Diversity Through Freedom: OODA Loop, Constructal Law & Meritocracy | Adrian Bejan, PhD

Discover why individual freedom is the ultimate driver of true diversity, rapid adaptation, and peak performance in this eye-opening episode of the No Way Out Podcast (The OODA Loop Podcast).

Brian “Ponch” Rivera and Mark “Moose” sit down with returning guest Professor Adrian Bejan (Duke University), creator of the Constructal Law and author of the brand-new book Diversity Through Freedom. Bejan reveals how the Constructal Law shares the same DNA as John Boyd’s OODA Loop—both explain how systems evolve for better flow, access, and performance when freedom is present.

From the misuse of entropy in education and science, to why sports remain the last pure meritocracy, to the physics of design, rhythm, and movement in nature—this conversation connects thermodynamics, first principles, and real-world flow states. Learn why collectivism stifles creativity, why questioning authority accelerates orientation and decision-making, and how athletics deliver equal opportunity, discipline, and elite performance that forced DEI can never replicate.

Whether you want to master OODA Loop tempo in uncertain environments, unlock flow states and peak performance, or understand why freedom + merit = natural diversity and progress—this episode delivers actionable first-principles insig

John R. Boyd's Conceptual Spiral was originally titled No Way Out. In his own words: 

“There is no way out unless we can eliminate the features just cited. Since we don’t know how to do this, we must continue the whirl of reorientation…”

A promotional message for Ember Health.  Safe and effective IV ketamine care for individuals seeking relief from depression. Ember Health's evidence-based, partner-oriented, and patient-centered care model, boasting an 84% treatment success rate with 44% of patients reaching depression remission. It also mentions their extensive experience with over 40,000 infusions and treatment of more than 2,500 patients, including veterans, first responders, and individuals with anxiety and PTSD

John Boyd’s Conceptual Spiral was originally titled “No Way Out.” In his words:

“There is no way out unless we can eliminate the features just cited. Since we don’t know how to do this, we must continue the whirl of reorientation…”

Download a complete transcript of Conceptual Spiral for free by clicking here.

Stay connected with No Way Out and The Whirl Of ReOrientation

• Follow Us onX:
  • @NoWayOutcast
  • @PonchAGLX
  • @NoWayOutMoose
• Subscribe to our Substack – The Whirl Of ReOrientation
  • Long-form work on John Boyd, Orientation, and how to think and act inside the Guerrilla Information War.

Want to build your organization’s capacity for free and independent action?See how we help teams become more competitive, collaborative, and coordinated under pressure:

• AGLX
• AGLX Yo...

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcoming Adrian Bejan Back
• 2:03 Freedom, Affluence, And Perspective
• 9:10 Military, Travel, And Gratitude
• 15:32 Introducing Diversity Through Freedom
• 19:02 Misuse Of Entropy Explained
• 30:38 Image, Jargon, And Scientific Silos
• 41:58 Defining Freedom, Design, And Rhythm
• 55:36 Information As Form And Meaning
• 1:04:46 Niche, Ecology, And Learning From Nature
• 1:12:56 Time As Direction Of Change
• 1:20:26 Sport As Merit And Evolving Flow
• 1:33:36 Positionless Play And Basketball’s Shift

Transcript

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 0:20

All right. Today we're going to mix up thermodynamics, the flow, the constructal law, with DEI merit uh hierarchy and some sport. And to help us with that is our guest who came back from episode 14. So we're so thrilled to have Professor Adrian Bejan back with us from Duke University to talk about his new book. And uh Professor, I think we've had a lot of new listeners since episode 14 join us. Can we go back and just revisit a little bit about your history and maybe a little bit of the constructor law before we dive into what you talk about in your new book about Moots, you got something?

Mark McGrath: 0:56

Oh, yeah, we have to, I think it's important to tell you, Professor, that you were the first Romanian born, first native-born Romanian that we had on the show. And since we've spoken to you last, we had two more. We had Tib and we had uh uh Dr. uh Mihhaela Elieru. So so uh we've had three Romanians and you were the first. So just so you just so you know.

Adrian Bejan, PhD: 1:20

I broke through the uh glass ceiling, you know, the glass ceiling, yes, that's right. I stuck my neck out, I fell off the limb, all these things thanks to Brian. In fact, uh this is the first interview that I'm uh uh giving uh for this new book of mine. And uh very, very thrilled, uh thrilled, thrilled, yeah, grateful for being uh included.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 1:43

Well you are sticking your neck out on this one, diversity through freedom, right? Uh you're a you're a maverick. Uh you I think uh after reading the book, I think you made it clear that not everybody shares your view on this. Is that correct?

Adrian Bejan, PhD: 1:55

Well, uh I'm not so sure. Even the enemies of freedom are using the F word all the time, claiming that they're the liberators and the defenders of uh of uh freedom, uh democracy. Uh look at the DPRK, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. I mean, they claim uh to be to be the uh freedom warriors. I think that the the the true um defenders or free individuals are everywhere, except that most of them are keeping quiet. And they're keeping quiet because unlike Adrian, they uh have not lived the difference. The difference. That is, I tell my students, listen, you can learn this, you can learn this, you even a trade. But along the way, read a few things from the past and and perceive the difference between having access to electric power and uh not having access. Having access to uh light uh meaning uh light fixtures, meaning a longer work day, and not having access, meaning having to be like uh these uh writers from the past who wrote by the candle, and only one candle, because the candle was expensive. All these things know the difference and account your blessings that ahead of you, older than you, were um generations and generations of creative people, most of them uh peasants, creative people who invented everything from uh the little hut to the ditch in which to dump the sewage. All these things, all these things were the mothers and fathers of the affluence that we take for granted. And the the the the biggest, the most notorious culprits of indifference are the children of uh affluence, uh meaning the those born in this country. There's one way to to shape them up. First is to encourage them to join the military. That is where that is where the uh um the let's call it the the uh the difficulty of uh of living is uh and the discipline are taught. And the military also takes you all over the globe for you to see people not as fortunate as every single American. And uh then when you come home, tell others to count their blessings and to be more realistic about uh the importance of every day that they live in this amazing country.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 4:22

I appreciate that. Moose and I have served overseas, uh, both of us in different parts of the world. I agree with you 100%, but not all Americans can join the military. I think 25% of our population is actually fit mentally and physically to join. But there is something else they can do. They could they could do what? They can join sport, right? Yeah, sure.

Mark McGrath: 4:40

They could play hockey and beat Canada and Italy.

Adrian Bejan, PhD: 4:42

Yeah. Look, Canada is uh is small potatoes compared with the USSR at the at the at the top of their strength in uh 1980, where whenever it was that was a um a monumental event, um it was it happened in the right time at the start of the Reagan years, at a time when um through uh I think misguided American policy, the uh enemies of freedom were were winning, such as the invasion of Afghanistan, the um this Muslim invasion of uh Iran. It was one uh one um like dropping the ball in basketball, you know, fumble, one fumble after another. Anyways, uh uh wisdom wisdom is not distributed uniformly or over a population. That's why I vote for the uh person who knows the difference between uh easy and difficult. And my father was uh basically rescued from a village shoeless by the Romanian army in the early 1920s, and put in school, and uh meaning from the village put in school, and they made a uh uh veterinarian for the cavalry of the army out of him, a highly gifted individual. In fact, I think I'm uh a reincarnation of my father, totally, totally, of course, anti-communist, but also anti-fascist. He did not he wanted people to be left alone, to create and to pursue peacefully entrepreneurship and the helping of other people. You could not do that under communism. You simply could not do it. Anyway, both of my my parents were in prison, sorry, not in prison, much worse. They had been disappeared, but they didn't come home in broadlight, daylight. My mother was tortured with uh sleep deprivation for six full days in order to spill the secrets that she did not know. The atrocities of um totalitarian state are not even a mystery. They never crossed the m the minds of people who were are the babies of uh of affluence in a free country. People need to talk about these things. It's about time that the few like me who are still around talk about them. I mean, and by the way, academia is uh is just a bastion of ignorance, you know?

