Echoes of the Invisible: Pushing the Limits of Human Experience

Factual America

20 Jul

Written By

Award-winning documentary Echoes of the Invisible (2020) looks at timelessness, the origins of the universe, and what it means to be one of the almost 8 billion inhabitants of Planet Earth.

The film follows the explorers who are pushing the human body and technology beyond known limits in the most extreme environments on Earth. One of them is Paul Salopek, a journalist walking across the world in the footsteps of the earliest human migrations. Others include scientists like Joe Incandela, building machines to look back nearly to the beginning of time.

Joining us is the award-winning director, cinematographer, and editor Steve Elkins, and two other participants in this film – particle physicist Joe Incandela, and Julia Payne, who is the project manager for Paul Salopek at the Out of Eden project.

Echoes of the Invisible took almost 7 years to make, as Steve travelled the globe interviewing scientists, monks, and athletes. We discuss the journey of making this film, and the great wealth of human experiences on this marvellous planet.

“I take a whole bunch of stories that absolutely deserve their own documentaries, but I try to see what sparks fly off when you collide these different stories together.” - Steve Elkins

Time Stamps:

00:00 - Guest introductions and the trailer for Echoes of the Invisible.
03:15 - When and where Echoes of the Invisible has been released.
05:29 - What the film is about and the common themes connecting the stories it looks at.
09:31 - What the Out of Eden Walk is, and the journey Paul Salopek has been on.
13:22 - What the God Particle is, why it’s so important, and how they study it at CERN.
18:35 - How long ago the Big Bang is considered to have happened.
19:01 - How Steve found the different stories to put together for this documentary.
22:42 - Why Steve doesn’t pitch his films and how he’s able to still produce them.
24:45 - The logistical difficulties involved in making the film.
26:01 - How long it took to film the documentary.
27:00 - The bureaucratic hardships you face when walking around the world.
29:17 - How Paul has managed to afford walking around the world for so long.
33:59 - What Joe’s response was when Steve approached him about being in Echoes of the Invisible.
40:02 - The over-emphasis on profitability within Western culture.
42:43 - How Paul reacted to the message of the film.
46:38 - Steve’s different artistic interests and how art can help science connect to the public.
50:00 - The relationship between artists and scientists, and announcing Higgs boson.
53:58 - How long Paul estimates it will be until he finishes his journey.
56:00 - The next scientific project Joe is working on.
57:52 - What dark matter is and is it the answer to the fundamental questions of the universe.
59:31 - The next projects Steve is working on.
1:02:43 - The clock Jeff Bezos is building that will chime every 1,000 years.

Resources:

Echoes of the Invisible (2021)
Kanopy
Out of Eden Walk
Out of Eden Walk Nonprofit
Innersound Audio
Alamo Pictures

Connect with Steve Elkins:

IMDb
LinkedIn

Connect with Joe Incandela:

Website

Connect with Julia Payne:

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Transcript for Factual America Episode 70: Echoes of the Invisible: Pushing the Limits of Human Experience

Steve Elkins 00:01
Hi, I'm Steve Elkins, director, cinematographer, and editor of Echoes of the Invisible.

Speaker 1 00:12
Being fearless is important for anyone who's trying to do something of the unknown. When I started to lose my eyesight, I honed myself to run across Death Valley. It's not so hard physically. What is really hard is mentally.

Speaker 2 00:33
At CERN, we built a machine that's the size of a city.

Speaker 3 00:36
What we're looking for is the genetic code in the universe.

Speaker 4 00:39
It really changed my perspective about everything. Photographing the oldest living thing.

Speaker 5 00:45
I thought what if I retraced the route, the first human beings who walked out of Africa, about 20,000 plus miles on foot.

Speaker 6 00:53
We live in a time when our ability to connect has been increasingly replaced by interactions with our screens and our devices, when we have so many reasons to be strangers to one another. We share appreciation for slowing down and seeing the invisible. I like to think about the people that came way before my own passing through. Their echoes are still here as well.

Speaker 7 01:35
I think whether we realize it or not, we're all on some form of pilgrimage. This whole place is chaotic, heartbreaking, maddening, beautiful, ecstatic place is yours; belongs to you.

Matthew 02:07
That is a trailer from the documentary Echoes of the Invisible, and this is Factual America. We're brought to you by Alamo Pictures, an Austin and London based production company making documentaries about America for international audiences. I'm your host, Matthew Sherwood, and today we're talking about timelessness as we ponder the origins of the universe, humanity, and what it means to be one of the nearly 8 billion denizens of planet Earth. Joining us to discuss the seemingly imponderable is award winning filmmaker Steve Elkins, the cinematographer, director, and editor of Echoes of the Invisible. We're also privileged to have two additional guests: astrophysicist Joe Incandela, and Julia Payne, project manager for Paul Salopek, the journalist, who has been walking the world for the past eight years. Steve, Julia, and Joe welcome to Factual America. Steve, thank you for making this film. And how are things with you?

Steve Elkins 03:03
Pretty good. Can't complain. It's incredibly hot in California right now as it normally is during the summer, but I'm surviving. So, all is good.

Matthew 03:11
And the film's Echoes of the Invisible. Did it debut at South by Southwest?

Steve Elkins 03:16
In quotation marks. Yeah. They canceled the physical festival, I want to say about three or four days before the actual premiere. So, I was literally about to fly out the next day.

Matthew 03:27
I had already flown out, actually.

Steve Elkins 03:29
You had?!

Matthew 03:30
Yeah. I mean, I'm UK based, but my family's from Texas, so I made a mini-holiday of it, anyway. But yeah, we were supposed to be there for...

Steve Elkins 03:40
I'm amazed you could have a holiday at all, because it sounds like the city was basically shut down.

Matthew 03:45
Well, my parents are in the hill country, so, yeah, it wasn't really even a holiday, to be honest. And we were quickly trying to figure out how we're going to get back but... It hasn't been released yet?

Steve Elkins 03:58
It has. It was just recently released on Apple TV on June 22 in North America. It's also available on a streaming platform called Altavod and also kanopy.com. That's Kanopy with a K, and not a C.

Matthew 04:11
Okay. All right. Well, we'll put links to that on the show notes. So, if you don't mind, Steve, please. I mean, I've mentioned their names, but I haven't done them justice. Certainly, yet. Could you introduce our guests for us?

Steve Elkins 04:25
Certainly. So, we're really fortunate to have today, Julia Payne, who is the project manager of Paul Salopek's Out of Eden walk. As you know, Paul is one of the lead cast in the film; a journalist who's walking across the world. And we also have Joe Incandela who's a physicist from CERN, who led the team that wound up discovering the Higgs boson at CERN's Large Hadron Collider.

