Peter Schreiner German Scientist on philosophy, discovery and Justus Liebig

Peter Schreiner German Scientist [00:00:00] I would say, I can feel that devil's breath down my neck sometimes saying that you are out of your league, you should be doing something, you know, more organized, more planned at the same time. You know, he has these lures, the lure of, you know, understanding something and dragging me into the more chaos. So, you know that feeling is always there. As a scientist, I'm Miriam Hoffman, a full-time college student living in Carbondale, Illinois, and you're listening to the Vance Crow podcast.

Vance Crowe [00:00:32] Welcome back to the podcast. I'm glad you're here. So today I have a bit of a confession to make. When I started to record this interview, I didn't know if it was just gonna be one of those that I locked away in the archives, or maybe I just let the network see because it was gonna be with a person that I had no idea anything at all about my friend Travis Liebig, who you've heard me mention oftentimes he told me that he one time went on a trip to Germany and he got to visit a university named after one of his great-great-great-great grandfather's, Eustis Von Liebig. He kept telling me all the time about how important this figure was in the history of agriculture, really in all of civilization. And I hadn't really paid that much attention to it. I mean, it was the namesake of a friend of mine, so I'm okay interested, but because of our connection, Travis set it up that I could speak with somebody that would represent the university, and it turns out he set me up with Dr. Peter Shriner. Now, before the interview, you might be surprised to know I don't actually do very much research. Usually if it's a subject, I may go look it up a little bit. I may toy around. But a lot of times all I am looking for is a really good conversation. And I assumed that we would talk about this historical figure. But what I found in Dr. Shriner was amazing. He is a philosopher, he's a student of culture, he is an athlete, he is a big thinker, he's a teacher and a mentor, and he oversees a major component of a university that is focused at least in his department, on the intersection between where does chemistry become biology.

Vance Crowe [00:02:12] This conversation is wide ranging and it is so totally different than most conversations that I have with scientists for many reasons, not least of which his perspective and his way of thinking about the world is absolutely worth learning from. So we're gonna get to that interview in just a second, but I wanted to remind you that Sunday, July 27th at 7:30 PM we are holding the book club for the month of July and we are doing 1984. It is a great read, it is really timely right now. It probably always feels that way, but it's a great read and there's a whole bunch of people that are gonna be signing up to come to the book club. Most people, if they wanna be involved, are involved with the Articulate Ventures network, which you can join. I'll have a link below, but if you just want to come check it out, you wanna participate in the book club, you wanna talk with a bunch of people that listen to the podcast and are interested in pushing their own boundaries by reading books, then send me a DM on Twitter and say, Hey, send me an invitation to the book club and I'll be happy to do it. Alright, without further ado, we're gonna head into this interview. Don't forget that if you like this work, you can always help me in a tremendous way by sending it to people that you know, and people that you think might find this stuff enjoyable and tell them why you're sending it to them, sending it to a friend, gets them to listen to it, and maybe they'll become a regular listener and they can become a part of everything we're doing here. So without further ado, Dr. Peter Shriner. Dr.

Vance Crowe [00:03:46] Peter Schreyer. Is that how you pronounce your last name?

Peter Schreiner German Scientist [00:03:50] Shriner.

Vance Crowe [00:03:51] Shriner, welcome to the podcast. So you are an unusual person for me to invite. We had no idea who each other was, and you are on the other side of the world as far as I'm concerned. But I have a good friend who shares the name of the university that you work at, and I think most people have in the United States have no idea who Eustis von Liebig is. But you not only know who he is, you sit in the chair that was endowed on his behalf, and he was a great organic chemist and a pioneer in the agriculture space. So we were randomly mixed up together, and this is the first time we're meeting. So I'm really excited to welcome you on here. And yeah, where are you right now?

Peter Schreiner German Scientist [00:04:37] Well, I'm right in the middle of nowhere in Germany, practically in, in, in the geographical midpoint of the state of Hesse, which again is in the middle of Germany, close to Frankfurt know Frankfurt Airport. A lot of people know quite well where it is. And it's about 65 kilometers north, an hour train ride or 25 minutes if you drive with me. More enjoyable though.

Vance Crowe [00:05:01] And are you still going into the office every day right now in the world of coronavirus?

Peter Schreiner German Scientist [00:05:06] I am. So we never stopped operations, at least not in the, in the research part. The university's closed for the students and it will be closed for the most part also in the fall semester. But research operations have been going on, so I go in every day.

Vance Crowe [00:05:23] So most people, I would say, even including myself, they know the idea of a chair of a department or a chair of, of some person is an official position. But the concept of what is it, what do you do all day? What, why do, why are there chairs endowed for people? How would you describe that?

Peter Schreiner German Scientist [00:05:43] Well, it's the, the idea goes back to the freedom of teaching and research. That is something that's a constitutional right in Germany for professors that also requires to execute that freedom, you have to have resources. So with a professorship, there are resources associated with it. They can be modest, they can be substantial, and they can be very nice and very nice typically means you're a chair, so you have good resources to execute the research that you really, truly interested in it, you truly feel it is most relevant at the time. So it's, it's a, it's a promise now that, that people e extend to you and say, please do something meaningful with the resources we give you. So there's a lot of responsibility too.

Vance Crowe [00:06:30] And so during the day you wake up and you come into the office, is it that you are looking over the papers of the people that are doing research? Or how, how exactly is it constructed

Peter Schreiner German Scientist [00:06:41] That's that's close? Yeah, so the students, I have mostly students and a couple of finished grad students that are postdocs, they basically give me the reports they want to discuss with me their findings, their chemical findings. They're always chasing new things. You know, we're basically trying to answer relevant questions, you know, be it origin of life or new mechanisms, how to do and make molecules. And they discuss it with me. And then most of the time I have to tell 'em, I have no idea what this all means. Sometimes I have a good lead and I help them formulate a better question to answer, you know, the big one. So I give them some advice on what experiment to do next to figure out what is happening in the quest for the big questions we have.

