one is all about the basics what does the word quantum physics really mean what are black holes what are the secrets of the universe all about a physicist dedicates his own life to understanding the deep secrets of science when you break down an atom into an electron a proton a neutron what happens if you break down those pieces what happens if you break down those pieces how are superpowers even a concept how are all these science fiction concepts that they show in movies concepts in the first place that's what today's episode is about this is part one of our very special conversation with abhijeet chaudhary [Music] hey ranveer if you're bringing people on the runway show they better be scientists they better be physicists that's what we got today mr abhijit chaudhar welcome to the ranveer


mr abhijit chaudhar welcome to the ranveer show thank you for having me it's great to be here so strange that i discovered you off of videos of history that you've made on your own youtube channel uh of course i'm going to talk about history in another episode this one is the introduction of mr abhijavada from a professional standpoint you're a physicist yes what does a physicist do because i'm going to ask you a lot of science fiction black hole time travel cosmology questions but in the modern day what do physicists do so physics is about trying to discover the actual nature of reality okay so we have a universe out there and we don't really know how it works we don't know what it is made of we have some idea but there's a lot of missing pieces so that's essentially what physicists try to uncover what is the real nature of reality right so that's essentially what it is for example uh we see a very big universe out there we have telescopes


a very big universe out there we have telescopes and other instruments we see stars galaxies planets dust clouds gas clouds all that now that the interesting thing is that whatever we see is less than five percent of the actual universe wow so our eyes and our instruments they allow us to see only five percent of the universe 95 of the universe is invisible it's dark it's missing and we don't have the faintest clue about what that is but when you say it's dark what do you mean which means that it is not visible to our eyes in our instruments but we can perceive this missing mass by the gravitational interaction it has with the mass that we can see so every object in the world including this cup i'm holding including this building has its own gravity it holds its objects towards it that's just how physics works yes so physicists have realized okay there's something massive out there that has its own gravity which we can feel which our instruments can measure but they're not advanced enough


our instruments can measure but they're not advanced enough to actually see what that mass is that's right so is when um you know you say that it's not visible is it because it's too far away is it's not too far it's not too far away it's actually near us so there are two kinds of invisible matter okay uh one is called dark matter which is about 25 of the content of the universe and one is called dark energy which is even more mysterious we don't even know if it's a particle or if it's some kind of property of space time so this dark matter that i just spoke about it's everywhere i think it's passing through us right now but it doesn't interact with us because it is a very weakly interacting substance maybe it's a form of exotic particles that interacts only gravitationally so for example normal atoms of matter they interact gravitationally they interact by the electromagnetic force as well and that's why they're visible so light is an electromagnetic wave right it


visible so light is an electromagnetic wave right it has the various frequencies and that's what we interpret as colors now these dark matter particles they don't interact via the electromagnetic interaction at all that's why even though they are there we can't see them let me just give an easy analogy for some of the listeners so would it be like how humans can see seven colors we can see a rainbow possibly there are other animals that can see colors beyond the whip your spectrum absolutely like some animals can see ultraviolet rays some animals can see infrared yes in the same way you're saying that there is some substance around us which even science is not able to perceive right now yes uh which is probably beyond human perception but we're trying to figure out what that is we're trying to figure out why it's there why it's there yeah that's a big question i mean why is the universe the way it is so that's a very big mystery and that's what we have been trying to seek


and that's what we have been trying to seek for from time immemorial right so that is the the big quest in science and physics and all of that so modern day physicists they're mainly concerned about dark matter and dark energy well physics has a lot of fields there are fields like uh condensed matter physics there's fields like uh all kinds of fields right can you explain some with like modern day applications of them so for example quantum mechanics quantum physics which is a very uh popular subject in even popular uh discussions and all that so the applications of quantum physics are everywhere around us today this thing works on quantum physics or laptops cell phones washing machines computers satellites nuclear reactors everything all this technology was developed using the principles of quantum mechanics so these were applied in in the form of engineering essentially and that's how we we have been able to progress so essentially the entirety of the progress that we made in the 20th century and after that as well has been