Matthew 04:50
Okay, well, Joe, you're our first astrophysicist on the show. And I'm, I feel like I'm definitely not prepared for this, but you've had great reviews, and which I wholeheartedly concur with. Here's one, one great quote, ''Echoes of' place me somewhere beyond words, one of the most profound things I've seen. See this film, for in a time of uncertainty and fear, it puts it all into perspective.' That's Steve Kopian at Unseen Films. So, with that in mind, Steve, what is Echoes of the Invisible all about?

Steve Elkins 05:30
I still struggle to articulate this concisely, because it's really not about any one particular thing. It's really about a number of people's stories that are linked through some common themes. And I kind of want to leave it to the audience to determine what it's actually about. There's many options. But some of the common themes that are right on the surface is that I follow about four or five primary stories of these bold people who are going into some of the most extreme environments on Earth, basically, to see something that otherwise would be invisible if they didn't put themselves or technology through these harsh environments. So, I follow athletes, scientists, monks, artists, and journalists, through these environments, to see how - in order to do all of their work, there are certain common threads that they all need in place to basically see something that would otherwise be invisible.

Matthew 06:28
And the thing is, any one of these could be its own doc, couldn't it? I mean...

Steve Elkins 06:34
Yes...

Matthew 06:35
But you interweave them.

Steve Elkins 06:38
Yeah. For better or worse, this is something I actually very deliberately try to do with all of my feature documentaries is, I take a whole bunch of stories that absolutely deserve their own documentaries. But what I try to do is do something you wouldn't be able to discover if they had their own documentary, which is what kind of sparks fly off when you collide these different stories together, I think there's certain thematic sparks that come off. That'll allow you to see things from a different perspective.

Matthew 07:10
And, I mean, we're going to be talking about collisions here shortly, I think with Joe, but the, you know, not to, like you said - I do highly recommend people see this. It's an amazing film, but we've got the guy who runs Death Valley, we've got Joe and his people certainly at CERN, discovering what has been called the God Particle. We've got the West Texas artists, Linda Lynch, Rachel Sussman, who photographs ancient living things- all these are amazing stories, and then we've got the Out of Eden Project. I mean, is it fair enough to say that that Out of Eden Project kind of serves as the thread that holds everything together? And Steve, and then we can have Julia tell us a little bit more about the Out of Eden project?

Steve Elkins 08:08
Sure. I mean, in my mind, I tried to balance all the stories as much as possible so that no one stood out from the others. But there's no question that I believe Paul Salopek actually has literally the most screen time. I think that if anything, that's just because it took a little longer to say some of the things I wanted to say through his story; but what I will say is that Paul Salopek, kind of came into the project fairly late in the process of making the film, and I did see both him and Rachel on their journeys as a way to make the themes of the film more clear, and convey what I wanted to convey more clearly. So, in that sense, they are very central, but ultimately, I wanted to achieve some kind of balance between them.

Matthew 08:56
Okay, well, we'll do our best to try to balance all the different stories that you bring to the big screen. I don't know when people are gonna have a chance to see it on big screen. I saw it; it was amazing, because I saw it on - even on a 15 inch laptop. But I mean, Julia, so, what can you tell us about - what is the Out of Eden project? And when did Paul begin this journey? And where is he at this point?

Julia Payne 09:25
Well, thanks, Matthew, and Steve, and Joe. It's so great to be here. It's an honor to speak for Paul, and to have seen and helped just a minute amount with getting together some materials for Steve as he made this film, which is extraordinary. And I had the total privilege of seeing it, as you were just saying, on the big screen recently in California, where it had a screening. Like you both, I was going to go to South by Southwest, and hoped to see it there. Steve, I remember being on the phone with you in the days just before it was canceled as we sort of puzzled that out. So, it was a disappointment, but it also illuminated, as we talked about Steve's kind of surprising elements, or if you looked at them in a different way, some accelerations of trends that are exactly what your film is about. And as you're saying, it's similar to the Out of Eden walk project, in that it's a little difficult to talk about in anything but an abstract sense, because, literally, physically, it's Paul, you know, Paul's walk across the planet. But as Paul would put it, I think that would be a misrepresentation. And it's become something totally different in that it no longer, and it never really did, belong to Paul, that sort of, actually, if this is a word, an anathema description to him, it's really a representation about, sort of, retracing how we became who we are today. And a way of moving literally forward, you know, with your own body to look back at where we've been, and tried to see where we're going. And then to go to a more sort of literal description, Out of Eden Walk is nonprofit that underpins this physical journey, and Paul began walking in 2013, out of Africa, and he's today in China, having recently left Myanmar and he's written a beautiful dispatch about that, you can find that outofedenwalk.org.

Matthew 11:24
Okay, outofedenwalk.org. That's a good point. We'll put that in the show notes. One thing that struck me is that it's the ultimate in long form journalism.

Julia Payne 11:37
Right? Yeah, it's an experiment in long term and long form journalism. And really, it's become more of a storytelling project than anything else, as Paul's covered some almost 12,000 miles in the past eight plus years of being on the trail. And it's, you know, a physical journey that doesn't have any brakes. So, as he puts it, a home base are now GPS coordinates on a map, and wherever he might be at that time. And so, even though we have this US based nonprofit, there's a differentiation between Paul and what he's doing on the ground. And his walking partners have become a huge part of the project, and of the story, and of how the people that he's connecting with, and the impact that slow storytelling, moving slowly, and making connections between narrative threads, just as Steve does in the film, has on them. It's really, people take ownership of this project, because it resonates, and I think we're hungry for that meaning and connection in today's attention economy.

Matthew 12:40
Okay. I mean, and Joe, so you've, obviously one of the stories that's interwoven here is the work that you and the scientists were doing at CERN with the Higgs boson; now, for our listeners, I guess, keep it as simple as we can. But I think you're skilled at this. I think you were one of the spokespeople on this. What happened at CERN, what has happened at CERN, what's still happening at CERN in terms of the Higgs boson, or the God Particle, as some have called it? And why is this so important?

Joe Incandela 13:22
So, the, I should say, first of all that, yeah, I'm a particle physicist. I'm not actually an astrophysicist.

Matthew 13:29
And my apologies.