Vance Crowe [00:07:31] That is, so I never went to get my PhD, but I have several friends that have, and the ones that get closer and closer to the hard sciences, talk about how the way you get your PhD is that you discover something new, you add to the library of knowledge. The challenge with being in a role like yours is that you are always on the edge of chaos. People that are trying to push to discover something new that no one's ever seen before, but not go over the edge or get out over their skis because in fact they're actually students.

Peter Schreiner German Scientist [00:08:05] Yeah, it is chaos. I always call the university or any research environment is controlled chaos. Yeah. So, and this chaos is really important because if everything's organized and scheduled and you know, okay, tomorrow I do this, then next Monday I do that, nothing good will happen. It's so unlikely that you discover anything new because if you know what you're doing, it's not research. Well, your research is really when you have an idea of what you're doing and you have a good plan on how to execute the idea, but you don't quite know what will come through. And then you have to be prepared. And this is what I'm trying to teach my students. You have to prepare and see what nobody else has seen. So in seeing that, that is a difficulty. Now what is new?

Vance Crowe [00:08:54] Well, I mean, that kind of comes down to, I heard recently a, a another German and a man named Yosha Bach. Talk about the idea that you don't really, intelligence are marked by what are the patterns that you're able to see and that the patterns are really exactly to your point. If you're able to see a pattern that other people can't see, you've discovered something new, something that's always been there, but maybe not understood in, in your scenario. I would think with young minds, you have to be able to push people to go a little further than they, than would normally be comfortable. But then also how to make sure that they don't just find themselves out in, I mean, yeah, it's, they probably, you're, you are the chaos master to make sure they don't get too far into the, into the woods.

Peter Schreiner German Scientist [00:09:40] Well, they, they go off to the, into the woods very far, very often. You know, I call it lala land of chemistry, and that's okay. And basically my idea is simply to keep them out of the darkest alleys. I want to make sure that they do check out the dark spots. But it's, it's difficult. And, you know, the typical student life is that they're frustrated most of the time because they don't get anywhere and everything they try doesn't work and extremely frustrated. So I'm the motivator, I'm trying to, you know, cheer them up and say, tomorrow morning, experiment number 11 will be much better than today's experiment number 10. And it often is, and that's, that's the key. So once in a while you have this eureka moment where suddenly it all makes sense and, you know, and my experience is you have to just hammer a problem hard enough until it, it, it yields to you, you know, it will, it will produce an exciting result. You just have to put a lot of effort into it and a lot of frustrating time.

Vance Crowe [00:10:47] Do you feel like when you're trying to hammer on it for a while, I assume you've been in this position, does it, does it feel like you're hitting it where you're hitting something solid and you're like, Hey, I'm definitely, you know, on the way? Or sometimes does it feel hollow and you think, ah, I didn't really get anything?

Peter Schreiner German Scientist [00:11:06] Yeah, it's sort of nailing a pudding to the wall. It, it doesn't, most of the time it doesn't feel very solid. You know, of course I give my students the impression that I, I know exactly what I'm doing. After a while, they figure out that's not the case. And, and then they still, they still ask. And it then a project typically comes to the stage where I can make a decision. And that decision is either stop it because it's not going anywhere because it's hollow. Or I suddenly know together with the students, we both know, ah, this is what we need to do next to clarify this question. And that, I would say nine out of 10 cases happens, right? It might take a while, but you know, the success rate at the end, if you just put enough effort into it, is pretty high.

Vance Crowe [00:11:55] And so you're in the area of, of chemistry and, and it seems like that's old and stodgy and well understood is are there things enough to learn new and chemistry?

Peter Schreiner German Scientist [00:12:09] A lot of people, even cists, think this is old and stodgy. And, and, and we understand most of it, but that's not the case. And so for instance, a lot of people think, oh, any molecule, you know, these talented chemists, somehow they can make it. That's not the case at all. There's so many molecules we can make or we can make them. But in a, in very elegan ways, nature does it much better. But they're even very simple things like very simple molecules that have not been made. And they may take a very important role, for instance, for, you know, questions of biochemistry, origin of life, what molecules exist in space, what organic molecules might have been brought to earth and sparked life here on earth. Maybe things haven't happened here, maybe if they've happened, you know, far away somewhere else. And none of these questions have been satisfactorily answered. So there's lots of open questions and you just have to really know a lot to understand that the mountain is much bigger than it looks at first

Vance Crowe [00:13:13] When you start thinking about the questions to be asked. And somebody like you has a huge view on the questions you could be asking, how do you pick one to ask?

Peter Schreiner German Scientist [00:13:24] That's a very good question. And I'm not sure that I have a good recipe. It's a gut feeling. And of course that is driven by what you know, you know, and we always do that in life. We try to not step out of our, out of our comfort zone too much because then it's sort of dicey. But I'm pushing myself typically in a little bit outta that zone. So I try to venture off into areas where I have the feeling that I have a good mind. I'm, I'm prepared, but I don't know enough about it to really answer the questions I might have. So it's, you know, it's really pushing myself or the group over the edge and asking them new questions to old problems or old questions to very new problems.

Vance Crowe [00:14:12] What is the most interesting question you've heard in a while or an interesting thing to pursue?