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 7:03

Yeah. Well, again, we're grateful that you're here. Uh your new book, I'm gonna share a screen share of it right now, uh Diversity Through Freedom. You you sent us an advanced copy. Really appreciate that, the connection that uh you're talking about with your background, your orientation coming from uh communist uh Romania, your background with with sport and and how you found sport as a way out of that. I believe that's the way you describe that. Uh your experience on a national basketball team. We've known the story you shared with shared uh the story with us in the past. And now you're connecting something that I think it could could be controversial. I don't I don't disagree with your your view on this at all, but the connection between DEI and potentially communism, which is fantastic. Uh I think but you're you're you're using first principles, you're using the constructive law, uh, you build on a lot of these things. So I do want to I mean I have many, many questions, but I again I don't want to uh uh dictate the direction and flow of all this, but I do want to go back to something we talked about the first time you were on here briefly today, uh where you talk about the misuse of uh entropy, um, maybe uh uh a little bit more defining uh the way you define the second law of uh thermodynamics with irreversibility, and of course um uh the connection to the first uh principle or the um uh the first law of uh thermodynamics and again what you have with the constructor law. So can you just briefly talk about what you bring up in the book about the misuse of entropy?

Adrian Bejan, PhD: 8:32

Yeah, that uh okay, you're referring to chapter two, which is about jargon or the um common sense. By the way, I wrote this book two years ago when I started to look for a publisher, and that was um one year before uh Donald Trump decided to use common sense in his campaign. And I was flattered by the fact that uh he brought attention to the importance of of um speaking a street language as opposed to uh hoiti toite uh um um you know recent uh inventions in language. Entropy is is, in my opinion, an educated opinion, unknown to those who speak the word. Entropy has a precise definition, internomics, that's my specialty. And I don't throw that word around at all because it's not useful, because I know that the not even my students, most of them don't get it. Don't get it. Um and I'm not going to start a discussion or explanation with you. There is a uh the the word entropy is misused in the context of say a disorder and um and the direction of meaning the time arrow. Time arrow meaning the direction of time. It's kind of funny. They're talking about the direction of time, not uh asking themselves, hey, what do you mean by time? You know, what is time? Ask me a little bit later, I'll I'll tell you. And uh so no, there is jargon thrown all over the place. And um what's been happening in science during the past 200 years is that as education became more and more available, meaning uh kids like my father uh uh admitted to school, they became intellectuals out of parents and grandparents who did not go to school. And all of this has created a uh an elite in every country, uh not just the advanced ones, elite that is educated and uh thicker and thicker, thicker and thicker. And in this elite there are more and more stripes, stripes of educated people. Some know the biology, others know economics, others know physics, others know to the point that those who know engineering, which is actually the oldest of the sciences, are are treated as second class academics because you see engineers sometimes tend to get their hands dirty where they know how to change a car tire or how to hold a wrench, you see? And so the today, the so-called the science establishment is uh uh tribal separated into uh families or cubicles according to titles. Biology here, physics over here, uh, and even in engineering. My colleagues from let's say electrical engineering uh don't know who I am, okay? Yeah, as if they don't read the the news or they don't watch your show. They simply don't, because I'm not an electrical engineer. I'm an electrifying engineer.

Speaker 2: 11:32

That's true.

Adrian Bejan, PhD: 11:34

Whatever. The point that I'm making is that jargon is good for those few who belong in this particular locker room. Okay, and so uh forget about entropy. Or for that matter, energy is another word that also has a definition. Energy is measurable. By the way, entropy by itself means absolutely nothing. Nothing. And in uh thermometics there's a definition for entropy change. Entropy change can be measured, and yes, entropy change, also known as under certain more special circumstances, entropy generation or entropy production, it's a it's a uh number you can uh you can measure or calculate, is a uh measure of irreversibility, meaning that not all things that go one way, one way, equally um bad, equally uh uh lossy or a penalty to you, or dissipative, not equally like friction, you know. You can have a low friction, that's a low, small number of entropy generation versus intense friction. That's uh that's uh that's really bad news. So that the so it's important here. Entropy, the word by itself nothing. But entropy change is a quantity with a precise definition, and it is a measure that quantity, a measure of the uh destruction, churn, useful work or useful power. Uh just like uh I'll give you an example of in uh street language, a waterfall. A waterfall steadily because it keeps flowing and falling is uh is uh generating entropy because it is destroying, destroying the power that could have been extracted by a smart person, maybe a gardener, who would then stick a uh water wheel uh in the middle of that jet and extract power in order to uh do something with that power, like uh drive a pump or uh drive one of these electric generators to light up his house. By the way, every light bulb that uh burns and creates uh light that is destroying uh, yes, just like the waterfall, destroying electric power. So everything, by the way, we are all guilty of entropy generation, every single one of us, using the electricity, but also destroying the work uh encapsulated in the food that we consume. And we destroy that visibly through our movement, through our noise, the way the noise we make, through the fact that we lose body heat uh right now. All of that is loss after loss after loss. It's one-way flow, also known as the destruction of uh something useful, and that destruction uh has a measure called entropy generation. In the early half of meaning first half of my career, yes, I started a field called the entropy generation minimization, which is the wisdom of calculating these losses, and even a deeper wisdom of doing something with the uh with the architecture so that those losses are mitigated, if not eliminated. And this is how I got this idea of about the constructive law, which is that uh while uh educating students and colleagues, especially younger colleagues, of uh what to do about avoiding uh penalties that are avoidable. Uh it occurred to me, Adrian, uh wait a minute, you're okay, fine, all this entropy, blah, blah, but this is all about changing the drawings, changing the configurations, changing the image. And bingo, image is nature, image is uh surroundings, image is uh all I know. All I know. In fact, without uh perceiving uh image and sound, I am as good as a marshmallow or some, you know, yeah, knock on wood.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 16:40

Well, Professor, you've given us a lot of uh ideas to go back in the archives and look at destruction and creation, something that we talk about quite a bit with the connection to Observer at the Side Act Loop from John Boyd. Uh you just triggered another thought here that the uh image that's something from the environment. Would you say that's true? Uh image.

Adrian Bejan, PhD: 16:59

Yes, yeah, because we're not we're not alone. Every single one of us is embedded or encapsulated in um in his uh niche, niche, like this room here where um my family by the way, did let me show your people. This is all my books there under my window chronologically. I wrote all of them from left to right. Yeah. And um, but I don't I'm not a book writer. I'm actually a writer of scientific uh articles, and uh every once in a while I sit down and say, ask myself, hey, what is uh the idea that connects uh Adrian's most recent publications during the past four years? And uh it occurs to me that um during those most recent years I changed my mind about something. Yes, that's right, um Brian. You write that you challenge the importance of changing your own mind.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 17:52

Yeah, you you challenge d dogma and and your own assumptions. That's that's true to uh that's what I understand. Before we go any further, and and since we're on the topic of defining a few things, and w I do want to come back to time here in a moment, but chapter twelve, you you write about lack of freedom and you have key definitions in there. I want to go through these because they're very important to our listeners, uh, and I think they're important to Moose and myself. And and the first one is freedom. Uh you have design, rhythm, uh, information, purpose, selection, and a time arrow, which you already brought up. Can you kind of walk us through what those why we need to understand a common definition of what those mean and what they are, what those definitions are to you?