Joe Incandela 13:31
That's okay, that's okay. There's a, there's a funny story about Rutherford who said that the Nobel committee did something he could never do, and that was to turn the physicist into a chemist, because he got the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. But you've turned a particle physicist into an astrophysicist, which is fine. And it's actually, it's a good connection, and makes sense, even in the context of the film, because there were some discussions about looking back to the early universe and saying how light, you know, light becomes dissociated from the fiery Big Bang mess around 350,000 years after the Big Bang. So, to see further you actually have to recreate what happened before that, you have to go to temperatures corresponding to the very, very early universe, and study the properties of interactions at those really high energies. And that's what we do at CERN, actually; we collide particles together at such high energy that we're essentially reaching temperatures that are, you know, ridiculous to even mention, but they correspond to now about one trillionth of a second after the Big Bang. And it's a very interesting time in the history of the universe, even though it's a very brief moment after the Big Bang because the universe underwent a transition in a forcefield we don't normally think about or see in the normal ways. The universe, in some sense, froze out. And what froze out was a field, a fixed field, which we call the Higgs field. And all other particles began interacting with that Higgs field, to different, varying degrees, at least all particles that now have mass. And in fact, their mass is an artifact of that interaction. So, the Higgs boson was crucial to our fundamental theories to understand how come some elementary particles have mass, how any elementary particles have mass, and it's called the God Particle, because, for instance, if the electron have no mass, which would be the case if there were no Higgs boson, then the radius of an atom would be infinite. Namely, there would be no atoms, there'd be no binding, and so we would not exist. And so the joke is, there was a joke about why it was called the God Particle; there was a book written by a former colleague, who passed away not too long ago, Leon Letterman, also Nobel Prize winner. He said he wanted to call it the god - I don't know if I can say this online - but the goddamn article, but the editors wouldn't let him. And the reason he wanted to call it that was because it was so hard to find. So, it took us 50 years, it took some, maybe almost 10,000, scientists, engineers, technicians, to build the machine that's, you know, the size of a city that had to collide particles, in beams many, many times. So, we had to look at so many collisions, in fact, to find a few hundred cases of boson - Higgs boson - production that if each one represented the grain of sand, each of these collisions, you would fill an Olympic sized swimming pool, and then the Higgs signal itself would be on the tip of your finger, a little coating of sand. So, it was an amazingly difficult thing to do. It required all kinds of technologies that didn't exist when we started the project. And it was an amazing feat, but now we understand something getting back to your original question, I'm sorry.

Matthew 13:36
No worries.

Joe Incandela 16:41
We understand where in substance the - where our substance comes from, you know, and it answered a question that was first posed, at least, historically, and documented by the stoics in 250 BC. And they proposed that there was something called the pneuma that penetrated the universe, a substance that penetrated the universe, and gave all things substance. They were right, but they were guessing.

Matthew 17:43
Yeah. Right. But still, I mean...

Joe Incandela 17:46
We proved it.

Matthew 17:50
I mean, as much as we're looking forward, we're also looking back. And so, you've got - and maybe there the astrophysicist or, at least, the astronomers we have, you know, you do spend a lot of time, Steve, with these guys in the, you know, these telescopes in the most remotest parts of the world. Even Antarctica, I think, all just doing everything they can to get away from noise. Like hermits of yore, and still do, were trying to get away from, and it's all harkening back to origins yet, that - What, Joe, how long ago do we think the Big Bang was, roughly?

Joe Incandela 18:36
13.7 billion years.

Matthew 18:39
Yeah. And we're, you know, so it's - it is all this, you know, and then it's interesting, all these; I mean, Steve, how did you find all these different stories? I mean, to put them together? I mean, I know you said it's part of your, the way you operate with your feature docs. But...

Steve Elkins 19:01
Yeah, it was a long process that didn't really finish until I was about, maybe, six or seven years into it, that I finished figuring out everyone I would want in it. And I kind of danced with it as I went. But, originally, I was basically seeking out, primarily, scientists, monks, but actually, that was it. Scientists, monks, and athletes at the beginning, who were going into these extreme locations, specifically because the original impetus for this whole film was, believe it or not, this very abstract juxtaposition of two images in my head that just came to me one morning. They just really struck me. One was, I was remembering these technicians I had seen at the Very Large Array telescope in New Mexico. I had just been there on a road trip. This was back in 2008. And they would basically, like, lay these railroad track type things on the ground one at a time so that they could move each of these 210 ton antennas that make up the telescope up to several miles in any direction to reconfigure what they're looking at in space. And there was just something about that undertaking of laying those tracks on the ground, that just struck me as remarkable. And then my brain kind of jumped to thinking about these Buddhist monks that I had seen prostrating their way across the Himalayas in India a couple of years before that, where they take one step, and then they flatten themselves face first, on the ground, get up, take one more step, do the same thing. And they'll do this for years on a pilgrimage to the Bodhi tree, from wherever they live in the world, whether it's Mongolia or even further away. So, there was something about the rhythm, and the activity of laying those railroad tracks one at a time with a telescope, and the bowing of the monks with their bodies one at a time, to look further inward. So, the process of finding people, for me, was a process of trying to find out what it was about the juxtaposition of those two things that sparks such awe in me. It gave me this very, very, for lack of a better way of putting it, just a very inspired feeling that I wanted to chase, and try to figure out why it fascinated me so much that juxtaposition, so. So, once I found, like, who were the scientists in the most extreme environments I could find on Earth, which led me to, you know, Siberia, and CERN, of course, and an abandoned iron mine half a mile underneath the earth in Minnesota. Lots of other places. Also in the Himalayas, in India, I suppose. Then I, you know, I put all this together with the monks in Ethiopia and the runner in Death Valley, but I felt like there was something about it that as broad as it was, it was not broad enough; the story was just not big enough to actually convey something that's a little more global, and a little more universal. So, that's when bringing in Paul's story of his walk across the globe, and Rachel's story of photographing the world's oldest continuously living things really tied everything together for me, and I sort of discovered them after realizing that it wasn't enough, my original idea. So.

Matthew 22:16
Well, so, I mean, I'll ask you more about this later, but I mean, how do you pitch this to when you're trying to - I mean, how does something like this even get made? I mean, thank God you did get to get it made, but I can just see execs - I won't name names - just kind of scratching their heads when you tell them the story idea.

Steve Elkins 22:38
Absolutely. You're right on the money there. And it is unpitchable. All of my films are. And fortunately, I've never had to pitch them. Because I don't think they'd ever get made, if I did. It's funny, you bring this up, because I joke about this a lot, that I basically make unpitchable films. So, I've been very lucky that I've had, basically, friends, and colleagues of friends, kind of see what I'm doing, and spread the word, and step in. So, they basically been the ones to produce it. They see what I'm already working on, on my own, because I basically start it before I pitch it to anyone. I just work. And I was lucky that the right people were paying attention, and funded the rest of it.

Matthew 22:47
Okay. Hey, well, I think actually, this would be a good time to just take an early break for our listeners. And we'll be right back with Steve Elkins, Joe Incandela, and Julia Payne. All involved with Echoes of the Invisible.