Peter Schreiner German Scientist [00:14:18] Well, what we are interested in is really what, what makes life, what are the molecules of life? And you know, if I asked you, you would tell me, well, I have heard of amino acids and DNA, which is just the molecule and sugars, you know, and all the a TP and you know, NADH maybe, and you know, all these molecules, they drive live. So everybody knows that. But then I ask you this question, do you know where these molecules come from? He said, no, I'm not a chemist. Ask a chemist. And I ask a chemist. And he, and he says, so, she says, I have no idea. And the answer is, we simply don't know. There are experiments for the amino acids, for instance, that have shown us that with, you know, simple soup and some energy we can make them. But the same type of experiments, for instance, don't work for sugar molecules. And sugars are very important. They're energy carriers, you know, some people have too much sugar, too much energy. And that is stored in, in parts where we don't like it. But they're also, it can also be information carriers because they have, you know, all kinds of different structures. So they can also carry information. Doesn't have to be DNA only. And to this day, the question is open, how they might form from the simplest components. You know, sugars are really, we call them carbohydrates, literally because it's carbon plus water, that is the formula for sugar. And we know, for instance, that sugar molecules have appeared in space.

Peter Schreiner German Scientist [00:15:50] Also, they have been brought down by meteorites. So we know they must form from very simple components. But to this day, you know, the answers to these questions are completely open.

Vance Crowe [00:16:01] I didn't realize that we had found sugar molecules on meteors.

Peter Schreiner German Scientist [00:16:06] Yep. The merchants and meteorites that fell to earth in the sixties showed, you know, a lot of sugars. And immediately questions arose, where are they coming from? Where were they made?

Vance Crowe [00:16:21] When you think about this kind of jump between chemistry to biology, where do you draw that distinction? When, when does something cease being chemistry and become biology?

Peter Schreiner German Scientist [00:16:35] I give you a, a cheeky answer first. I draw that distinction when I don't understand it anymore, which is, you know, beyond a small molecule, biology, you know, has a bigger, bigger view on things. You know, everything's larger. So the molecule is not as detailed as a chemist sees it. But essentially biology is driven by looking at the interactions of very big molecules, you know, biochemically relevant molecules. But you know, it's, it's, it's chemistry at the end. And I, I wish, for my personal view, I would understand a lot more biology. At the same time, I wish a lot more biologists would try to understand more chemistry. So there's a lot we don't talk about, you know, between these two subjects that would, that would be highly relevant.

Vance Crowe [00:17:23] You know, I never really thought about it, but it's probably that weird jump between micro and macroeconomics, where, you know, in microeconomics you can get in there and understand like, hey, supply and demand and all this stuff works. And then when you get out to macro, you're like, there are so many forces playing at this that to choose any one of them and highlight them as the cause of any other thing seems to be preposterous. But I think that's pretty much the same way with biology, right? You can abstract it down to chemistry, but the reverse is not always understood.

Peter Schreiner German Scientist [00:17:54] Yep. It's, it's pretty much the same thing. It's different scale. Yeah. And different degree of complexity. So biology is just far more complex. I mean, both are very complex. I mean, nature is very complex, but biology is just a level up in that sense.

Vance Crowe [00:18:10] So what, I guess one of the thoughts that I have about like your unusual position is that you really are sitting right on this edge of chaos. It's between chemistry and biology, between what is known and what's gonna be understood in some new way. Are you an adventurous person? Is this purely an intellectual pursuit? I see a guitar in the background,

Peter Schreiner German Scientist [00:18:36] Straight answer is yes, you know, I want to be challenged. I want to be stimulated. And you can only be stimulated again if you're out of your comfort zone once in a while. And, you know, I'd like to really under my, my motivation is to try to understand how nature works. I mean, this is a big quest and you know, I can only have a little glimpse at it, but it is just such a wonderfully exciting moment when suddenly things fall together and we understand a little bit more on how nature does something, you know, and in, in our way it is how nature assembles a certain molecule or uses it or destroys it or does something with it. When we understand that, that it's just a wonderful moment that drives me. It's an adventure. It's a big adventure.

Vance Crowe [00:19:23] What, what pulled you on this adventure? How in the world did you find it?

Peter Schreiner German Scientist [00:19:29] That's a good question. I have no idea. I always was thinking of myself as being a, a scientist. Even when I was a little kid, you know, I would draw images of my, my hand on paper when I was maybe five, six years old and was speculating that the hand that I have is similar to that of a, of a monkey. And I was trying to find the differences in all these things. So I guess I was always driven by the desire to, you know, understand how, how nature works at different scales. Now first I was very interested in, in, in the animal world, the plant world. And then I got deeper and deeper and eventually ended up with molecules, which then is chemistry.

Vance Crowe [00:20:11] Wow. Are you, I mean, I think it's gerta that, that that first described, or at least that's where I remember it from, the idea of the Damon, the voice that tells you like, hey, this is where you should be going. As a scientist that's trying to discover the, the chemical life bond, how do you feel about that concept of the Damon? Do you have it?

Peter Schreiner German Scientist [00:20:33] Yeah, it is a, it is a demon good, by the way. You know, he grew up in this area. He was, he was born in Frankfurt, just, you know, 45 minutes from here. So if you will, his spirit is, is still a little bit around in the sense that he was one of the last, you know, complete universal scientists and writers and that spirit, you know, we are talking about his peace Faust, so fist the devil that tries the scientist. And you can, I, I would say, I can feel that devil's breath down my neck sometimes saying that you are out of your league, you should be doing something, you know, more organized, more planned at the same time. You know, he has these lures, the lure of, you know, understanding something and dragging me into the more chaos. So, you know, that feeling is always there as a scientist, you know, it's, it's lurking.