20th century and after that as well has been built on the top of applications of quantum mechanics okay okay so we understand quantum mechanics we we can use the principles and the laws of quantum mechanics to build stuff but the funny thing is that we don't understand how it works we don't understand why it is the way it is we don't understand what the equations are telling us and that's why we have all these different interpretations of quantum mechanics so it has a practical aspect it is a very successful theory but it is one that no one understands okay but uh again what what are some of the other domains like one once quantum mechanics one study about dark matter dark energy and we'll break down all of these in this podcast what else is out there that people that modern day physicists or the top physicists are researching about so for example via particle physics nuclear physics nuclear physics we know the application nuclear energy nuclear weapons particle physics is about understanding


nuclear energy nuclear weapons particle physics is about understanding the nature of the fundamental particles of the universe like we have every atom is made up of protons neutrons electrons protons are consistent they consist of quark quarks there are six kinds of quarks and then there are particles that mediate the forces and all that so that is particle physics we have uh large machines called accelerators you must have heard of the large hadron collider in geneva yeah so that's one of the instruments we use to probe deeper into the nature of reality by smashing particles together and seeing what comes out so recently the most uh interesting success that we had was the discovery of the higgs boson which was the last missing piece of the standard model of physics so basically if you keep breaking down an atom proton neutron electron then you break down those pieces first and the more we understand those tinier pieces the better we understand physics therefore the better we understand the universe therefore we'll figure out some applications


the universe therefore we'll figure out some applications of that science eventually there will be applications sometimes the applications take a long time to discover sometimes it's faster but eventually there are applications for all of that gotcha okay so this is this is broadly what uh physicists you know divide their work into coming back to dark energy and dark matter you come up with someone who is interested in science fiction to a degree i am okay it's it was all that i read when i was a kid science fiction i'm a huge fan of science fiction like from the time i was seven or eight i started reading science fiction and it's essentially all i read until i was like 17 18 after which i went into other other things lovely so the fiction that i read initially was all science fiction and uh i think it's it's wonderful because it it's like thought experiments you know what if this was true what if we could do this and how would things play out and they say science fiction books are trailers for the


and they say science fiction books are trailers for the future yeah yeah things can happen like so we can have intergalactic travel and all those things um so but uh you know again coming back to dark energy and dark matter keeping your science fiction fanboy in mind along with the physicists that you've become what do you think it is according to like what's your hunch right now without having done deep research in that field you know what do you think are the applications why do you think it's out there does it have any impact on the human body mind what's up so as of now where we are on this little planet it doesn't impact us at all but if we were to travel outside our solar system or if you were to try intercollected travel and the thing is that every galaxy is surrounded by a big halo of dark matter okay now this dark matter even though it's invisible it may be like a gas and gases have temperature they have density so if it is hot very hot for example then


so if it is hot very hot for example then we may have some problems if we were trying to go out of our galaxy and go to another place so that is one issue we may face because of dark matter now what is dark matter people have lots of theories there are a whole bunch of theories about the nature of dark matter weakly interacting massive particles wimps machos axions these are all exotic theories of what dark matter is i am the co-author of a theory myself it's called holium so the this hypothesis is that in the very early universe in the first millisecond or so after the universe was born in the big bang there were a very large number of there are believed to be a very large number of primordial microscopic black holes that were that were created okay and it's possible according to my theory that if these microscopic black holes formed bound states like atoms then they may be still around and they may constitute dark matter so that is one of the theories around today


matter so that is one of the theories around today it's it's it's a theory that i have co-authored about 18 19 years ago so that is one of the possibilities so the mainstream general consensus is that dark matter is some form of exotic particle that is not understood gotcha okay um and we obviously we're still researching but possibly one of the science fiction applications is that if we create a plane or a rocket that could actually leave the milky way galaxy then at the board of the milky way galaxy that plano rocket could melt because of the temperature yes possibly it could be one issue we could face so maybe that is not the way to do intergalactic travel maybe we need something more exotic like a wormhole or something but even that may have some issues it's all in the realm of science fiction which meets physics right now lovely but we are not in any position to create these uh technology right now when do you think the human race will be in that position we would need a huge