Factual America midroll 23:41
You're listening to Factual America. Subscribe to our mailing list, or follow us on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter @alamopictures, to keep up to date with new releases or upcoming shows. Check out the show notes to learn more about the program, our guests, and the team behind the production. Now back to Factual America.

Matthew 23:59
Welcome back to Factual America. I'm here with award winning filmmaker Steve Elkins, director of Echoes of the Invisible. We're also joined by Joe Incandela, and Julia Payne. Debuted, inverted commas as they say here at South by Southwest, you can watch it on Apple TV, and a few other places which we will put in the show notes because I wrote them down, but that's on another piece of paper. But so, again, we're talking about this film, how you make unpitchable films, but thank goodness someone's paying attention to what you're doing. I mean, you're already saying that you just thought you needed something else more so the Out of Eden got involved, but I mean, the logistics of this must be a nightmare. How do you...?

Steve Elkins 24:54
Yeah, that's actually one of the main reasons it took so long to make because I was fairly clear about what I wanted to set out to do from the beginning, but just getting permission to access a lot of these regions I filmed in took very, very long. I mean, the one that took the longest was getting into a part of the Himalayas, it's on the border of Tibet, it's actually a restricted militarized zone. And that's where the scene takes place fairly early on in the film, where science writer Anil Ananthaswamy talks about how he realized being in that place, that when he saw one of the world's state of the art telescopes directly across the mountain from a 400 year old Buddhist monastery, and that those were the only two things in this region that, you know, he recognized that both scientists and monks need a particular kind of silence, to look further outward, or look further inward. And yeah, it took me about four years to get a visa to go there, because it's really closed off to the public.

Matthew 25:56
How many years in total did it take you to film this?

Steve Elkins 26:00
The filming took, you know, on and off, for about six or seven years. When I say that, I wasn't filming, you know, continuously throughout that time; very sporadic. But over a six or seven year span, the filming took place. And then it was a couple more years of editing and fine tuning and post production.

Matthew 26:19
So, and then, Julia with that filming that we - so we have some - obviously, we've got Paul on camera. Is that, I mean, does Paul have a team following him, besides the people he's journeying with, does he have a team that's following him around, or is that - is that what happens? I mean, he must - and also, I mean, he does a lot of sitting around and waiting trying to get to - we see a little bit on the film where he's, he can't leave Djibouti, can't get a, you know, that must happen quite a bit as he's trying to cross borders. I mean, the the film goes into details towards the end about all the trials and travails of trying to walk the world.

Julia Payne 27:00
Absolutely. It's a great question. It's actually the same question I had for Steve. Maybe the first chance to ask you some questions, Steve. How was it for you? It's the repeat theme of Paul's writing. And he's written almost, he's written actually, a little more than now, 400,000 words, in just the online collection of literary sort of reportage that's available on the same site, outofedenwalk.org. And that's not counting print stories that he's written along the way, a book that he's working on and almost completed. And, so, he's just, he's prolific. So, if he's ever sitting around, he's working. And there's going to be something that comes out of that pause, that forced pause, whether it's the weather, or geopolitics, that is part of the story. And I think that's really the way he's seen it. But a repeated theme throughout these writings, I think, has been, it's the obstacles in walking across the world are not what you might think they are, in terms of, you know, that mountain is too high to get over, or, you know, running out of water, even, the kindness of strangers really makes those physical and climactic obstacles surmountable, as Paul's seen, but what is more difficult are borders, and bureaucratic kind of wrangling and red tape. And these borders that we construct. That's what makes something like this difficult. Or that's what can hold up the walk more than anything else that you might think. But it all becomes part of the story.

Matthew 28:45
Yeah. I mean, it's interesting, because - I think as he's points out there's, in our day and time, there's no one more suspicious than the guy who's walking, it seems, at least to some people, but, I mean, I think with you being here, I mean, it's very - so there's definitely, there has to be this nonprofit, he has that sort of support, but at the same time, because that also answers some questions I had in my mind, I mean, you know, if you want to be extremely pedestrian, you're like, well, how does this guy afford just to walk across the world, but at the same time...

Julia Payne 29:15
No, I'm glad you asked. It's an expensive undertaking. And to keep this sort of legacy alive is what's become important because of the people who've gotten involved: the walking partners, the education mission, our partners at National Geographic Society, Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, Project Zero. And the ladder to our education partners, our civic engagement program at McCormick Foundation really puts the benefits of what he's doing in terms of slow storytelling and enjoying and rediscovering maybe just your neighborhood or community or the world at large, and you're place in it through the lens of what he's doing. Just as you can sort of rediscover art and math and science and the relationship between those things through Steve's film. And it is a nonprofit foundation that sort of keeps - 501(c)(3) charitable organization is the right classification - that keeps that going. And at a different place to join the journey you can go to outofedenwalknonprofit.org and follow along there with our newsletter sign up, and to donate, and become part of the online community there easily. But I want to circle back to your earlier question that I think I didn't answer, which was, does Paul walk with a team? And the answer is no. And you're right, the walking person is maybe the most suspicious. He writes a great piece called Our Car Brain in the New York Times that I go back to at least once a year, about how being in a car, we're in this isolated bubble, and so as he's walking, you know, with a walking partner, and maybe a pack animal, in the instance that he uses, as an example, in that story, I think it's a camel, and they're walking, you know, next to a highway in Saudi Arabia, and people are just completely bewildered, understandably. But Paul writes about it beautifully and with a sense of humor, but pointing out, sort of, what it's done. And no one can give you directions if you're walking; we only think in terms of roads and lines. And so they'll say, how do we get here? And they'll say, well, you have to take Interstate, whatever. But it's, it's not possible I've been walking. And so, Paul does walk with a local person. And he finds his local partners. He does not call them guides, but walking partners. And, you know, they tell the story, as much as if not more than Paul, in each place. And, you know, he finds them in different ways. One example that I'll share that I really like, and then I'll be quiet, is Marat Yazhar, who's a photographer in Turkey. And I think Paul just met him, bumped into him in town or something. And he said, you know, Marat, I need somebody to walk with me across Anatolia, would you be interested in joining? As a photographer, you might find it interesting. And Marat said, Okay, I'll walk with you for seven days - I think this is in the film, too - and then he ended up walking with Paul for the rest of the journey through Turkey, and now he's still using a walking methodology to produce his photographs. But it completely changed his life. He was with Paul right until they kind of stumbled over these snowy caucuses to get into the Republic of Georgia, where they said goodbye.