Vance Crowe [00:21:28] And is it something, yeah, the way you describe it with lurking, it sounds like temptation or it sounds like a, a feeling of never quite being satisfied. Should I be more organized or should I be more exploring?

Peter Schreiner German Scientist [00:21:42] That is a constant feeling. I, you know, I always feel, okay, next week I'm gonna restructure all kinds of things. So we are more organized. And then once I've tried it, I realize it's not, not going anywhere. So, yep. That's a good description.

Vance Crowe [00:21:57] I feel very similar. I think that that's an interesting, an interesting thing because I think there are some people that they, the, the pull towards being more organized or the pull towards being more chaotic isn't, isn't there, but mine is, is at a constant tension all the time. And it probably is what drives me. Yeah. To be experimental. So you, in this, in the spirit of experimental, we, we were connected because of Eustis Von Liebig. And you, as we were getting ready for this, told me some things about him. I had no idea. So lay the stage for American farmers that have never heard of him, or have no concept, who was this figure in German academia and agriculture.

Peter Schreiner German Scientist [00:22:41] Yeah. So he is an important figure. And you know, any, any farmer in the world will appreciate what he's done. I'm gonna start from the end. He has invented mineral fertilizer and the world would not be the world we see now without fertilizer. You know, you have to keep a number in your mind. I know this number 'cause it's easy to remember in the year 1900, an acre of land had to feed seven people in Europe in the year 1990, it had to feed the same acre to feed 70 people. Yeah. So how do you do that? Well, you work harder, you have a higher density of your crops, maybe you can double it, but you cannot increase, you know, the yield of that acre of land by a fact of 10. So you need to do something else. And people back then, you know, we're talking about, we're jumping back now to the end of the 18th, early 19th century. And Levy was born in 1803. And at that time, the kunz concept was that if you have an acre and you, you plant wheat or whatever, that the plant only needs the soil to have something to hold onto, to grow properly, you know, to basically fix its roots and, and stand up straight and then only take water out and everything else comes from the air. Yeah. There was no concept that the minerals in there, there was no concept of CO2, two being, you know, used up from the air after picked up.

Peter Schreiner German Scientist [00:24:14] None of that was there. And ish grew up in the, in the great famines during the great famines. Now just think of 18, 16, the explosion of the tambora volcano that led to a year without summer in Europe. So it was snowing in August. In, in, in Germany,

Vance Crowe [00:24:34] People don't, I, I only just learned about this recently. This is where, there, it, it could happen tomorrow that, that this happens where a volcano goes off, clouds out the sun, and doesn't matter how bright and sunny it is, the cloud of the volcano blocked it out and crops just didn't grow.

Peter Schreiner German Scientist [00:24:52] That's exactly right. So it was sort of like, you know, winter all the time because there was too much stuff, debris in the air and, and, and smoke and everything. And so nothing grew and there were pe people just, just starving to death. And, and Levy saw that, and I said, you know, his driving force was really to do something for the people and make sure that the crops are protected and the high risks are as better. So he just simply said, well, I don't believe that something big and green can grow out of almost nothing. I think it's taking out something from the soil. So he analyzed that and he said, wow, there we go. We now understand that the plants are taking out minerals from the soil and CO2 from the air, and this is why they grow. And if you do that toma on the same piece of land, then you won't grow anything anymore because it's completely depleted. So you need to put it back. And this is how I invented the mineral fertilizer.

Vance Crowe [00:25:51] And when you say mineral fertilizer, I guess I am really only familiar with the Haber-Bosch nitrogen. I don't really know what it means to have mineral fertilizer.

Peter Schreiner German Scientist [00:26:01] Well, he was working mostly with salt. So he looked at, you know, mostly potassium, nitrogen, phosphorous, carbon content, magnesium, and found that indeed these concentrations, they go down as you keep growing plants on the same field. And he formulated something, what would you call that? The law of the minimum, I think is, is the proper term that he says, it doesn't matter how much potassium have in there, if you are short on phosphorus, things still won't grow. So he realized you have to have the right combination of minerals to put back in. And he formulated salts, you know, to put them back on the fields. And it was only much later that people realized, well, nitrogen is the most important fertilizers, ammonium nitrate, and then how harbor Bosch business sits in and all this stuff. This, this came a little, little bit later, but ish said also that you can use natural, you know, animal dung and stuff, natural fertilizers also to, to put back on the fields.

Vance Crowe [00:27:06] So they weren't doing that before?

Peter Schreiner German Scientist [00:27:09] No, no. And he had big farms to convince people that what people were completely against this, because he said, are you crazy? You know, you putting salt on the fields, what is that supposed to do? Yeah. They just didn't understand what he was doing. So he said, well, I will show you. So he had fields and he grew them in Germany and also in the uk big fields and had all the, you know, the royal society, the Royal Agricultural Society come in and says, look, here's the field with without and just look how the crops grow. Yeah. And then they were convinced and realized, wow, there is something to it, a lot to it, and we ought to do this on all our fields.

Vance Crowe [00:27:45] Yeah. The thing you were talking about, that minimum, I, I heard it described to me one time that it is, you can only fill a barrel up as high as there is no hole in the barrel. And if you have a hole at the bottom of the barrel, it doesn't matter how much water you put into it, it's gonna leak out. And that's the same problem with the, I didn't realize it was with mineralization, I just knew the metaphor from, from liebig.

Peter Schreiner German Scientist [00:28:06] Yeah, that's, that's exactly the picture one has in mind. And he has actually made a barrel like this, you know, where, what you call this, the, the planks of the barrel, they have different lengths and the, the shortest one of course determines how much water you can pour into it. And, you know, he had a demonstration barrel for the farmers, you know, so because he figured they will immediately understand what I'm talking about. And he just labeled the planks, you know, potassium, phosphorus, hydrogen, magnesium, and all this stuff, calcium, and they immediately understood what he meant.

