??The Pleasure of Finding Things Out

?? Who Is Your Favorite Scientist? ??

If you are anything like me, the question of "Who is your favorite scientist?" actually isn't that simple to answer. While Carl Sagan, Richard Dawkins, and many others are ranked very high on my scale, I've gotta give my All-Time Favorite Science-Person Award (ATFSPA) to Dr. Richard Feynman.

His almost childlike wonder that he applied to how he thought & learned about things is just awe-inspiring. He was involved in the creation of the atomic bomb. He also earned a Nobel Prize in 1965 for his work with Quantum-Electrodynamics, which is basically all about how certain forces (e.g. gravity) behave very differently at a very small scale as compared to a large scale. He certainly didn't stop there as he played an important role in proving how the Challenger spaceship exploded due to faulty O-rings. (Wikipedia)

From the following video which is one of my favorite examples of what I'll call Improvisational Teaching:

"It's interesting that some people find science so easy, and others find it kind of dull and difficult, especially kids. Some of them just eat it up and I don't know why it is, it's the same perhaps for all subjects."

"For instance, lots of people love music and I never could carry a tune, and I lose a great deal of pleasure out of that. And I think people lose a lot of pleasure who find science dull. In the case of science...

I think that one of the things that make it very difficult is it takes a lot of imagination! It's very hard to imagine all the crazy things that things really are like!

? Jiggling Atoms ? (0:50)

"Nothing's really as it seems, we're used to getting hot and cold, and all that 'hot and cold' is the speeds that the atoms are jiggling. If they jiggle more, it corresponds to hotter, and colder is jiggling less. So if you have a bunch of atoms, a cup of coffee or something sitting on a table. And the items are jiggling a great deal in the coffee, and they bounce against the cup, and the cup then gets shaking. And the atoms in the cup shake and they bounce against the saucer, and the heat heats the cup and heats everything

The hot thing spreads its heat into other things by mere contact, because the atoms that are jiggling a lot in the hot thing shake the ones that are jiggling only a little bit in the cold thing. So that the hot 'heat', we say, goes into the cold thing. It spreads, but...

what's spreading is just jiggle and irregular motions, which is easy to understand.

If you want to find out more about Feynman beyond the above video, I'd suggest reading "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman" which is one of my all-time favorite books.

??Failure Guy Podcast Guest: Barbara Barna Abel ??

Episode 54 - "There's No Motivation Without Motive"

The wonderfully warm and supportive Barbara Barna Abel joins in to give more insight into the wild world of casting.?She's a legend in the category having been the casting director on Queer Eye, What Not to Wear, and Man v. Food.?We discuss a wide variety of topics from coming into your own personal brand to the importance of meditation and being gentler with yourself. I'd highly recommend listening in as Barbara shares incredibly generously and with sometimes reckless abandon.

Special shout-out to Vinnie Potestivo, whom we chat about throughout as well as Evan Shapiro who has a fantastic episode on Barbara's podcast which can be found here.

?? The Joy of Painting ??

I almost forgot that I said last week I'd share another Bob Ross painting I did, enjoy!

Credit: Ben Currier - Circa 2010 - Wet on Wet Oil Paint in a Dexter-like Basement

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