Matthew 32:26
I think that's a - it's a very good point. I mean, I think your stories about - I can't tell you how many times I get stories from - because I'm based here in the UK - people who've traveled to the US and have similar stories; they travel and they decide because they're mostly used to living in cities in the UK, they - well, if you're in a hotel, obviously, you can just cross that road to go to the TGI Fridays, or wherever it is you're going, and invariably end up - there's no sidewalks, there's nothing. And the number of times people say, yeah, one of the local cops pulls over and asks them what are they doing? And they're just saying well, we're just trying to walk over there, like, why the hell are you walking, and invariably, they get like a ride or a lift, you know, to get there. But it's just this mindset that we're in, I think, and I think I'm not trying to focus too much on Paul here, but I mean, what you've said also reminds me of the things he has said about how we're naturally more hardwired when it comes to how we, you know, in this year and a half of pandemic, and many people like myself stuck in front of a screen during Zoom calls and things. I mean, we're not meant to be sitting down all the time, we're not meant to, we are meant to be absorbing the world at a three mile an hour pace, or whatever it is, however we walk. Joe, what did you think when you were approached by Steve for this project?

Joe Incandela 33:59
That's a tough one to answer. But partly because at the time, I was leading the experiment at CERN, and there was a lot of media interest. So, I was just often asked to give interviews. And so, Steve came and did an interview with me. And I didn't know what the concept of the film would be. And I have to say sometimes I've been surprised to see where I show up in media because of various interviews I've done but I found in the end that - I found the questions he asked at that meeting at CERN were really, extremely good questions. And he really probed, kind of, my soul as a physicist surprisingly well, and where I came from, and why I was doing what I was doing, and much of that connected to sort of this quest for a timelessness or a deeper understanding that I've had, kind of a drive to acquire ever since I was very little, and it was something I found really great about the film, actually, there were a couple of different themes I picked up. One was this timelessness aspect, this kind of deeper search for meaning. The other was the drive that certain individuals have to go to these extremes. And, you know, it's even as a scientist, which is a fairly respectable, you know, position in our society to do the kind of science we do, it attracts some, you know, weird people in some sense, because, you know, you can't often even explain what you do to your family so well. But I was, from a very young age, trying to understand what space-time really was, and trying to imagine and visualize it. And so, now what I - literally what we do is study the fabric of space-time. And it was really fun to see in the film, how that juxtaposed with these other characters.

Matthew 36:15
So, what did you think of the film? And did you ever think of yourself as having a connection with hermetic monks?

Joe Incandela 36:25
Yeah, believe it or not, I love the film, for many reasons. I love the fact that it wasn't telling you in detail what to think. I'm a little tired of the modern way of every movie you watch has a narrator because you apparently can't figure out what's gonna happen. And tells you exactly what to think. And I love the fact that it didn't do that- you had to. It kind of brought you into some of these quests, you know, you had this struggle with the people out there. So, in terms of the film, I love that the cinematography was beautiful. The stories were fantastic. I wish I could meet the people, other people, and spend some time with them. What was the other part of your question?

Matthew 37:05
Well, I guess you did you see yourself as...

Joe Incandela 37:09
Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah. And I've often felt a little bit, I mean, sometimes like a monk, because you have to go off for so long, and try to understand and work on something, you know; there aren't many jobs people have that take them 25 years to get done, you know, from start to finish in 30 years, there's that. I've often felt that connection. There's been a connection to art as well, which has been interesting. And I was happy to see that talked about in the film as well. Also, part of art is, I think, this quest for a timeless, deeper understanding of things. And I had studied to be an artist, actually, from when I was six till I was 18. And then switched to physics, oddly enough. Partly because I didn't know physics existed. I came from a family of artists. And then I had to take a physics course in college and discovered, there's actually a field that's dealing with all these questions I've had, and struggled with, all my life, so, that's how I made that shift. But there is a connection there. The one thing I want to just end this, and answer that question, sometimes we are compared to Cathedral builders because many people put their time into the building of the Large Hadron Collider and the experiment, who didn't even live to see it run. Things like this. It was such a long project.

Matthew 38:44
I mean, I'll ask - so, I'll ask you since you bring it up, and I happen to live in a city that's got one of these cathedrals you're talking about. Do you think as a society humanity's just kind of lost sight of this? I mean, people used to - there's someone else I know who says, you know, think about some of those gargoyles that were carved, sculpted at the top of those cathedrals. And those people knew no one was ever going to really see those things, not from the ground, but they still put all this time and effort and, you know, almost create some sort of perfection. And we've become very much focused - I think somewhere in the film, Steve also talks, I forget how it's put, and which religion was kind of looking at this, but this sort of almost - we've become so, in that sense, so self-centered and focused on what we can see, and what will be, you know, we're not thinking - I guess we've lost sight of the bigger picture in many cases; yourselves excluded, obviously, but I mean, what do you think Joe?

Joe Incandela 39:59
I think there's a hunger for that, though, I don't think we've lost sight of it because individuals all made the choice to do that. We live in a society where efficiency is very important. We're pressed to do many different things. And so, things become, I think, much more, a little bit more, superficial, if not a lot more superficial. But, you know, I find, you know, Americans, of course, are famous for being this way, and being very focused, efficient, you know. But my friends who go to Japan, for instance, immediately recognize and love that culture, which still has many connections to a deeper appreciation of things, a much more aesthetic appreciation of things. And I think all of us like that, or feel a need for that. And my hope, actually, on a completely different subject is that, in addressing climate change and sustainability for the planet, we actually will revert back to some of these ancient cultures, because they understood that; they understood the connections. The way I put it is this, that the world is a multi-dimensional space, where you have to understand the connections of all those dimensions, to maintain it, and sustain it. Our modern society is kind of focused on one axis, and that axis is mainly, is what I'm doing profitable, you know, and that can discount these other axes. And we've discounted to some extent, the ancient civilizations that really appreciated those, and actually incorporated that knowledge into their spiritualism. And so, I think our path forward is a combination of those things, modern science with a return to a deeper understanding and appreciation of all of these different dimensions. So, I think our survival may depend on it, actually. Not to sound too dramatic, but I think that's the best - that's the path forward, really.

Matthew 42:01
Yeah, I think that's an excellent point. And not to single out any one particular culture. But one thing that resonated with me, just mainly because I had a professor in grad school, who was a specialist in this group, was the Tuva peoples, that you bring into this, Steve, and that was quite, that music was quite, quite amazing that they produce, and I had forgotten about that. And Julia, has Paul been able to see this? And what does he think of the film? Because obviously, he couldn't wait till he finished his journey. Otherwise, we'd have a long way to go.