Vance Crowe [00:28:39] So then what happens as a result, when people start seeing this, they adopt his techniques

Peter Schreiner German Scientist [00:28:46] With some reservation and also with some problems because he thought that the salts he's using, they have to be highly water soluble. And that turned out to be a mistake because then it was washed out too quickly in a big rain. So it was years of trying to really get the right formulation. Yeah. So people, you know, have something that would last for the crops to develop and then be, you know, washed out eventually. And that's a problem that we face now that, you know, a lot of the phosphorus can be washed out and ends up in the rivers. And then we have all the, you know, algae growth and all this stuff. So it, it was a good thing, but we're living with the consequences now. So it, it wasn't immediately adapted and had some failures initially, but eventually it really made agriculture what it is to what it is now.

Vance Crowe [00:29:39] Now is von Liebig, is he a well-known figure in Germany? Because I think here that name means almost nothing to most people.

Peter Schreiner German Scientist [00:29:50] I think if you ask a person just off the street, then, you know, people wouldn't know. I mean, if you ask here in, in Geen, then maybe in Frankfurt people would know, but by and large you wouldn't. But you know, how many, how many scientists do laypersons really know? I mean, they know

Vance Crowe [00:30:07] Einstein.

Peter Schreiner German Scientist [00:30:08] Yeah. But if I ask them about

Vance Crowe [00:30:11] Norman Burlock, most people don't know. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Peter Schreiner German Scientist [00:30:14] Then yeah. So who's that guy? Yeah, so it's like you ask scientists about modern rock stars. I mean, it's the same thing you can ask me, but the answer is no. I mean, he's, he's, he's known in academic circles, I would say. And, but that, that's about it.

Vance Crowe [00:30:34] So I don't know how it is in Germany, but lately with you being at a university, you might have some interesting insight. There has been a big pushback among a, a small group of people saying, Hey, our peer review system isn't working, and that, that what we're doing by having this, this peer review system is we're making it so the big discoveries, the things that go really far against what people already think they know aren't getting to the light of day. And so you're an interesting person to ask about this because you are both trying to push people up onto the edge, but then you've also gotta keep them contained so that people can check their work. What is your thought on this concept about the brokenness of peer review? I've heard two people recently talk about it.

Peter Schreiner German Scientist [00:31:20] Oh, this is a, a topic for a very long discussion. I wouldn't say it's broken. It's, it's sort of the same thing as with democracy. You know, we all know democracy is, is a terrible system to be in because it requires a lot of work, a lot of effort. It is shortlived, you have to reelect and all these things. But at the same time, what are the other options? There are none. I mean, democracy is the best we can have. And I think the peer review system at the moment are viewed similarly. It's the best we can have, but it's by no means perfect. It's also not broken. I think the pressure is that the push and the, the necessity to discover something new all the time, it's so high that very often, you know, we get to see things that are not fully described. Well, they're not, not really that new. They're just, you know, in a different gown. We say it's old wine and old in new bottles. So it's, you know, there's too much pressure on scientists to be successful in publishing because it determines the careers. I think that is what is broken now, if you look in the US tenure decisions are made on the number and the, so what kind of journal people have published in. And that is just, just a very hard measure and it guarantees the scientific life or it in scientific lives.

Peter Schreiner German Scientist [00:32:52] And this is what's broken, I think.

Vance Crowe [00:32:54] Oh, that's super interesting. So you're saying the emphasis on just a few publications that then have the ability to promote, put forward an idea, and then those that can't or that don't then end up making it whether or not you're a successful scientist?

Peter Schreiner German Scientist [00:33:12] Yes. That's pretty much it.

Vance Crowe [00:33:14] How would you fix it?

Peter Schreiner German Scientist [00:33:18] I would fix this in the sense that, for instance, you know, tenure year evaluations, so after five years, typically an assistant professor is evaluated. And I would, of course, I would always want to look at the publications, but I would also have interviews with this person, want to have them present their case, their signs exchange with them to really figure out if they know how science is done, because that's what they will be doing for the next 30, 40 years after that decision. And not put so much emphasis on, on the journal articles itself of itself, but really evaluate the person on the whole, you know, as a scientist, you know, there, there are more dimensions than just the publications. You know, a scientist has to be a father, a mother, a brother, a sister, a good friend, a devil's advocate, you know, everything. At the same time, you know, when I run my group,

Vance Crowe [00:34:20] Students, you should, you should slow this down. You, you should slow this down because people have no idea what you're talking about. So to to, to the average person, a scientist is a person that they either see on television that's like kind of the pseudo blend between being a doctor and a scientist that can do all things. Or they view them as being cordoned off, you know, weird people that don't really like talking to other people, or if they do experience them on social media, they view them as like very politically active, very much like, this is what the science says and this is how you should behave. So for you to say that a scientist should have all of these many facets, a mother, a sister, a brother, that is so paradigm, that's such a different paradigm that I think people won't immediately recognize it to be something they can understand.