Adrian Bejan, PhD: 18:29

Well, freedom is part of uh nature, nature, because without freedom there is no change. No change. In fact, uh we perceive only things that change. Things that don't change, uh good luck with them. They uh put you to sleep if you're dumb enough to concentrate on them. What really if what really and by the way, that was uh what I just said is the message from my preceding book called Time and Beauty. Okay, I'll uh leave that um uh to the side. Uh so change is the uh the perception frame, something to change something, anything changes that has freedom to change. So freedom is the is the word, the d is a descriptor if you want. It's not jargon because everybody knows the difference between uh being able to change and uh not being able to change, such as being able to uh escape from a prison and not being able to escape from a prison. And uh and then that is important if you are uh curious about what changes can be made, and then what is the direction of those changes that may be useful to you and your children, or your students, or your compatriots. And this is very, very important. And um um and of course the joke, it's a it's a bitter kind of laughter, is that uh that it is not appreciated. The word is not uh is not appreciated for what I just said, it is uh spoken as a slogan, as a uh opportunity to for I would say some politicians, especially those who are uh enemies of freedom, to beat themselves in the chest as being um liberators and uh defenders of the common man. And no, they're the opposite of that. I'll tell you what they are ideologues in their own uh lives lucky enough to uh to uh find themselves in positions of power and uh please themselves with the thought that they are in fact helping their countrymen. But that's that's a pipe dream as history has shown time after time. You know, Hitler and uh Stalin and uh Charlescu and Romania are just recent examples. By the way, the list will the list will get longer and longer. Just read the news every day, um Maduro the other day. The point, but the history is full of these things, full of these things that uh there are some people, uh, by the way, it's not just at the at the top of a uh uh country, it's at the top of anything. For example, a university or a school. All of a sudden there's a one of these, uh let's call uh ideologues who uh is the number one and very powerful, and um he or she acts uh out of honest belief that uh he or she, the individual, uh, knows what is best for his fellow man.

Speaker 2: 21:27

Yeah.

Adrian Bejan, PhD: 21:29

I'm I I know the exact I have the exact opinion about myself. I do not know. This is my father the veterinarian, I do not know what goes through the brain of the dog. I don't know what the dog is going to do. Uh I know dogs, I know dogs, the dogs talk to me, but they don't tell me what they're gonna do next. And the same with a chicken, and the same with whatever you want. You know some things if you're educated, such as the dog will come to you when the dog is hungry, and on and on. But other things, other things, good luck with that.

Speaker 2: 22:10

Right.

Adrian Bejan, PhD: 22:12

Meaning, listen, uh I have in the uh in the book the course from Clint Eastwood, man's got to know his limitations.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 22:19

Right. Let's move on to design and rhythm. Uh you call them sisters, and this is the first time I saw rhythm as a as a um Did I get that right? Yeah, that's right. So design would be can you can you walk us through that? Because rhythm is very important to the way we talk about how living systems interact with the external world. So can you help us break that down a little bit?

Adrian Bejan, PhD: 22:35

Yeah, right. The so-called design, which means configuration. By the way, design of the the Latin word means drawing. Yeah, or a sign. A sign uh sign small simple drawing with a message. That is what drawing really means. All right, so the design, the simple thing with a message is expressible as an image or as a sound, meaning a rhythm, a rhythm, a uh musical note or get it? That's it. So when people talk about space, space and time, this is the jargon in physics. I am from From the village, you see. Literally, my my father's uh uh village uh where he grew up in the home, the uh the floor was dirt. Eaten dirt. There was no parquet, no cement, no wood, just dirt, okay. That was poor Romania in the 1920s. Poor doesn't mean stupid, or quite quite the opposite. The poor really know the difference between right and wrong, or useful and not useful. Anyway, so um so no, I don't talk about space and time. I talk about yes, uh designs or drawings, or movies for that matter, and the rhythm, because because the movie itself is designed in time, you see, changes in time. So you see, even though they're different, meaning music is not to be confused with with a painting or with still art, they uh two go together because of change, change. So the so-called still image, after the still image, after the still image becomes obviously cinematography, but it is nature itself, nature itself. And uh that is the complete story, the complete uh discipline, if you want, to uh respect yourself as an intellect. But if you're in my position as an educator, wow, that is that is the secret to share with your students, because your students are the best citizens on this planet. They have not been indoctrinated sufficiently. They are the ones with whom you have a chance, a chance of having a conversation, a discussion, uh, a uh let's say for them an eye-opening session. That is in fact the the uh the happiness moment in life for me. But I think it is the same for them, the same for them. It is a fact as I look back at my career, because students are in contact with me. This week I'm uh talking to you. You're my first uh uh interviewer, but three students want to talk to me on Zoom. These are students from decades ago. And um and one of them, gee, I can brag about this. One of them is the senior vice president at Blue Origin, Jordan Charles, was my undergraduate student, very much a constructive design author of scientific journals. And he's gonna draw by on the on next Monday. The point next Monday. The point is this. The point is this. What the student takes from the classroom, I'm talking from the university, if that student is lucky enough to uh to uh to uh encounter a free man, the student takes okay, several things, but the most important one is the memories of the professor. The professor, not the memories or the memorizing of the textbook.

Speaker 2: 26:27

Right.

Adrian Bejan, PhD: 26:28

And by the way, most textbooks are not written by the professor who is lecturing, unlike uh unlike my textbooks, my courses. I never taught I never taught out of somebody else's book, okay? Right. I never did.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 26:42

You also bring up information uh where you combine a design and rhythm that conveys a message. So the way I understand that is both design and rhythm provide some type of information to the observer. Is that is that correct?

Adrian Bejan, PhD: 26:54

Yeah, yeah. Look, I have an advantage over many others, especially English speakers. Manon is a um is a Latin uh descendant, meaning it's from the Latin language. And these words that we throw around in academia in science are um mostly of Latin origin or if not of Greek origin. And um you know uh uh these uh two uh let's call them cultures were very smart, they uh borrow from each other. So Greco-Roman is their name not only in wrestling but also in science and in uh technology for that matter. So the the words, the the words you just spoke, uh tell me what they mean. Uh in science, by the way, many people violate what I'm going to tell you next. In science, uh words have meaning, meaning, and one word has one sense. One sense. So information. Tell your viewers uh to question when they hear this word, just like uh oh, run away from entropy. I told you that's the first thing you should do. But information, it sounds common, it's information. No, information is a verb informu informare, which literally means to give form, to give shape. And you get information when you when you see a sign signum, which means design, meaning you're you're being shaped up for encountering the sign. And the shaping up is called uh information on the fact that you're being informed. Yes, it's the same thing. Design in nature is all around, and it's running like a movie in the 3D from left to right and from heaven to the earth to uh yeah, to inform you, to make to make your brain more at peace or more a part of the surroundings.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 29:00

I think this connects well to and I introduced you to uh Professor Rob Gray and and Alex uh Saram, one of the basket, a basketball coach, right?

Adrian Bejan, PhD: 29:07

And the reason for that is they're familiarization. They're responding to me, yeah.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 29:12

Yeah, I mean, they're familiar with ecological dynamics, which is about affordances or opportunities for action, for connection. I'm gonna throw this out to Moose here in a second, but we talk about outside information as being the environment or one of those elements of the environment.

Adrian Bejan, PhD: 29:23

And I think I call it the niche, the niche, like the nest of the bird or the the the gallery of the worm. Just a second, the worm is not underground because the worm is blind or stupid. The worm finds shelter in the gallery and the nest to lay its eggs. And uh yes, in the gallery, uh it is lubricated, is the niche. It's not good for me to be in such a tight place, but that is that is excellent for this particular being. So get used to the idea that uh the biology, I hope they listen or watch your show, should uh revise its uh its pages. It's not about the uh the naked animal here or the naked uh Homo sapiens over here. There's no such thing as naked anything as the is the the so-called uh animal in its uh immediate uh surroundings called the niche. Niche. I I don't know whether I said this to anybody, but uh my wife, who by the way should be interviewed some sometime, maybe not at my funeral.

unknown: 30:33

Okay.

Adrian Bejan, PhD: 30:35

She uh 1986, uh she said uh let's go to Africa. We've been yeah, we've been going there ever since, almost annually, to see what I'm telling you. To see life untouched, but also you see uh local people resembling the uh simple lives that I was sketching earlier, talking about my my parents, and appreciate the difference, quote unquote, the difference. There are these people who predict the future and uh all these other things, all the way to uh invading Mars and yes, if you know the past, you're not surprised by the uh creativity of some very special individuals who are willing to climb out on a limb and fall, and then climb again. This is uh the uh the reality, the reality is uh is worth uh uh worth knowing.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 31:36

So one last definition before we maybe move on to sport and merit and the physics of flow and the freedom and and diversity in DEI. That last thing I want to go back to. You brought it up time. Can you spend just a couple minutes on explaining what you think time is or what time ought to be?