Julia Payne 42:42
Right, yeah, no, exactly. It's gonna be about 23-24,000 miles, once it's complete when he hits the tip of South America at Tierra del Fuego, some years, some years away. But it's great to hear Joe speak. Joe, what you were just saying, I think actually also perfectly encapsulated the walk, and what Paul's doing, and why it resonates with so many people. I think Steve's film made the point beautifully, that it really doesn't matter if you're a monk or a scientist, an astrophysicist or a particle physicist, or a podcast host or project manager, or, you know, if you're working outside and using your hands, it's work that drives us; timelessness that we're interested in, in a way, and I think timelessness and restlessness as well. Restlessness is a, you know, kind of an obvious driving factor of Paul's walk. So, to start from the cradle of humanity in the earliest known sort of fossil site in Herto Bhouri, thus the Out of Eden walk, you know, made sense. And one of the things that he's walking after, one of the questions he's walking after, is why did we move? Partly, it was forced, but as it's shown early in the film, you know, a lot of theory say, we didn't need to, we didn't need to. So, what made us go, and that's sort of the question that he's following, and he's seen everyone that he works with, and walks with, and speaks with the people who are really constituting the journey now are also wondering that, and it doesn't matter what we're doing, we're kind of all doing the same thing. And in seeking perfection, I think it's become superficial and to use America, I guess, as a specific example, you know, on social media and that type of thing, but it's the same seeking for perfection, I guess. I feel like but we're just we've got a different set of tools to sort of go after it. So, it's sort of the same problems, just that we've always dealt with, but with a new kind of packaging. And now, as Joe mentioned, our future will depend on, can we work together to sort of untangle what we've seen, and the problems that we've created for ourselves through this sort of arrogance, and through looking at efficiency and profit as the two main driving definitions of success? Or will we just continue on sort of with short-sightedness? And this sort of ephemeral relationship with things and ourselves? And I guess that's sort of what we'll see in the next few generations.

Matthew 45:30
Yeah. Well, we can't even wait that long, actually, can we? I mean, we need to...

Julia Payne 45:35
Let's just hope.

Matthew 45:37
Yeah, I mean, we had a different guest on, I forget what the subject was, but I said, I used to say - I've got teenagers, and I'd tell them it's your generation, that's going to save the planet. And then now realizing that actually, we can't wait for them to start saving the planet. We should have gotten started a while back. But, I mean, Steve, what I wanted also to ask you about is because Joe's brought it up, and I think Julie's mentioned as well, but something we haven't really talked on too much is the art side of this. I mean, there is this very artistic element you capture. There's art through your cinematography. But there's also the art that we, I forget, is it Rachel Sussman's the photographer, and we also have the sand paintings and things like that. It's just - and would you agree with Joe's point; it's just sort of how the art fits in with all this as well?

Steve Elkins 46:40
Absolutely. I think that, you know, all these paths, whether they art or journalism, or science or spirituality, I mean, they're all ways to access these things we're talking about; a sense of timelessness a sense of what actually drives us as human beings. What has made us who we are? How do we become who we are? So, yeah, and for me, you know, I've been an artist my whole life in some capacity or other. I wish I had studied sculpture and glassblowing like Joe, that's something we didn't get into specifically. But those are just incredible mediums. Joe actually studied with Dale Chihuly, if I recall, right? Is that right, Joe?

Joe Incandela 47:21
I actually didn't, but I had to make a choice at one point between going into science or going to Pilchuck and working with, and studying, with Chihuly, and I chose science. So, that was when he was just starting. So, it could have been an interesting path. But I'm actually pretty happy with the way it went.

Julia Payne 47:40
Still pretty interesting!

Steve Elkins 47:41
Yeah, absolutely. So, yeah, that's a whole other aspect of Joe that I found so fascinating. We could certainly have a whole podcast about. But yeah, I mean, I started playing music literally, when I was four years old. That's when I got my first drum set from my parents for Christmas. And so, music and photography, and things have been a big part of my life for a long time; writing, actually, that's one of the first careers I wanted to have when I was a little kid. So, art is kind of my background. And for me, it was very interesting to explore how other people in other fields access the same things that I tried to access through my art, throughout my life.

Matthew 48:22
Yeah...

Joe Incandela 48:23
Maybe I could interject something really quickly, I just wanted to say that one thing we're learning, especially because the science we do is so abstract, we're finding that art is very helpful in helping us connect to the public. And so, a lot of our, like, a lot of these big experiments and so forth have artist residents, and this is something that's becoming more and more common, and it draws people in, they can create imagery that is inspired by our work that actually draws people in, and gets them interested in the science and then we talk to them about the science. Otherwise, it's quite difficult that you'd probably could gather from what I was telling you before.

Steve Elkins 49:03
That's a really interesting point, Joe, because actually, the moderator of our Q&A at the theatrical premiere of Echoes of the Invisible was Dan Goods from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. And he has the most unique job, potentially, there, which is he has no background in science at all. But he has a background as an artist and NASA hired him to try to convey to the public, or communicate to the public, what they're doing through art. And what happened in the process is they realized that these art exhibitions or art projects would actually help the scientists themselves think through their own thinking, as they like to say. So, it's kind of a two-way dialogue, which is really beautiful that NASA is willing to embrace that.

Joe Incandela 49:51
In my art training, actually, it's helped me to communicate. For instance, in announcing the Higgs boson discovery, we had a very strong signal, but it was across many, many separate analyses that - each one you could see nothing - so, I worked with the team, and we figured out a way to combine them, and you could show a very beautiful spectral peak, where the Higgs is. And I remember the competing experiment gave me a lot of flack about that initially, because they said, ah, but you're cheating, but actually it was a way of really, visibly seeing why this was such a strong signal. And then they later also did the same thing. But I never had made the connection earlier, but over time, I realized it's that kind of thing that an artist does, you know, tries to visualize, what's really hard to visualize, and that really, has played a role in my own research.

Matthew 50:52
This is all so cool. I mean, there's hope for aspiring artists everywhere. I'm gonna have to have a chat with my daughter because she dropped art, because she's moving into science, and didn't think she could do both. But I think we've just shown that maybe she can. So we shall see.

Steve Elkins 51:10
By the way, can I interject something real quick?

Matthew 51:12
Yeah, please do.