will be in that position we would need a huge amount of energy to create wormholes so for hold on hold on i just gotta give uh the listeners some briefing about what a vermour is so we've actually had a lovely episode with i think lovely is the word of the day we had a beautiful episode with uh abhi abhi from and where we explained you know the abc's of a verbal so basically say abhijit sir is at one corner of the universe in a galaxy very far away from the milky way i'm on earth if i want to go meet him if i just draw a straight line from me to him it'll probably take me tens of thousands of millions of light years to go meet him but what if i take that same straight line take the two edges off it on one edge is mr abhijit on one edge is me and then i just take those edges and join them through like you know some science uh that's basically a wormhole so we see some you know


basically a wormhole so we see some you know phenomenons like this shown in uh movies like interstellar movies like you know anything about any science fiction movies where if you want to go from one part of a galaxy to another they create basically a door in space the spaceship goes through the door and then when it comes on the other side actually tens of thousands of millions of light years away that's what a wormhole is so let me give another analogy we are on the surface of the earth let's say i want to go from mumbai to new york so what i have to do is i have to take a plane and i have to travel over the curved surface of the of the planet and it will take me 15 18 hours to reach new york yeah now instead of traveling over the surface of the planet what if i drill a hole through the planet so it will allow me to reach faster so that is one interesting analogy that you do you could use for a wormhole so you


you do you could use for a wormhole so you are connecting two very different parts of space time through a doorway or a pathway that you create but for that you have to you need a lot of energy to create that sort of a pathway like so it's possible in physics but the energy required is much more than lots of atom bombs even together so there are certain solutions of the einstein equations of general relativity which allow you to create wormholes these are called wormhole solutions but there are problems in that because the thing is that this pathway is very unstable and you need something inside to keep it open otherwise it closes it closes a black hole so it may also be possible black hole doesn't it becomes a black it becomes a black hole it pinches off see it's it's a doorway it's a it's a tunnel but then the tunnel pinches off and it becomes two black holes on two opposite ends got it so that's what happens so you need something to keep


that's what happens so you need something to keep it open and there's also the possibility that if you try to travel through it it becomes unstable so the the act of traveling of trying to travel through it itself may make it unstable so there are these theoretical problems these issues so we are not entirely sure if wormhole trouble may be possible but there are some other solutions and some other possibilities that may make it possible like so like for example there is a hypothetical thing called a cosmic string it's not part of string theory it's something else so in the it is hypothesized that in the very beginning of the universe after the after the big bang there were these subs these uh structures called cosmic strings that were created at the time the universe was very small it was like the size of a of marble and enormous amounts of cosmic strings were created with tiny wormholes now as the universe expanded these cosmic strings they stretched and the wormholes went far apart in the


stretched and the wormholes went far apart in the universe today there may be millions of light years apart but because of the cosmic strings these wormholes may be open so if you can locate one of these wormholes and cosmic strings then these will be open these will remain open i want to highlight something you said at the start of the podcast which is that 95 percent of the universe is undiscovered yes so and all we can see is the solar system man has only gone as far as what like the moon like himself yeah um and probably ships we sent out i think have crossed uh pluto right the furthest is the voyager spaceship which has essentially reached out to space now interstellar space so it has gone past the boundary of the solar system so that's the farthest we have gone but it's really just a just one one footstep in the grand scheme of things yeah and you're saying that out there in that massive black ocean that we call space there are possibly these doorways


that we call space there are possibly these doorways that if you enter one we don't know what'll happen and two um you know it'll probably get you to some other part of the universe absolutely or another universe itself well that is an entirely different possibility we don't know if we can actually travel to a different universe because we don't even know how big our own universe is the visible universe is a certain size the universe is 13.8 or 9 billion years old and the visible universe has a radius of about uh 90 billion light years but the actual universe may be much larger than that it may even be infinite we have no no clue so about other universes we would be able to explore them only if we can explore our own universe but that itself is not possible because the universe is expanding and the expansion of the universe is making certain parts of it inaccessible because the further you go away from earth the further the space time is expanding and