Adrian Bejan, PhD: 31:52

I did not hear you well. Explain what? Time. You brought up the time. Oh yeah, sorry, time. Here I go back to my preceding book called Time and Beauty. Yeah, time. The uh these uh specimens of the uh Homo sapiens did not have a wristwatch, you know, and uh clocks. No, they had they had brains and um there's like just like any uh any animal, they were able to perceive change, change. And when language appeared as a natural artifact for the uh for uh the bipedal ape, words were uh spoken to describe the difference. Words such as now and before, or uh young and old, for uh past and future. These are very different. This is called dichotomy, like the difference between one and two, or white and black, you know. And in Greek, which is the oldest of these written languages that uh civilized uh the West, there are others older, but I'm talking about Europe here. In Greek, all these words, this dichotomy comes under a chapter or a headline called chronos, which means time. And yes, the difference between uh before and after is uh speaks of direction. Because the the after doesn't come again, you see. Get it? That's direction.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 33:17

Yeah.

Adrian Bejan, PhD: 33:17

Direction or directionality. So, starting with the bipedal ape, and with the occurrence of language, just like a writing much later, came this this uh this language full of words, full of words that were uh describing directionality of change, directionality of change. And the name for that is is the passing of time. So time, uh to those who were born yesterday, is jargon. Yeah, the kid. The kid was really curious, kid. I should ask, what what is time? What is time? You know, what do you mean, uh daddy, what is or mommy, what do you mean by time? I know that kid. I was I was that one, and my parents got so sick of me, this is I was very small, nowhere near going to school. And my parents were uh so sick of it that uh my father showed up one day with uh with a four-volume stack of the uh dictionary of the Romanian language, and he said, bang on the door. Well, after you after you go to school, if you have these questions, just look them up here. Yeah, so okay, uh I was kind of a uh a um what do you call it? Um there's a word for uh uh I was bothering my parents with uh with to me there are important questions like what do you mean by this? Right. Or why why such a word? It is weird, weird, you know. But it's the same in my work today. There are a lot of things in uh that my my peers, I'm not talking about my colleagues, my peers at my level in uh thermosciences, they use, they speak, they write, but I realize time and after after time that the authors do not question the meaning of the words they speak. Which means which means that they don't know the meaning of the words they speak.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 35:19

Yeah. So this curiosity is key here, challenging assumptions and and understanding the uh and this goes back to some of the things that we talk about on the show. John Boyd was very specific about the language he used. So I I thank you for all that background information. I want to switch gears a little bit to something that Moose and I are closely connected to, and maybe uh we could talk about things from your past and make it uh make a connection again to the key thing about diversity, and that is high flow activities such as basketball and soccer, right? So we've talked about this in the past. Our children both play basketball. Moose's children play basketball, some of them swim actually, so there's a lot of connections of flow there. But can you go and and talk about, and you wrote about this in your book, that athletics sports is a last bastion of the merit system. Can we talk about that and and why you see that as being important to connecting to the physics of flow?

Adrian Bejan, PhD: 36:09

Well, because uh because nature, nature has uh has its own way, and its own way is uh that of shaping things and changing things so that those things find the greater access to uh to what's moving. In the case of the uh human society, clearly the society as a whole, by the way, that's not an abstract concept, it is the multitude of all the individuals and their associations, small and large. The smaller are embedded in the larger. I mentioned family, but uh there are lots of families in uh Durham, North Carolina, and there are lots of cities uh this size in the United States. You see, you see the uh the modular structure. It's invisible, but it's modular of the sarcosa side. It's just like the animal body, it's modular. You have one body, but then you have a few uh main organs, and then inside of them a few smaller suborgans for um components, you know, blood vessel here, even though the organ is the uh muscle. You get the idea, same with the skeleton. It's all it's all a uh an assembly of a few large and many small. And all of that thing is moving, and all of it is flowing. Yes, uh moving from a birth to death if you want to look uh at the bigger picture per individual. And uh nature is uh has a has it has its way. Luckily, luckily for uh everybody, not only those who who uh uh uh were educated in athletics, luckily athletics is on display, just like the Olympics that ended last uh last evening. And if you pay attention, if you pay attention, you see there uh the evolution of society in front of your eyes. There are people in uh all over biology who who claim that evolution is such a slow, slow uh process that it cannot be witnessed. Yeah, you cannot witness the evolution. Well, if you read my books, you can you are no longer confused what evolution is. But well, okay, fine. If you cannot witness the biological evolution, the least you could do is witness a short movie of it in uh in um in the evolution of uh a competition. This uh Olympics has been evolving. There was a great movie called Chariots of Fire, which was about the uh the uh first Olympic Olympiad. There's a big difference between that and uh what you saw yesterday, and that's evolution. Uh well the direction is clear. It's in the direction of providing access to more and more athletes to compete. Yes, in fact, this was the purpose of the uh evolution. It was uh I'm quoting uh Pierre de Coubertin, the inventor of it, was to to create a truly egalitarian technique. This is a quotation, imagine a quotation that's uh self-contradictory, egalitarian and elite, you see. Yeah, show that to the DEI people, okay? Right. Egalitarian means equal access, equal access, but merit, elite is in the same statement. So access, access is important, is number one, and access gives birth to the hierarchy that we celebrate gold medal, silver medal, and so on, and inspiration for the uh still younger to uh keep training and compete four years later. I mean, try to beat that. By the way, Pierre de Coubertin was a let's say lucky enough the uh survivor of uh French nobility in uh around the 1870 or so when uh France lost uh the war against Prussia and lost, I think, about a million young men, imagine, had the idea that uh there's got to be an additional way to educate young men other than with a weapon in hand, meaning uh in the military. And so he invented the concept of physical education in school, uh, or something in schools, something that we take for granted. Except that he proposed it to the um Ministry of Education of France. By this time France was a republic, and um to to institute physed in schools, and uh there was no interest in this. So he crossed the channel and uh he found uh uh he found interest in uh England. And it was in England that he um put his vision in practice, physed. And then he said, wait a second, I need a gimmick, a gimmick with which to popularize Phi Z. And uh bingo. That's how about we resurrect the Greek Olympics and so you see the Olympics is uh call it um advertising, advertising for physical education in schools at any level. And um and it's been it's worked out wonderfully. Uh you have phys ed everywhere. Uh you also have phys ed in the military, meaning done uh scientifically. You have universities that uh that produce uh professors of professors, university professors of physical education. And it's all wonderful. And of course it's a spectacle that inspires uh uh inspires uh young uh young uh men and women one generation after another generation. Gee, a generation. Every year you you have more uh more uh let's say uh uh young people who aspire to join this uh truly egalitarian elite. Yeah. And you'll never find a DI in uh in in in this uh kind of movement. You cannot. We're fans of Arsenal. Did I tell you this? Yeah, no, you I think you wrote in your book. Yeah. Yeah, Arsenal. Anyway, we watch English Premier League. English Premier League. In addition to uh recognizing on the playing field the flow of a society, you know, the flow is everything, not just the ball. In addition, from year to year, I observe with great satisfaction the morphing, the evolution of the composition of the club. And the club, yes, the club is changing. During the past uh, I would say uh decade, it's maximum two decades, it has become home to uh talented played players from everywhere, not just from Europe, everywhere. In fact, the largest stream comes from West Africa. Yes, or from uh Europeans with West African genealogy and uh parents. And uh the the game is obviously a lot faster, a lot faster, a lot taller, a lot taller, a lot uh more is the word, uh persistent or with the players playing on the entire field all the time. You don't have a uh a segregation of uh here's the defense, here's the middle, and here is the offense, as if uh painted in uh in uh with a steel image on a on a painting. No. The whole team is moving like a carpet up and down the field as required. And I watch that and I know from the beginning which team is going to win, because the better teams are moving information packed, either attacking or defending, but it's the same formation. Others are uh either sluggish, sluggish or breaking formation under attack, meaning they become ruptured. And through those cracks, the the good attacking team uh finds access to the goal.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 44:31

What you what you're describing here reminds me of what we call the re in in team science, the reallocation of resources or reallocation of people. It's it's a go anywhere type concept. And I had not watched soccer, or I've not watched soccer uh in about three or four years. Uh so I I'm probably missing out on this. But in basketball, we want the same thing. We're moving away from position players to uh more positionless and high flow with motion, high motion.