Peter Schreiner German Scientist [00:35:11] Yeah. The reason why I say this is because, you know, I'm, I'm in a, in a mentoring position, you know, so I'm a mentor for new young scientists, you know, I'm a grownup whether scientists, and I'm trying to teach new ones to become scientists. And my philosophy is that, of course, as a scientist, you have to know your stuff, you know, your subject chemistry, physics, biology, languages, whatever it is, you know, and I just safely assume that you know your stuff and then you're supposed to discover new things and new stuff. That's why you need to know what's what's already known and, and what could be new. So that is that the technical side, and I think this is what people see most of the time. The other side is that science in contrast to what a lot of people think is a very personal thing, and it's a very emotional thing. Yeah. You know, we're always viewed in, in movies as you know, these dry scientists that hardly ever laugh. It's not the case at all. It's a, it's a deeply human adventure science. So you know, your project becomes your baby, and if your baby's crying, you, you get desperate. You know, you ask for help if your baby's sick, you go to the doctor and all this stuff. And as a scientific supervisor, I have to make sure that all my students identify themselves with their scientific baby. So they very often come and said, my baby's sick, and it's screaming, can you please help me?

Peter Schreiner German Scientist [00:36:42] So I have to be a good advisor, little fatherly figure. But sometimes, you know, they also don't, don't do their stuff to behave like babies themselves. And I have to take the whip out and tell them what not to do and let go. That's, that's why, you know, I have to assume different roles. And I, I think to be a good scientist also means to really have a broad knowledge of things, how the world works and, you know, be multidimensional.

Vance Crowe [00:37:13] So you are also in a weird position in that both being the head of, of students and as a, as the chair of this department, but you're in some ways the person in charge. And, and when you were younger, at a different time in your life, you would've seen people that were in charge of labs or scientists. What do you hope that you learned from those? Or what are the people that you thought like, man, that is a, that is a thing that had I not encountered a person positively or negatively, I wouldn't have known that about what I'm doing now.

Peter Schreiner German Scientist [00:37:49] Oh, I was very lucky. I have encountered wonderful people that I had as mentors. I had two doctoral supervisors, one in Germany, one in the us and they were both very different characters. And I learned pretty much all I know from them, mostly by setting very good examples. Some things that I didn't like that I told myself, well, when you ever grow up, if you ever grow up, then don't do that to your students. So I, I was very lucky. So one of those two people is Fritz Shafer from the University of Georgia, and he is the greatest communicator I ever met. A science communicator he can talk to and with everybody, and everybody loves this man. I mean, he's just absolutely great and he's extremely open and just knows how to go about people. So I figured this is an important thing, you know, to learn from. The second one was Paul Schleyer, and he was quite the opposite, very quiet personality, very shy, but enormous scientific knowledge and an absolute heart bone when it came to the nitty gritty details of science. So I learned from him that you have to be very, very meticulous when you do science and when you report it. And the combination of the two is really what, what drives my work or shapes my work. So I was very lucky.

Vance Crowe [00:39:16] Yeah. It feels like to me the, the great scientists that I know in my opportunity to work in ag have been people that something about their personality traits have been turned way up, you know, and like it makes them out of the ordinary, whether it's, you know, their agreeableness or disagreeableness or, or the way they're open to new ideas. One of those knobs of their personality. And I think for a lot of people, the, the scientists seem like a lonely figure, but because they have such weird knobs on their personality when they get together, you can find synergies between people. That doesn't happen in ordinary life when all the knobs are somewhere in the average or in the, in the mean.

Peter Schreiner German Scientist [00:40:00] Yeah. I think that's, that's a fair statement. You know, there's, yeah, there's one, one knob that has definitely turned up too, too much. It is turned up a lot.

Vance Crowe [00:40:10] And when you think about the state of the relationship between scientists as, as much as there is some community of scientists, I think there's probably a lot of ambiguity about that. People think of scientists as a, as a monolith as opposed to a, a cluster of really pretty disagreeable people. What do you think about the perception that people have of what's going on by scientists or what scientists think of the, of the way things ought to be?

Peter Schreiner German Scientist [00:40:39] So this is a misconception, and I can, I can prove that very quickly. For instance, you know, the most extreme examples are in physi physics, for instance, the hick bow zone, you know, it has been called the guard particle. It was discovered a few years ago. It was, you know, predicted by a gentleman by the name Hicks, of course. And it sort of gives everything mass, you know, it's about as much physics I know, but the original nature of science paper, don't quote me which one it is, the, the publication I think has 3,500 names on it. So it needed at least 3,500 people to work together in concert to build a big machine. And it's a scary big machine to then actually show that a tiny, tiny particle exists and, you know, explains a lot of the things we always were, you know, guessing about. So scientists by nature, especially natural scientists, they typically work in teams. So it's not, you know, the basement, lonely, lone ranger finding something. Most of it is teamwork and it's, it's effortless across oceans. You know, I, I've been working with scientists from just about any place in the world, and we speak the same language. I was once in China and wanted to talk to a Chinese chemist, and he could not speak a single word of English. So we looked at each other, no Chinese on my side, no English on his side.

Peter Schreiner German Scientist [00:42:14] So I thought, what we're gonna do? Well, very simple. We took out a pencil and a paper and we started drawing chemical structures and we had a great conversation for an hour, you know, and that was it. And I know exactly what he was doing, what his questions were, he knows what I'm doing. And it was a really wonderful experience, you know, to have that, that common base.

Vance Crowe [00:42:34] Describe that. How, how was it different than playing an ordinary game of like, not charades, but you know, you know where you draw and somebody guesses. Why is it different because of the language of chemistry that you shared between you?

Peter Schreiner German Scientist [00:42:46] Because we don't have to guess what the other one is drawing. We know exactly what it is, right? If he draws a benzene ring, you know, even if it's crooked or you know, whatever it looks like, I will always recognize it and vice versa. So the language is very clearly defined. It's like, you know, like, like numbers the same thing, you know, he writes down one plus one equals question mark, and I write down two, it's all clear.