earth the further the space time is expanding and at some point in time it's expanding faster than the speed of light wow so because of that it may not be possible to even do that do you think that you're what like how old are you i'm 44 44 so do you think by the time you're 84 like 40 years from now we would have made significant strides in all these kind of things that we're speaking of or at least some of them i hope that we colonize mars by the time i mean not colonized but we we travel to mars and we establish a foothold over there but interstellar travel i don't think it's going to be possible anytime soon at least in the next 100 years we are just taking baby steps right now see what we have is chemical rockets chemical rockets are very very rudimentary machines we need a lot of chemistry a lot of chemicals and they're very unstable they can explore at any time so it's a very difficult and delicate operation just to put


a very difficult and delicate operation just to put a human being into orbit or to send somebody to earth or mars at most but to have the technology to go beyond the solar system or beyond the galaxy is going to require a whole different kind of physics and a whole different kind of technology that we don't have right now got it and it's primarily about powering uh the existing machinery that we have so we probably have the machinery but we don't have the power we need immense amount of amounts of power to go beyond the distances that we are talking about and chemical rockets are not going to fit that bill because first of all they're too slow and they require a lot of fuel so ideally what you want is something like the annihilation of dark matter or i would say the annihilation of antimatter with matter so there is a very pure form of energy what what does this what is anti matter okay first explain what matters matter that is around us is the ordinary matter but we know


is around us is the ordinary matter but we know that there are anti-protons and the positrons and electrons and neutrons so if you create an atom with antiprotons and uh and positrons that's in it's an anti atom okay so for example hydrogen it has one proton in the nucleus and it has an electron that goes around the proton that's the simplest atom that we have now instead of the proton if we take an antiproton and we put a positron around that that's an anti-hydrogen atom okay now the property of antimatter is that if it comes in contact with ordinary matter it instantaneously annihilates and it releases a huge amount of energy antimatter releases energy so say that the negative hydrogen the antimatter hydrogen meets the positive hydrogen uh there's an explosion you're saying yes they they become just pure energy both of them both of them they spontaneously annihilate each other and this is like okay so basically before the atom bomb was created someone einstein figured out


the atom bomb was created someone einstein figured out how to create an atom how to create nuclear energy and then the application of that was the atom now because of advancements in particle physics people have figured that oh wow now this can happen this is also another way of creating energy and this is a huge amount of energy therefore maybe there are applications like interstellar travel if we can figure out how to store anti-batter for example because the moment antimatter is exposed to the to the atmosphere it will explode okay annihilate so we have to keep it in a perfect vacuum if even one molecule of oxygen or air comes in contact with it it's going to create an explosion how big is the explosion uh it depends on the energy that is inside the uh the molecule for example a proton has a certain amount of energy 511 mev mega electron volts electron has a certain amount of energy so it depends on how much antimatter comes in contact with ordinary matter and we can calculate the amount of


with ordinary matter and we can calculate the amount of the exposure is it bigger than a atom bomb yeah it could easily be bigger than at an atom bomb it can be a very very powerful source of energy if you can use it right so we need a certain kind of engineering which has not been invented yet to store it and then make it react with matter in a certain way beautiful this is where the machine guys which are the engineers come in touch with the scientists research and the learner guys and create something for the sake of science all progress depends on engineers the ideas come from theoretical physicists but to make these ideas practical and apply them in the real world you need engineers so engineers are very important you know when people go like oh why are engineers in other industries it's for the same reason that in engineering college you're taught three things you're taught jugaad to get out of trouble which is just do together trouble you're not mental toughness to be