Adrian Bejan, PhD: 44:55

Is that the evolution that you're seeing in all Yeah, the uh the basketball used to be like soccer because because back then when I was playing, players are not uh not as well endowed physically. They're definitely not as tall. And in the league where I played, there are no uh players of uh West African in uh origin. The West Africans are uh statistically. Taller, taller and with a higher uh center of gravity, meaning uh longer legs, and that means uh greater ability to jump. And uh so basketball, in my uh opinion, has evolved toward being less interesting because it is a lot faster, a lot taller, meaning the basket is for them too close to the ground.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 45:42

Yeah.

Adrian Bejan, PhD: 45:44

Uh and with a professional structure everywhere, including the university, these so-called student athletes uh in uh basketball and football, American football are actually professionals.

Speaker 2: 45:56

Right.

Adrian Bejan, PhD: 45:57

With that kind of uh um life, the um the players become much, much better at everything, including shooting. And today basketball is just uh the team uh marches one way and uh the player, uh tall one who has the ball shoots uh from beyond the arc and uh and uh scores a three-pointer. And it's boring. Boring.

Speaker 2: 46:21

Yeah.

Adrian Bejan, PhD: 46:22

The fun in uh basketball is watching uh videotapes from uh say the late 60s and throughout the seven that's one way. The other one is to watch uh video tapes from the same uh period, including the eighties and nineties of NCAA games, uh and uh stop there. Because for that for the game, the uh the court has become too s too small and the basket has uh become too low.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 46:51

Okay, and that's just because of the evolution of uh the players.

Adrian Bejan, PhD: 46:55

Of the players and the the game itself. Yeah. Um nothing is done to slow the game down.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 47:02

That was a great perspective. I I agree with you on many of these things. One thing I want to disagree with you on, and I think uh this will make sense in a moment. I think you mentioned that there's DE DEI has no place in sport. However, today we're seeing uh men play women's sport. And I know you write about this in your book. And your thoughts on this? That's different. Okay, okay.

Adrian Bejan, PhD: 47:21

That is is something uh and I have I wrote about that in, I believe, chapter five in the in this new book. I showed uh I showed the uh the gaping difference between records of uh men and women in in uh sprint on land, meaning uh 100 sprint versus 100 meter freestyle. And that that difference in speed is I forgot uh 15%. Um yeah, meaning that there's there's a women for obvious reasons are not built to compete with men. That is is undeniable. And if um if a if a if a sprinter, male sprinter who does not win um the race uh among uh his quose sexuals moves over to uh compete uh on a track uh populated by women, I think in my opinion, that's uh that's uh unethical, no matter what uh you call that uh what uh person who makes the switch. And by the way, as a former athlete personally, I would not be proud of the fact that I I won a competition in which my uh competitors were women. I would I would not be proud at all. But that's Adrian.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 48:43

Uh yeah, I'm just gonna read from your book right now on on just to make sure our listeners are clear. You write that men and women perform at significantly different levels because of different sex architecture, body size, and upbringing. Men have a 10% speed advantage over women in both 400 meter sprint and and swim. So you're you're saying there is a difference, right? There's a physical difference.

Adrian Bejan, PhD: 49:03

But that difference is enormous. It is 10%. 10% is enormous. In sprint, the records have not changed practically at all, meaning that when they change, they change by the fraction of a second. I mean, that's it it yes. And it's always been this way. The records in uh say the 100 meter dash have not changed uh much since Jesse Owens, Berlin Olympics.

Mark McGrath: 49:28

That not when you think about this, when you see trends like this emerge in in large groups of people supporting things like this, we're talking about evolution and entropy. Isn't there something in a society that can reverse and go the opposite way, not in a progressive evolution when they when they choose to do things like that?

Adrian Bejan, PhD: 49:48

Is that yeah, well, a society, uh depending on its uh luck uh of the moment, could be uh the victim of uh mistakes uh generated at the top. Germany, before uh Hitler was uh at the top of uh everything science, technology, industrialization, all these things, not to mention music and art and all. And then all of a sudden, all of a sudden, they have a leadership that uh was pursuing a conquest of the globe under a particular ideology, which was that of uh socialism. In their case, uh also called uh nationalist socialism. And that was and that uh set the Germany back for I would say two decades, because Hitler was in power only twelve years. Imagine the damage that a person has done to his own people. I forgot, was it two million dead, in just twelve years? And then uh without American help, uh Germany would have been languishing to this day.

Mark McGrath: 50:50

Well, you you you use the example of the leash as a form of uh coercion, which I I really could relate to that uh like in a social thing, like whether it's you know, we're talking about sports or or or coercive government, you know, it it that forces that kind of collectivism forces inefficiency. Whereas freedom allows the the natural flow. And I say to somebody that lives in Manhattan, when the mayor in his inaugural address said we're gonna welcome in the warmth of collectivism, and then yesterday we were hearing a blizzard, and he says he wants everybody out shoveling snow, but you have to bring two forms of ID to shovel snow. But I guess that I guess the broader point, all kidding aside, well, I mean it's not kidding because it really happened, but that that kind of coercion is stifling human energy and stifling flow.

Adrian Bejan, PhD: 51:46

Well, look, uh it was very clear about uh Mam Dani from um from when he was campaigning, uh where he was coming from. Very, very clear. Uh and uh meaning that uh that to me was not uh anything new, it was actually bitterly familiar. The fact that people voted for him shows you that how easy it is for um for the common man to uh to uh uh fall for it.

Mark McGrath: 52:24

And to c to clarify, I mean we're talking scientifically. I mean, I think that's where a lot of times the things that you talk about and that Brian and I talk a lot about when we're exploring authentic science, which is always open to challenge and evolution, yeah, you can come across as sounding political, but science doesn't know politics. So when you see coercion in place, it doesn't matter what what you slap on it, whatever kind of political label, that there's scientific, you can critique that scientifically, and you can see that inefficiency occurring.

Adrian Bejan, PhD: 52:58

Well, uh, that was the point of uh my chapter on uh the uh the the dog on the leash.

Mark McGrath: 53:04

The dog on the leash, I love it.

Adrian Bejan, PhD: 53:06

Dog on the leash is uh is uh it's true, that's a problem of physics. I wrote a scientific journal paper about it, and that's that was uh peer-reviewed by my uh my uh I'm talking about the journal paper reviewed by my peers, and it's a back of the envelope argument about the fact that uh that walking freely, uh as individuals, dog and man, consume less power than walking uh connected or uh forced to walk at the same speed.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 53:40

Yeah.

Adrian Bejan, PhD: 53:41

The uh uh the the problem with uh with uh Mamdani and the word collectivization is uh is or why that slogan is attracts voters is because uh there's a there are things that are big such as the army, which is a collective, that um are more successful on the battlefront than the individual soldier. In other words, size matters. The the group defeats defeats the individual. And then this is reality. I'll get to it in a second, because it's not to be confused with the dog on the leash. But in the mind of the uh of the uneducated, there is power and there is benefit in um in joining. In joining. Of course, of course, that's true. If you do that voluntarily, voluntarily. And uh especially today when military is uh is a choice. Um yes, to join voluntarily, which is a uh an expression of uh of selfish behavior when you join is not a bit confused with uh ending up together with uh somebody who puts on a leash around your neck. See? So in this as a still image is the same image, it's a collective, but the the collectivized are not are not the ones who join voluntarily, and um because it is beneficial for the individual. The latter, meaning joining voluntarily, because it is beneficial to to move or to live as a group, is called economies of scale. Economies of scale is a phenomenon in nature everywhere you look, and you see it in the African bush. You see it every if you know history, you see it, in fact you see it in the evolution of of technology, big time, big time. Supply chains, they the movers are the biggest trucks or the biggest uh cargo ships and the biggest cargo planes, because the price per unit is lower and lower, the bigger the bulk. Okay? But all of that is done to benefit the individual, and the individual s signs on to this scheme voluntarily. The opposite is the collectivization which is imposed from above. Yes, it is done, in fact, quite um uh let's say intentionally by people at the top in order to to rule over a population unaware of the fact that uh they're they're being um trapped into a structure from which they cannot escape.