Vance Crowe [00:43:12] So I play a game with some of my friends who after we've been talking for a little while, and you start to try and say, I'm really interested to see how your mind works. One of the ways that we play this game is we say, let's imagine a room that we've both been in or that we're both familiar with. How would you draw that room? How would you represent it? How would you bring it into your mind and then represent it to another person? If I were to ask you that and we could, we could pick something that, you know, some space that both of us know, the Notre Dame Cathedral or or I, I don't know, very many German, how would you draw it?

Peter Schreiner German Scientist [00:43:49] Well, Notre Dame is a good one because we both have been there, so that's a good one. How would I draw that? So I should describe to you, well, the first thing I see is the two towers, of course. And I walk in and I see the big organ, and I'm worried that that organ might have been damaged in the big fire. And at the moment I see a burnt down roof, you know, all the wood structure, I see lots of benches for people to sit in and, you know, have their prayers and sing and, and things like that. And a lot of beautiful stained glass windows. Oh, that's sort of, that is my impression of, of that place.

Vance Crowe [00:44:34] Do you, do you also hear sounds in there? Can you hear the echo of things and can you put, put,

Peter Schreiner German Scientist [00:44:40] Put with

Vance Crowe [00:44:41] The, the smell of those things?

Peter Schreiner German Scientist [00:44:42] Yeah, I, I can, I can, I have that smell of old church, so sort of a little bit in a moldy wet smell, and I can hear my footsteps and realize there's quite an echo in there. It would be nice to play electric guitar in that room, in that church.

Vance Crowe [00:44:59] You and I have something very much in common. In fact, you are the first person besides one of my siblings that's ever described it this way, way. And I think a lot of people that I'm close with, a lot of my good friends see it almost entirely as a blueprint from above. And so they immediately orient themselves above it to see it, to be able to draw it and construct it.

Peter Schreiner German Scientist [00:45:20] Ah,

Vance Crowe [00:45:21] But not everybody does, right? There's other people that it is the synesthesia, right? Like the, the experience of all of these things coming together. And I think people have one or the other. And I think you can have it to more or less of an extent, but you're the only person I've ever met that I was walking through the door with you. And by the way, I haven't been in there, I've only done it on Google Earth through vr. But, but the same thing, right? Where you pull open the space and you move into it and you, you can hear sounds differently because of the shape of the room. Like you were describing how you wanted to play guitar. It's an interesting thing to figure out how do people cons conceptualize space? Because just like the benzene ring, it's, it's whether or not there's clarity there.

Peter Schreiner German Scientist [00:46:10] Yep. Yeah. That is, for me, there has total clarity. So if you tell me, you know, describe that, then in my mind I'm walking into it, not hovering over it.

Vance Crowe [00:46:19] So as you think about the kind of disorder or non-understanding of what the future looks like, at least from the Amer, well maybe first it'd be what is the German perspective or what are you seeing around coronavirus there, are you guys opened back up? Are things fully moving or how does it look there?

Peter Schreiner German Scientist [00:46:38] Things are moving quite smoothly. So a lot of the restrictions have been lifted. There is still distancing, social distancing. So, you know, one and a half meters and facial masks everywhere in public spaces. Then restrictions on how many people can meet. So I think it's maybe 50 or so that can meet in one place. And of course you're supposed to, you still stay inside and not travel too much and just, you know, do social distancing at all levels. A lot of people don't go on vacation, they just decide to stay home. And people just have been extremely careful in following these rules. And I think overall we've been handling the, the crisis quite reasonably, but we don't know, you know, it's could be changing any time. So if we look at other places like Israel, they've been doing great and suddenly, you know, they open probably a little bit too quickly and they have lots of infections again. So this is very worrisome for, for many reasons. So, you know, we're, we're sitting tight, so to speak, but business is running.

Vance Crowe [00:47:51] My perspective is that it's been hard to remain open to the idea that you don't know what's going on because I, my even personal sensation is I'd rather just decide how I feel like coronavirus is and then activate off of that consistently as opposed to paying attention to what's going on and changing my behavior based on my, my, you know, the changes of information that we've heard. How do you think about this? Do do you find yourself picking aside and sticking with it or changing all the

Peter Schreiner German Scientist [00:48:21] Time? Yes, so, you know, I, I had to convince myself that I really truly understand that this is a dangerous thing that's happening. So it took a couple of days because initially I thought, well, you know, it's just another flu, you know, and probably statistically slightly above average. And then I looked at the numbers and the, the troublesome thing was the, the rapid change in the numbers, a rapid change in the infections and what that meant. Then I realized, well, it's, it's a very serious thing that's coming at us, so we need to act on it. And then I made a, a conscious decision to say, it's there, you gotta avoid it. You gotta protect yourself and other people, and you live by this now until you know it's cleared. So it was a conscious decision and I've been living by it since, you know, mid-March or so.

Vance Crowe [00:49:11] And do the Germans have the same sense of liberty being taken away that the Americans do? There's a huge swath of Americans that believe that this is a, a major infringement on their liberty.

Peter Schreiner German Scientist [00:49:26] I think the generic answer is no, we don't feel so limited in or restricted in our liberties, but the, the notion of liberty in, in the US and in Europe is probably a different one now. So I mean, liberty in the US is something that is executed at the very personal level. People don't want to be told what to do and what not to do, period. Which I like very much. But I think the common sense in, in Europe is because it's so much more dense. There's so many more people in a, in a much tighter space that your liberty ends where that of the other person is restricted. And that that attitude basically tells you that the space you have to yourself is much smaller than you have in the US both, you know, physically, but also in terms of what rules to follow and what rules not to follow.