together trouble you're not mental toughness to be able to you know deal with stuff in life and you're taught this solutions solutions find find the right way to do it find the architecture to do it absolutely any thought you have it could be a thought about relationships or space can be broken down into structure i feel which is something that engineering college mental models and structures and all that yes absolutely visualizing architecture around thoughts absolutely yes it's a mental model isn't it yeah so uh coming back to this conversation um you know you you spoke about intergalactic travel how they sent out that uh spaceship which is probably crossed uh where pluto is i mean pluto's orbit and it's gone slightly beyond the solar system when scientists plan a mission like that for so do you know when it was sent out it was sent out sometime in the 1970s okay so when they sent it out back then with what purpose is it sent out is it just sent out with this open pose of go see


just sent out with this open pose of go see what's out there the purpose for these uh voyagers of voyager spacecraft was to take photographs of the outer planets okay jupiter saturn uranus neptune these four and if anything else comes out in the way we could do that so these missions go got us the first images detailed images colored color images of jupiter saturn uranus and neptune okay and that was the uh the main purpose of this mission got it got it um when you when you hear about these planets like neptune and all these gas gassy planets gas giants gas giants uh gassy planets gas giants planets you know how there's like theories about them that if you go inside the gases at such a high temperature that you'll probably you'll die in like a second or you'll melt away in a second how is science figured all that without actually sending something in so what we do in astrophysics is that we apply the laws of physics and chemistry to models of a planet okay


of physics and chemistry to models of a planet okay okay so we have first figured out how the solar system actually formed what we know is that there was initially typically when a solar system forms is that you have a giant cloud of gas which comes from somewhere it essentially comes from the death of another star okay then this this gas cloud coalesces together under the force of its own gravity we have observed this astronomically okay and then slowly all the uh the heavier elements okay like carbon silicon phosphorous all these things they combine together and they form planets but at the core of this thing is a giant ball of hydrogen which under its own gravity undergoes fusion and that is the formation of a new star okay and then you apply the laws of physics to all these planets what kind of is it a rocky planet then it will have a certain kind of geology is it a planet with a lot of gas then it will have different characteristics and you can model them using the laws


different characteristics and you can model them using the laws of physics plasma physics contains metaphysics and all that to essentially made to judge what kind of uh properties they will have and then you can see the spectrum of the light that comes from jupiter and saturn so you can determine using that what kind of gaseous composition it has you know the size of it so you know how much pressure will be inside and using all these different uh pieces of information and data you can figure out very precisely what kind of properties this planet will have and at what depth what temperature you will find and if there is carbon in jupiter at the very core of jupiter it will be squashed together so hard it will become diamond so it's more very likely that jupiter has a diamond core yeah the diamond rain that we hear about on all these planets it's the same logic yeah that when um carbon go is if it's found in the atmosphere probably the atmosphere turns it into diamond because of the pressure yes


turns it into diamond because of the pressure yes when it goes to the depth where there is that amount of pressure then it will become it will become diamond lovely uh i've got to ask you about the next general domain that you spoke about quantum mechanics what does this even mean to an average person who's just getting into physics how would you explain quantum physics quantum mechanics these things so quantum physics is the physics of the ultra microscopic world it is smaller than an atom not smaller than an atom the molecular level atomic level and sub-atomic level okay okay so it is a very very counter-intuitive and very perplexing theory but we know it works so for example if i have a particle in a box let's say i have a molecule of oxygen in a box now typically when you put about when you put a tennis ball inside a box you know exactly where it is right if you can see it if it's a transparent box you know where it is and even if the box


you know where it is and even if the box is closed it's going to be in one position in the box one location in the box however because of because of the laws of quantum mechanics if you have an oxygen molecule in a box it could be in all kinds of different positions at the same time it is not localized okay so there is something called the wave function which is denoted by the letter psi so the wave function is of is essentially a field of probabilities and every particle every part of the box the particle will have a non-zero probability of being there so the particle is in a superposition it's in a superposition of all kinds of different states at the same time so that is one of the strange things about quantum physics so in in the real world uh things can only be in one place at one time like this cup it doesn't follow the laws of quantum physics therefore it's only on this table but the moment you start following the world of quantum physics once you go