Mark McGrath: 56:38

When you say size matters, uh you could and and I have I want to connect a thought to another guest that we've had, but when you say it's size matters, like basically saying something could be too big, too, right? Like something there could be too many people or too many.

Adrian Bejan, PhD: 56:52

There's n there's no such thing as too big. If it became too big, it crumbled. The uh society that evolves freely, obviously, she does, no matter what you want. Society will uh change itself if it has in it uh meaning the uh laws that allows it to change, to morph. The laws are made by by uh people, and and if the people are wise, meaning the ones who write the constitution, then those laws are to be changed by the voters, by the elected officials. What uh has not been changing at all since the get-go is Marxism or some other ideology like that. And that is why every every um every uh society that's ruled by uh an ideology is uh is destined to uh to change, meaning every ideology is destined to crumble.

Mark McGrath: 57:49

So, in that we're learning here, and we're always trying to learn, what I was trying to tie it to, I was rereading a paper by another guest that we've had by the name of Bing West. And he wrote a paper, he worked for the Rand Corporation after his service in Vietnam, and he had written a paper called Strike Teams. And what he was saying was that smaller organisms, you know, anywhere from five to ten Marines or Navy SEALs or Army Rangers or whatever, was getting more effective results than an a thousand-man sized battalion. And what he was saying was that the smaller, the smaller, more agile, adaptable unit or military unit was able to flow into the the populace, the culture more effectively than the big 1,000-man battalion coming in to take an objective and destroying everything.

Adrian Bejan, PhD: 58:44

That's that's I was trying to because like as I was as I was going through this, I was thinking, uh you seem to have been hitting on that, and I didn't know if if if you had any if you had any thought about that, where where something like big brute force doesn't flow in a specific culture, in this case the the the you know the Vietnamese countryside, but what they found more effective instead was smaller smaller groups that could adapt assimilate like a chameleon sort of yeah that's uh that's again something else that uh the um um uh was made famous in the US by uh General uh Schwarzkopf, you know, in the first uh Iraq war was to delegate the decision making to the uh to the um uh to the soldiers on the small groups uh on the battlefront. That is basically what they teach on uh organized sports such as soccer, is called the creativity on the spot. Uh these people who play the game are not looking on at the sideline to see what signals the coach uh is flashing. And uh yeah, creativity on the spot or dexterity or heads up, heads up as opposed to uh playing with the looking into the ground. All these you can teach these things, you can teach them to young uh aspiring players, but then the ones who uh who uh win the game are uh those who uh who question the uh the emitted environment uh every single moment and create uh the the the the cracks and the gaps and the mistakes of the opposition. Yeah. And all of that is in my opinion, nothing new. Nothing new.

Mark McGrath: 1:00:28

Asymmetric guerrilla warfare that we're where adaptable guerrilla thinkers can can f tap into the flow of a culture or uh or a situation better than larger groups.

Adrian Bejan, PhD: 1:00:41

Okay, and these are these are this is the language of uh the one that you quote is from the military. I uh respect that a lot, um, but the the physics of it is that uh that the movement Yeah, that's what I want to understand, the physics of it. Movement movement uh the organizes itself in this uh uh multi-scale fashion with uh let's call it the front. The front that's uh that's uh advanced by uh smaller uh uh entities like uh the uh the attacker in soccer is an individual.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 1:01:16

Yeah.

Adrian Bejan, PhD: 1:01:17

In uh in um in the military uh is the infantry, the uh obviously the Marines. The point is, and by the way, and the generals are l uh at the back, or not even in the picture, the so-called commanders. They are not on the front line. Uh is the same as in the famous game of chess, you know. They uh the you have the peons in front and then the uh the uh more powerful pieces at the back, and those powerful pieces, yes, sometimes could jump over or through the uh front. That is a great game because it and by the way, athletes should be taught that game because it um it teaches the um importance of uh seeing seeing uh what is in front of the front, you see. I just came up with this.

Mark McGrath: 1:02:08

I like that because I because I guess as I was reading your work, I mean I I I was thinking of like adaptable guerrilla insurgent asymmetric warfare are people that are generally that have been successful at it are are uh uh very capable of tapping into the flow of something, whether it's a culture or religion or whatever it whatever it is, they're able to they're able to do that.

Adrian Bejan, PhD: 1:02:32

This thing with discussion or anything is is the same that okay should be happening in uh scientific research. In scientific research, uh the uh yes, unfortunately, it is not happening much to the point that I'm a kind of a singularity. I'm still the uh the uh that uh small thing, the the the soldier on the front line who is trying this and trying this without um in my case, without support from uh from uh from the authorities. It looks like we just lost Mark, okay?

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 1:03:06

Oh, he's still around. Going back to innovation, you you write that in conjunction with the idea of technique. Uh you also say you brought this up that innovation is you know, it's innovation on the spot. So technique, can we go into that a little bit when it comes to individual performers? What you mean by that?

Adrian Bejan, PhD: 1:03:23

Yeah, that was uh a uh uh in the chapter about uh sports evolution. It's one thing to uh recruit uh uh the uh the uh the better built, you know, the faster by nature. That's uh that is one way to uh to uh create a winner, but then the other way, which is worth teaching, is that the uh the coach uh is a teacher and should employ that um that opportunity uh for the benefit of uh the player or the or the team or the uh sponsoring institution. And uh I think I show there that uh for example in sprint have a God-given ability to be fast, and but I also have a god uh god-given ability to uh run a particular way, meaning uh with a certain number of steps to the finish line. But I show that running, and this is a very good example in female sprint, and also uh yeah, female sprint, but also in male sprint, those who run uh with uh a somewhat larger number of steps tend to run taller as opposed to keep falling forward. And the the telegraph pole that uh that falls the fastest forward is the pole that's uh still vertical when it starts falling. That is the fastest speed forward of the tip or of the center of gravity. You watch it. And then that speed forward drops down to zero when the uh pole hits the ground. Get it? So falling forward too far is not good for horizontal speed, you see. It's it's good for vertical speed because you go flap and that's the end of your progress forward. So uh there's this, I keep forgetting the name of this uh sprinter who was for 20 years the record holder in the 200 meter sprint. Michael Johnson. Johnson, okay. In fact, I met him. I met him during a um BBC or filming in um Kingston, Jamaica. And he was famous for running uh people thought uh naturally straight up. Straight up, and he was making uh shorter steps. And turned out to be a lot faster than everybody. His record was broken uh just recently.

Mark McGrath: 1:05:48

Twenty I also love one of the things I loved too, other than the leash, was the difference between how uh an aquatic mammal moves in the water, like a dolphin or a whale with uh flap, a vertical flap versus the shark or the fish that has uh like more of a snake. Like I thought that that was pretty interesting.

Adrian Bejan, PhD: 1:06:10

Yeah, yeah. That uh that uh that kind of uh let's call it uh movie teaches you, in case you did not know, that mammal uh swimmers came from land. Because uh movement on land is this way, falling forward, falling forward. The bird itself is actually falling forward, and then falling forward. Movement on land is is designed by God to uh fight against and defeat gravity, meaning uh to make up for the fact that the body by itself keeps falling. So then the body has to be lifted. So the movement is in a vertical plane, like this. You see, in the water, all these bodies are neutrally buoyant, neutrally buoyant, and uh they rose from the bottom of the uh the shallow swamp. So the movement was uh uh snake like, like uh the fish and the uh the um the reptiles, these uh snakes.

Mark McGrath: 1:07:11

Well that you know I I have uh as Ponch mentioned, uh children who swim, including at the Division I level, and I Think of the the dolphin kick and the and I also think of the breathing coming up and over. Like the the the mammal has to come up and get air to go back down.