Steve Elkins 51:13
Just while we're on this topic. One of the most interesting books I read during my research for Echoes of the Invisible was a book by Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison, called Objectivity, which ties into this question about the relationship between artists and scientists, because she kind of goes back, if I recall, to the 1600s, and then carries the history through to the present day, where back in the 1600s, the relationship between artists and scientists were very, very intimate. Scientists depended on artists to render - basically, to sift through all the variation of detail in whatever data they were studying, to get to the essence of it, or the archetype behind the mess of all the data, to capture something in a singular image or a small series of images to convey to people what they were doing, or to even show proof of their experiments. And then, when photography came about, she says, that's when things started to kind of split between artists and scientists, where suddenly instead of truth being in the essence behind all the data, photography showed that actually truth is on, on some level, in the variations in the data, not in the essence behind it; we need to look into the messy details of everything and find the truth in there, somewhere. I didn't explain this very well, she articulates it so much better. But the point is, it's kind of nice to see that we're coming to a point in history now where the sciences and the arts are sort of talking to each other again, in a way that's mutually helpful to both.

Matthew 52:50
Thanks for that. Well, I'm sure, we can put a link to that book in the show notes. And I'll definitely be looking that up. Getting it on the Kindle. I think we mentioned at the very beginning, before even we started this, on a subject that's - a film that's all about timelessness, it's hard for me to put a time - end on this, but we have already come close to being an hour, and it's been - I've really enjoyed it. Maybe a few little questions before we go, though, a few extra ones. I mean, Julia, I mean, usually I ask people, what's next for you all. How long till Paul makes it to Tierra del Fuego? And is he - he has a dream of getting all of his co-walkers, or co-trekkers, if you will, to join him. Is that something that's actually in the works?

Julia Payne 53:56
Oh, yeah, absolutely. And it's not just anybody who's walked with him, but anyone who wants to join. I hope all of you are there. I hope everyone is with Steve's film is there. I hope, as Joe said, to meet them at some point before then. But yeah, when he's taking the final steps of the journey, basically anyone who wants to, and has the capacity and ability to come join, is welcome. I like that question a lot because the answer is, you know, I can say, if we're about in terms of mileage halfway through, then there's about seven more years, probably, on the trail. But we don't know, and it's really a luxury and a great thing to not know. And the nature of walking is unpredictable. So, that could change, and again, that's part of the story. But you know, to give you my best estimate, at this point, it would be about seven years, yeah. And I like hearing about Joe's work because, and Steve's work. Making the film took a little over a decade, and probably a lot more than that in terms of what you were doing before then Steve, to bring you to that point where you wanted to start making it. And Joe, what you described doing in 50 years, and the fact that it took, you know, 50 years, to me, that sounds really, really fast. Technology is changing in real time, and so the more is becoming possible, it's all the same. That includes sort of the walk, and how the walk is going to change as technology changes, and what becomes possible with storytelling, and sharing the journey as Paul continues.

Matthew 55:35
And, okay, well, we look forward to it. And seven years is, given what we've been discussing is not even...

Julia Payne 55:42
An eye blink!

Matthew 55:43
Yeah, it's not even, not even. And Joe, so what does someone do after discovering the God Particle? But the scientists I know don't ever stop being scientists. So, they keep going till...

Joe Incandela 55:57
That's right.

Matthew 55:58
So, what are you working on?

Joe Incandela 56:00
So, I'm working on two, well, three things, but two in science. One is, we're continuing to study the Higgs as we produce it. But I'm working on developing a new experiment to look for dark matter. Dark matter is the next big quest in particle physics. And it's a very, it's a beautiful experiment, I think it has a very good chance of discovery. We're looking in a very obvious place, which is at the mass where all the known particles that have stability over the time scales in the universe exist. No one's ever looked there before, because it's so difficult, but you know, we're getting used to doing difficult things. And I just need a little bit of money. 30-30 million, if you've got that, I'll be on my way! The Department of Energy is supporting us; we'll get it done. Then also, I started a project in the sustainability space that I was talking about, along the lines that I was discussing, and hoping to get lots of different academic fields to work together. And that's still quite early. And then I'm also back into painting, actually. I've returned to painting. The pandemic - I normally travel 150,000 miles a year or something because I have to go all over the place, and the pandemic grounded me, and gave me some time. So, I got back into art.

Matthew 57:20
Well, lovely, and I nearly asked you about dark matter, earlier. And it's a whole, another, not just podcast, but several episodes, I think. But can you succinctly tell us, does dark matter - is that a big game changer? I mean, I get the feeling from what I'm hearing about it as someone who's a complete lay person that it has this possibility to kind of turn some scientific theories on their head, or is that a bit too simplistic?

Joe Incandela 57:50
Yes, no, no, the dark matter - the thing is that we have a very good model for everything we see in terms of the fabric of space-time, and dark matter doesn't appear in that model at the moment. We don't know quite what it is at all. We had some really good candidates for it. Some beautiful theories that had just not panned out. But we know it's there, we know that it created the structure of the universe. I call it, I've heard others call it, the scaffolding of the universe. It's what brought the material together that created galaxies. We know it's in our room, it's passing through us right now. And yet we've never had a direct interaction with it. We just know from its gravitational effects that it's there. And we need to understand what it is because it could help us make the next step in really understanding what the universe is about. It could be crucial to that. It's one of the three pathways we're following. The other is to really understand more details about the Higgs boson. And the third is to understand neutrinos. Neutrinos turned out to be much more interesting and complex than we expected and may help us understand why the universe is made of matter, and not anti-matter, for example. So, these are the fundamental questions we're after.

Matthew 59:13
Okay, so Steve try to follow that up. What's next for you? You got another project that's gonna take seven to 10 years to make it to the big screen, or probably your friends...

Steve Elkins 59:27
Inevitably. It's funny, I set out on every project, saying I'm never going to spend that long on a project again, but then, you know, I also have to remind myself that some things have to bake in the oven that long for them to convey or express themselves properly. So, I'm going to try not to be too judgmental from the outset But I am working on several new films, kind of all at the same time. And actually, I have to be a little bit secretive about them, I'm afraid, not to be dramatic, but when they're released, you'll understand why, just due to the nature of them. But one of them has to do with how and when violence is justified. Another has to do with completely rethinking what technology even is in the first place to see if we can completely scrap our whole paradigm we're living in and start over. And it involves people who are very central in the development of the technology of the last 40-50 years. And then the third is actually about child consciousness. I'm really interested in finding a way to tell a story from the point of view of a child before it learns language, to sort of, like, hopefully reawaken in adults, the experience we all had before we learned language when things weren't so tied to cultural concepts that are embedded in language, where we see the world a little differently, and perhaps a little more openly, but none of us can remember because our brains weren't developed enough to store those memories, so.