start following the world of quantum physics once you go down to that level suppose abhijitsa and me become as small as an atom then the laws of physic physics change where the same cup if we throw it into a box that's governed by quantum physics there might be five cups that we'll be able to see together you will not be able to see five cups at the same time when you make an observation you will see only one cup so the entire superposition of probabilities will collapse and it will become just one but as long as you don't observe it it's in a multitude of states at the same time god that's how it is that's just one of the strange things about quantum physics there are a whole for example you can have barrier transmission so if you have a wall a wall a thick barrier and you shoot a particle at it there is a possibility a non-zero finite probability that the particle will just go through the wall that is something we don't observe ever in


the wall that is something we don't observe ever in the real world right but the thing is that the real world the world that we observe every day it emerges out of the laws of quantum mechanics that is the fascinating thing about it so first of all this is very x-men-esque by that i mean that um you know there's these characters in x-men which can pass through walls yes yes there are characters in x-men which uh can be at multiple places together there's a character called night crawler so i suppose i'm night crawler i can just like kind of explode into a gas gaseous state and then suddenly i'm in that room instead of this room so uh somewhere i mean the only reason i'm highlighting x-men is to make the average listener understand what quantum physics laws can possibly be like and i'm sure there's a thousand more like this like the example you gave about looking at that box with a cup inside it the cup actually if you look away it's all over the box but


if you look away it's all over the box but the moment you put your eye on it it dissolves into one place it will all converge into like one cup it'll say no i'm just like right here similarly i'm sure that the particle passing through the wall uh is just just the second example out of like a thousand there are a thousand there are many really weird examples the more generalized form of quantum mechanics is called quantum field theory and according to this theory this entire world is an illusion particles themselves are fiction the world is made up of fields so there are fields everywhere and the interaction between these fields causes the laws of physics as we know it and the particles themselves are nothing but waves localized waves in the fields so that is the more general version of quantum physics it says that there is no such thing as empty space vacuum itself is fiction everything is field there are fields that permeate everything and that is the most successful theory that we know of such physical


the most successful theory that we know of such physical as in its proven again and again yes we can predict the properties of nature extremely precisely using quantum field theory got it and you know a lot of spiritual people also highlight the quantum field theory as a proof for spiritual thought like when you say omnipresence that there's something all around us there's cosmic energy all around us in the world of spirituality it's called cosmic energy or omnipresence in the world of science it's called the quantum field which which basically means that you and me while we're talking are probably made out of the same energy uh we're made from the same energy and uh only when i'm putting my eye on you can i see all that energy converge into one man and reverse when you're looking at me you can see all that energy converge into one person we have manifestations of the same fields right and in indian philosophy there is this concept of consciousness so we don't really know in science what


consciousness so we don't really know in science what consciousness is we don't even have a definition but in indian philosophy it says that consciousness is something that permeates the universe so there is a consciousness field in the universe and whenever we wherever we have individual people there is a concentration localized concentration of consciousness so there is in a form a field theory but it is a field theory that is a part of philosophy not science got it um we actually had this uh podcast way back i think it was the fourth or fifth podcast ever you're the 105th or something i see but so it's been a long time since then that podcast was about this uh the quantum field theory okay so there is this whole concept that um i believe that there are some there is some machinery all over the world which is capable of measuring something within the quantum field theory is there something like that i am not aware of exactly what there is so uh the episode was with uh one mr


is so uh the episode was with uh one mr abhijit pradhan who studies these things a lot but again he studies it from a spiritual perspective okay so uh basically just before 9 11 had happened that machinery had caught a change in the quantum field uh all over the world where uh you know so they say that okay if if truly you and me are made out of that same energy uh we are connected in some way if someone even in africa or in japan was feeling something different right before 9 11 happened like a big worldwide catastrophe that you would eventually notice when we talk about things like intuition sixth sense i'm dead sure that the quantum field theory has some role to play and all that or you know just feeling a connect with another human being that's what separates humans from animals that we're more collaborative we look out more for each other we're more empathetic are we able to express art which can be created by one human and appreciated by