Adrian Bejan, PhD: 1:07:29

By the way, by the way, so if you are a thinking athlete, that uh gives you an advantage because you uh connect with uh the animals that you observe. And if you pay attention that you learn that yes, you have the freedom to adjust your rhythm, and that is the technique. But if you are not that smart, then a smart coach will teach you to do these things that you and I are discussing. There's a place for the coach on a team. There's also a place for the medical doctor on a team. There's also a place for uh, I'm sure, a priest on a team, or for a person to uh to help you become a better person during those very few years of opportunity to becoming a solid citizen. By the way, this is actually the benefit of uh of uh being an athlete.

unknown: 1:08:20

Right.

Adrian Bejan, PhD: 1:08:21

To become a solid citizen without realizing. You stay away from crime, you stay away from rape, you stay away from all the from uh smoking, from drinking, from spending sleepless nights. You uh are educated uh without knowing the about the benefits of uh respecting others and not fouling the opponent because he'll hit you right back. Or being nice to your uh teammates, by the way, teammates are then your brothers and brotherhood for life. This is what you get out of sports. It's it's priceless, it's priceless. If parents watch this uh episode or this segment, take notice. Um encourage your children to be uh to be competitive, yeah, and active physically. And recognize uh the the the uh the golden hand of uh merit with and the opportunities in front of you if you are and by the way, also recognize the golden hand of discipline. Discipline is liberating, not the leash that uh was mentioned earlier, is the complete opposite.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 1:09:32

Yeah.

Adrian Bejan, PhD: 1:09:33

The discipline is uh gets a bad uh bad rap in academia. No.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 1:09:39

Well, I'm I'm excited to see what comes out of the new relationship between you and the folks in the uh constraints-led approach, the ecological dynamics that preach a lot of these things, that we have to look at the individual constraints or or genetics and then design that rhythm or help them design the rhythm that uh gives them to their peak performance. Everything you're talking about today resonates well with what they shared with us on the show, and of course, on how all living systems interact and uh thrive in in an ever-changing environment. Uh, before I ask one last question about AI, I want to uh ask a question about the following connection to the Vitruvian Man, if you don't mind. That's in your book. Yeah, can can you share a little bit behind uh why the the the connection to the wheel and spoke and what you talk about here?

Adrian Bejan, PhD: 1:10:22

Yeah, by the way, uh gymnasts uh all ages have been uh showing this cartwheel uh all the time. In my own uh elementary school, there were classmates of mine uh doing this on the corridor, you know. And the uh the line drawings uh on the right show how the uh the uh body falls and then how uh the second leg uh catches the fall, breaks it, and then straight straightens the body. The the smallest number of uh legs needed to do that is two. And then and then of course that's one thing. Then there's the human-made wheel, which has many spokes. And if you look at what the wheel does, the wheel is basically a repetition of the of the drawing that I made with the black lines, a repetition, except that the wheel has uh many legs called spokes. Yes. And um which wheel is better. Or meaning better for the animal. Because people like to say that nature did not invent the wheel. How wrong that statement could be. Nature invented not only the wheel, but invented the lightest wheel, which is the wheel with only two spokes. Not with with twenty spokes, eighteen of them not used, you see. And that is the advantage of uh quadrupedal motion, sorry, bipedal motion. Quadrupedal motion is uh the same story with uh with one wheel in front and one wheel in the back, each wheel with only two spokes, namely two legs. And then that's why design in nature approached uh critically, meaning not as dogma, but as a as a uh let's like at the North Circus at the in Las Vegas, you're being shown tricks and then you scratch your head. How did that thing happen because it's so incomprehensible? Yes, your own earth to question what goes on and question those who make these declarations. Declarations. I just thought of something akin to uh nature did not invent the wheel. Of course, nature invented the wheel. All right, I just showed you. There are people talking about that um ideas come from uh from the collective. Yes, they even call it the wisdom of the ants. Yeah, the wisdom of the ants. Last August I was when I was in uh in Africa, filmed filmed a um a colony of ants returning to their um to the nest after raiding a neighboring colony. I mean, these uh ants are predators, they kill and eat each other. And um, yes, and on this path, which was on a on the road, meaning there were no obstacles, on this path you saw the beaten track of the of the successful ants that were bringing uh dead bodies to their colony to eat, and then their relatives, meaning also predators, walking in the opposite direction on the same path to go and steal more, you see? So you have a counterflow, counterflow just like the vehicles on the highway here, and uh the wisdom of the ants was such that these ants did not uh did not invent the two-lane system. They're actually walking into each other and colliding with each other, and then wrestling one against the other to get past the other. Wrestling and then walking on top over the other, meaning a lot slower than otherwise. That's the wisdom of the ends. And if you want, if you like that, you can have it, you see. The idea is something else. The idea is about avoiding the collision and yes, coming up with flow architectures such as the two-lane system, and yes, get to know the difference, the difference, quote unquote, because it wasn't long ago when human movement on a beaten track, in fact, we can still see it in the bush, is on a single lane. It's called the Conga line. And you better watch out if on the same narrow path you encounter you encounter the predator or the neighbor who wants to kill you, you see. That is that is the wisdom of the ants.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 1:15:22

You bring this up in the context of science in your in your book, uh, that I think you say that science is not a uh it's not about the voting, right? It's not about the I think you say science is not a democracy. Is that is that true? Is it the way you look at it?

Adrian Bejan, PhD: 1:15:32

I don't hear you. Well, you're talking about what now uh goes through.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 1:15:35

Science has uh you know, it's not about the number of votes science gets. It could be the outlier, the it's not a natural democracy, if you will.

Adrian Bejan, PhD: 1:15:43

No, not at all. Not at all. In fact, let me show you. Upon the wall here, I I have a dictum from uh from uh Galileo Galileo Galilei. Let me see if I can point to it. Right there, right here, up above my head. In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual.

Mark McGrath: 1:16:07

From your lips to God's ears.

Adrian Bejan, PhD: 1:16:09

And he knew he knew what he was talking about because he was about to be burned to the stake, you know, for his uh for his understanding of nature. Yeah, this man. And yeah, he's one of my very few heroes because he had ideas and he stuck to his guns. And everything that came and is celebrated, you know, Isaac Newton and Euler, all these things began with him and before him um Leonardo da Vinci. Yes, these people who were basically symbols of individual freedom to think. And by the way, my book, this uh book we're talking about, is about the primacy of the individual. The individual. The idea comes from the individual, but not from the collective. If the idea, if the idea is good enough to spread by itself, then that idea attracts attracts a group, a group of all kinds. But every single one is in is a volunteer.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 1:17:17

Yeah.

Adrian Bejan, PhD: 1:17:18

Yeah, and that is not a collective. That is that is a uh like uh the stadium that comes to watch a game. And yes, the group, if it is uh gifted, uh to practice the idea that attracted them, that the bigger group executes a project. Maybe they build a bridge, or maybe they build a university department. And you see here, in other words, first is the idea, later, right, later is a group and a project, something bigger, something that would not have been born without the individual who, like Galeo Gale, defended an idea. But this is not only true, it is extremely important today, because what we're being taught is that ideas are created by the group, that the group is the mother of the idea, which is complete nonsense. It is it is a repudiation not only of nature, it is a repudiation of the history of science. You open any book, especially a book of science, you do not see the names of groups, you see the names of individuals, you don't see the names of groups or the names of institutions or governments, you don't see the same thing. Even better, even better, even better. Uh the the students, all of us who went to school, remember the remember the names that uh of people who came up with ideas. And this is why this is why uh parents use some of those names to name their children. Yes, yes. Listen, the collective the collective is the poison, poison to creativity. It kills the individual. In fact, uh those who accept to be coerced into joining, those are unbeknownst to them, are abandoning their individuality. They're they're saying goodbye to their opportunity to think for themselves. They're waiting for things to be told, told from above, things needed by the uh head of the institute were under communist communism that is much, much, much uh simpler thing to expect because there's only one thing coming from above, you know.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 1:20:01

I wonder, is this connecting back to um collectivism drives unnatural diversity when in fact we want to have that? Okay.