Matthew 1:01:01
Wow. Well, I look forward to seeing those, whenever they do see the light of day, and anything else that you've not been able to announce. All filmmakers do this, they always say they can't say anything about it. But I understand why because, well, for various reasons. So, thank you again, so much for coming on to the podcast. It's been a joy talking to all three of you, and talk a little bit more about this film, which I really heavily recommend everyone see- I'm going to watch it again, now that the password works, Steve. I think, yeah, because just do it, seeing it once - I mean, you know, part of the time because not to get into my personal life, but I had to listen to just part of it. I wasn't able to watch it while it was going, and that was interesting as well just to listen to it, you know, but that's - it sounds odd for film that's just won awards for cinematography, and being a work of art, but, but thanks, again, highly recommend and just want to say thank you again to Steve Elkins, director, cinematographer and editor of Echoes of the Invisible, Julia Payne from the Out of Eden Project, and particle physicist, Joe Incandela, for joining us here at Factual America. It's been a joy having you. And again, the film is on Apple TV Plus, and we'll have some links to other places where you can stream it. And actually, by curiosity, when you were out in West Texas, did you come across the 10,000 year clock while you're out there? Because we had the - you know, there's a Stuart Brand doc that was supposed to premiere at the same festival?

Steve Elkins 1:02:55
Yeah, how he's reviving extinct species, like the woolly mammoth and re-introducing...

Matthew 1:03:00
Yeah, so there's that element of it, but then there's also the, you know, he's, I think, I think its Bezos is behind it, but he's building this clock in the side of a mountain in West Texas that is going to chime every 1,000 years.

Steve Elkins 1:03:17
Yeah, it's funny you mentioned that. There is a whole story behind that. So, when I was out filming Linda in West Texas, she mentioned to me - I had not heard of the 10,000 year clock before that - but she mentioned to me in a nearby mountain range, they were in the process of building that clock. And I actually thought she was exaggerating or something; it just sounded too far fetched. Not that she's prone to exaggeration. So, I went and researched a little bit, and the more I learned about it, the more I realized that story of the clock could easily be a whole component of this film. And at one point actually attempted to make it in one of the stories of the film, I went out and interviewed some of the people who are making it, including Laura Welcher, who’s actually a linguist, I thought that'd be interesting to bring a linguist into the film with monks and everything else. And one of her jobs is to figure out how do we archive things for 10,000 years, 100,000 years, a million years, where they'll still be intact? Like how do we think that far ahead? And so she was in charge of thinking of some of the materials that would go into the clock, and into a library that they want to have as a part of it, and what books would you even put in a library that would be significant for the next million years. And anyway, it's a long story, but it was just too much for this one - because that's where it actually did get over the top because she was, you know, she was talking about how now they're thinking about having to have libraries of the future in DNA, like not so much physical libraries because they're too easy to destroy...

Joe Incandela 1:04:57
... digital as well. I mean, we worry about this all the time, but you know, in science, we're producing tons of data, which we're trying to figure out how to preserve it in one form, and it's a lot; and if it's digital, it may or may not survive. You have, you know, there's a lot of issues there. In just even the impact of cosmic rays on electronics, you know, they flip a bit from a zero to a one. So, we have this problem all the time in particle physics, because all these particles are zipping through our experiments. So, all of our electronics is triplicate, so we do majority logic, you know, because one of the bits couldn't be flipped. So, you check the other two, and, you know, whichever way two of them are equal. How do you preserve data for millions of years and I said that - you had that in the film - where I mentioned that what we're doing may never be repeated, because it's taken generations to get to where we are; when we stop, who's going to pick this up again, and try to go through 100 years of work to reach this point, you know, they're just not going to do it. So, what we're studying has to last millennia, and how we're going to keep that information? A lot of it can be written into texts. How long will the texts last? Maybe DNA is the answer. It's interesting.

Julia Payne 1:06:16
Sounds a little bit like an Ursula K. Le Guin novel, though. Eternal preservation in DNA. Sounds like a sticky question. At least a few podcast episodes. Joe, I would not want to be the person in charge of making sure that the eternal preservation at CERN is up and running. That's seriously some catastrophic data loss possibility!

Matthew 1:06:40
Well, one reason I thought of this 10,000 year clock is just that some people that I imagine you might even be talking to about your technology project are also behind that project as well. Because Stuart Brand's got connections to the, well, some of the founders of, you know, Apple and other places. So, anyway, I said thank you before, I'll say thank you again. Thank you so much, guys. It's been a thrill having you on...

Joe Incandela 1:07:10
With pleasure.

Joe Incandela 1:07:10
Yeah, and you.

Matthew 1:07:11
Yes, take care. It's a pleasure meeting you. And, yeah, look forward to hearing more about everything that we've discussed, and all this stuff going on in the future. So, all right, take care. Thank you so much, Julia. Thank you, Joe. Alright, see ya.

Julia Payne 1:07:13
Thank you, Matthew.

Julia Payne 1:07:15
Thank you for having us on.

Steve Elkins 1:07:25
Yeah. Thank you to Julia and Joe for joining us, too, I really appreciate it.

Joe Incandela 1:07:37
Yeah, it's nice meeting you Julia, and Matthew.

Julia Payne 1:07:39
You, too, Joe and Matthew.

Matthew 1:07:39
Nice meeting you. Take care. So, just want to give another big thank you to Steve Elkins, the director, cinematographer and editor of Echoes of the Invisible, to Julia Payne from the Out of Eden Project, and particle physicist Joe Incandela. I also want to give a shout out to Sam and Joe at Innersound Audio just outside of York, England: Escrick, to be more precise, and congratulations especially to Sam and his better half, Poppy, on the birth of their son Halen. Big thanks to Nevena Paunovic, our podcast manager at Alamo Pictures, who ensures we continue getting such great guests like Steve, Julia, and Joe onto the show. And finally, big thanks to our listeners. As always, we love to hear from you, so please keep sending us feedback and episode ideas. Whether it is on YouTube, social media, or directly by email. And please remember to like us and share us with your friends and family wherever you happen to listen, or watch, podcasts. This is Factual America, signing off.

Factual America Outro 1:08:02
You've been listening to Factual America. This podcast is produced by Alamo Pictures, specializing in documentaries, television, and shorts about the USA for international audiences. Head on down to the show notes for more information about today's episode, our guests, and the team behind the podcast. Subscribe to our mailing list, or follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter @alamopictures. Be the first to hear about new productions, festivals showing our films, and to connect with our team. Our homepage is alamopictures co.uk

Echoes of the Invisible: Pushing the Limits of Human Experience

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Echoes of the Invisible: Pushing the Limits of Human Experience

Time Stamps:

Resources:

Connect with Steve Elkins:

Connect with Joe Incandela:

Connect with Julia Payne:

More From Factual America:

Interesting Reading from Factual America

Transcript for Factual America Episode 70: Echoes of the Invisible: Pushing the Limits of Human Experience

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