Adrian Bejan, PhD: 1:20:10

No, collectivism is uh is the uh one uh ask one word to describe what happens in a society that's not free. Meaning uh communism, uh fascism, it's uh but communism is the the the best uh the best uh uh let's say the uh the doctrine that has evolved scientifically. The uh diversity there is known as the class struggle struggle, and that's the uh diversity of two. Uh is the under communism the oppressed versus the oppressor, or the the uh workers versus the factory owners. In today's uh uh DEI it is the uh the uh underrepresented against the overrepresented, or the minority against the majority, or the uh obviously white versus black, or male versus female. In every single case, one class is to be uh favored and the other one disregarded or eliminated. So that's basically the and then uh if you realize, meaning if you have my background, then DAI, when it appeared about 15 years ago, was uh bitterly familiar. Because I grew up, I lived under this uh kind of system where uh as I documented the book through uh the writings of uh very famous uh authors who lived under communism, the plan was to destroy, really to kill, to exterminate the so-called enemy class. The same in under you know uh fascist uh Germany and Italy. They had uh the people and then the enemy of the people, the enemies of the people. They had the uh pure race and then the not pure race. I tell the story in uh this book about my first day of uh school, in which I was told that I was of unhealthy origin, meaning my my fate was to die because I was unhealthy. My disease was that my parents were intellectuals. Can you believe this? I mean, by this is this is what was going on uh all over the eastern half of Europe. This is a civilized uh continent, and then all over Asia, all the way to today's uh you know People's Republic of China and uh the DPRP uh in uh in uh North Korea. There's still communism in uh Vietnam and you've got communism under the nose of the United States uh in Cuba. This is what's going on. So uh so yes, science is good if you take uh your God-given uh gift of uh of questioning, just questioning, and you come up with the answers yourself. You don't have to read what I write or listen to what other people have seen, or uh to listen to folks who have lost their uh grandparents and so on, uh and the gulags and uh No, just read, read and question what you see and especially question question every single voice uh that comes from a position of authority. Why? Because you are an individual. And by the way, this is the story of uh of uh the book cover. Yeah, the story of the book cover which you showed uh in fact show it again if you if you can. Yeah, that one. So uh two years ago I was uh with my wife in uh in um in one of these reserves and uh in front of the the Land Rover appeared this image. It's a dead tree. It's actually called um lead wood tree. Anyway, it's it's a dead tree, and on it this bird. Later I found out that this bird is a Egyptian goose, but I cannot tell from uh this uh distance. And I said to myself, hey, that's Adrian, that's Adrian, you know, standing as I wrote in the caption for this image, stepping on dead wood, meaning questioning what's being celebrated, that's all dead wood. What with infinite access to the blue sky of ideas? Nice yeah, and uh and f luckily I was able to persuade uh the publisher to use my photograph because they did they had not read the book to know that uh this book comes from um from a person who uh yes is at peace with the questioning authority.

Mark McGrath: 1:25:10

Gotta challenge all assumptions. Yeah.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 1:25:13

Hey, I think that's a great place to wrap up our conversation. Uh Dr. Bejan, I think uh having you on the show is is always awesome, always our pleasure, and we thank you for joining us today. Um can you tell our listeners what you're up to next, what's coming up uh after this book launch and and what your plans are for the future?

Adrian Bejan, PhD: 1:25:29

Well, uh the uh in uh today's academia, because of the internet and all these tools, uh AI is a factor of plagiarism. Um I shy away from uh from uh well from uh talking about uh what is what I'm doing next. But I will say a few things about that. The point is that uh everything, including this uh book is just uh flashed on the screen, soon enough will be uh plagiarized. By the way, the things that I uh came up with, these things about predicting design in nature, have never been refuted. So the uh the constructor law has never been refuted. And that means the physics of design in nature is uh here to stay, no matter what you call it. Except that those who, while failing to refute it, are now doing this kind of work and uh calling it by other names, not constructor law. Okay, so that's uh that's the tongue-in-cheek comment on uh on my peers. But the answer to your question is yes. Currently I'm working on on the fifth edition of my uh theramomics uh uh treatise, which is the most used uh theronomics uh book in English on the globe at the graduate level. And I'm uh I'm actually uh making changes to this uh treatment to make it accessible to students who are taking theronomics as a first course. And I am uh yes, what I'm doing is I'm talking to them in writing the way I'm talking to you. You know, I'm explaining why entropy is to be spoken as a word only by those who know the meaning of the word, but to use other words such as irreversibility or um unintended destruction of uh available work or available power. The wisdom of uh knowing the difference between uh using that power and then wasting it, you see, that's called engineering, is the same as in uh a military campaign. You have a final supply of uh power from the back, it's called uh it's called supply and maintenance and uh hospitals and all these things, including uh defense against attack from the back. There's also that. And um and uh all these things, all these things have a a um a place in education. And by the way, one thing that uh also has a place in education, no matter how specialized, is uh history. Teach teach these young people history because especially in America, that is not being taught. Lots of things are not being taught. Mathematics education is very poor, very poor. Latin and Greek come to mind, I think that that earlier the classics the classic classics are poo-pooed. We're not nobody knows anything about anything. Foreign languages are useful, but uh by default, if anybody gets learns any foreign languages Spanish, well, I have news for you. Spanish, the language had practically zero impact on science. Science, there's a reason for that. It has to do with the uh the Empire of Spain, which is different than the other empires. And um and uh so teach history. Learn history along the way, learn foreign languages, learn them comparatively. If you don't remember one word as you speak English, that happens to me quite often. I remember it in the three other languages. Yes, it's easy for me because Romanian is a Romance language. But but but but question question every step you take and that means every word you speak. Once again, develop the uh technique of uh questioning authority. Oh, you don't have to question uh ver uh audibly. You read something that was written by uh an exponent of authority with a smile, question that because, as I said a second ago, Clint Eastwood was right. Man's got to know his limitations.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 1:29:48

Well, sir, I think we'll uh wrap right there. We'll keep you on the uh show for a few moments while we stop recording. Thank you so much for being here. And uh I know there'll be next time.

Mark McGrath: 1:29:57

I want to tell our listeners, especially for someone like myself with a liberal arts background, like a Bachelor of Arts and not a science background, I I find your books are some of the best books I've ever read that help teach me actual science and be open to science uh in the way that I learned it in the in the liberal arts perspective, that's not dogmatic and promoting flow and and and inquiry. So I can't recommend your books enough.

Adrian Bejan, PhD: 1:30:24

But uh let's not put down the liberal arts. Uh no, no, no, no, not at all. Not mentioning the things I uh I um describe uh autobiographically is the fact that in addition to uh to a very, very uh competitive mathematics education and athletics, my parents put me in an art school in uh elementary school, and because they detected that I had an inclination toward making drawings.

Mark McGrath: 1:30:53

Yeah.

Adrian Bejan, PhD: 1:30:54

It was that was very important, very important. I went there for four years among kids who were uh better than I was. I uh I developed, yes, I developed uh this uh aptitude uh to recognize a message when I see something, and then to convey it graphically, because this is Napoleon. The exact quote uh I don't remember, but Napoleon was making fun of all sorts of people uh and was a very good writer. He had a lot of time uh to write in exile, and um he said that uh he would uh stop uh the top general from talking and tell him uh that it would be better if he could if you if he could if he could speak with a simple sketch.

Mark McGrath: 1:31:41

Yes. Uh believe me, I'm a proponent of the liberal arts. I'll let's say I'm I'm saying with someone that with a non-engineering background, a non-technical background, I love your work specifically more than others.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 1:31:52

So thank you.

Mark McGrath: 1:31:53

Anyway, all right, Professor Adrian Bijan from Duke University. Thanks for being with us again.

Adrian Bejan, PhD: 1:31:59

Also known as Adrian.

Mark McGrath: 1:32:01

Adrian, yes, the f the first of three Romanians we've had on the show so far.

Adrian Bejan, PhD: 1:32:05

Well, no, no, no, no. The one and only. The one and only.

Mark McGrath: 1:32:08

That's true, that's true. All right, we'll keep you on for a moment. Thank you.