Vance Crowe [00:50:25] It never dawned on me that that would be one of the reasons why European culture and American urban culture would be so similar and because of population density. That is, I had never thought of that. That is rather profound. You know, you said something earlier that I, I thought was a very good idea, but I didn't wanna interrupt you about it, but I think it relates to, to this in some way, which is, I've never heard anyone describe that democracy takes time, right? Like that, that you need attention on it and that it has to be cultivated. Most of the time people say, well, the downside on democracy is that you do have to give up some of your freedoms, like being able to tell somebody what to do in order that you have your own freedoms. And that always been the trade off that I had thought about, but I'd never actually as an adult grappled with the idea that if democracy isn't working, it's because you haven't spent enough time fixing the gears.

Peter Schreiner German Scientist [00:51:20] Yeah. So democracy does take time and yeah, I'm talking from, you know, I can take Germany as an example. We had our first adventure with democracy, 1848. That was our first democratic parliament back then in Frankfurt. And it was a failure, you know? Then a second try was,

Vance Crowe [00:51:37] I don't know anything at all about this. What,

Peter Schreiner German Scientist [00:51:39] Yeah. So basically in 1848 was the first proclamation of a democratic parliament. Back then we were still a monarchy and, but people were sick and tired, you know, of a, of a, a king or a kaizen. That and, and that respect. And they said, no, all the power to the people. We want to elect our leaders. We don't want to have, you know, these, these people that are set apart from all of us. We want to have democratic rules. So they just proclaimed the parliament in 1848 in Frankfurt, and it was dissolved quickly thereafter because the, the public wasn't ready for it now, and then after the first world

Vance Crowe [00:52:22] War, what does that mean? They weren't ready for it. What did they do in response?

Peter Schreiner German Scientist [00:52:26] Well, they were still still listening to the authority too much. You know, the executive powers were with, with the, the rulers and the, the public couldn't resist or didn't want to resist or wasn't ready to resist, resist because they didn't know that democracy is a good thing and if they have the power that it will provide a better life. They were just not aware of this, you know, and you need to be convinced and that convincing takes time.

Vance Crowe [00:52:54] This is fascinating. I know nothing at all about this. I feel as though, like somebody just revealed to me a really important part of civilization and I've never heard about it.

Peter Schreiner German Scientist [00:53:06] I can give you another example. For instance, when you look at the, you know, the war in Iraq, the assumption was in the US and that's a fair assumption, you know, stop them from battling, get rid of all these, you know, rogue leaders and make sure that the power is given to the people. So have, let's have elections, have parties, and then it will sort itself and democracy is there and everything will be fine in dandy. That was the idea. And all of this should take about two months. And when I heard that I was living in the US at the time, I thought, guys, this will take maybe 20 years, maybe 50 years, especially from a tribal society. It might take hundreds of years to do that because that's not, not how they think now and turned out to really take a long time and it's still not there. So there's a misconception how long the structure building of democracy really takes. And the answer is very long.

Vance Crowe [00:54:05] And that probably has to do with the fact that it has to be intricate, right? If you do, if you use blunt tools to make it so that I, this is a very interesting turn on the way that I think about politics. I mean, in the US the reason people pay attention to the president so much I don't think is because the president actually has that much power they do now and they've amassed more of it. But it used to be that that was the cheapest thing for the news outlets to cover that they knew everyone would want to watch, right? Because all the other elections are broken down by state or even much, much smaller county and city. So it's cheaper to focus on the president, but what that has ultimately ended up doing is creating a monarchy of sorts, right? Like a sort of power centralization that it's easier for us to focus on it so we don't have to spend that much time understanding the other things. And maybe it's the way we're spending our attention is the very thing that's breaking down our democracy.

Peter Schreiner German Scientist [00:55:01] Yeah, that's, that's exactly the, the problem we're facing. You know, it's the personal lethargy of everybody trying to understand, know politics. So it people want to be led. It's a, it's a, that's a strong statement, I think, but I think it's true. It's much easier to follow a single person because you think, okay, he knows or she knows what we're supposed to be doing, so let's do that. It's much easier to follow a group or follow on idea or follow a, a principle, a principle of, of freedom for everybody. So this is human nature, we like to follow leaders. It's the easiest.

Vance Crowe [00:55:44] Yeah. And the leaders that give you those soothing, satisfying answers are the ones that say, let's just quick fix this problem. By doing this one large action are the ones that can galvanize support really quickly because they don't need to prove that they're, yeah. This is, this is a fascinating way of looking at this. Is this something you've come to over time or this is the German way of thinking?

Peter Schreiner German Scientist [00:56:08] That's a good question. I I, I don't know if that's the German way of thinking. A lot of people think like that. I know that. But if it's the general public that thinks like this, I'm not sure. I, I think the answer is no. I think people are about the same everywhere. They like to follow, they don't want to, you know, think for themselves and get the information themselves. It's exhausting. It's a lot of work, but it's more my own conviction that this is how politic politics works and also doesn't work. And at the moment you see this in politics, the world has gotten so complex that instead of trying to understand that complexity and conveying the idea that difficult problems have also difficult answers, people try to follow the people that say, look, you know, it's a gray zone. I don't care the answer's black or white now, and that's much easier. So we are living in a very critical time also for democracy, where, you know, people are afraid that things have gotten out of hand in terms of complexity and they follow at the moment those that give answers to them that are easy to understand.

Vance Crowe [00:57:20] I think that that is exactly right and it's a more precise way. I, I've been describing that if you watch our US politics from a step back, it is not all together different than watching a soap opera or WWF rustling or something like that. And I don't even mean to denigrate it or demean it, I just mean the, the rudimentary nature of everybody's arguments and their points and their point of views, they're only complicated because there's a lot of them. None of the ideas in it of themselves are all that complicated to understand. And really what people wanna see is two people fighting with one another. And it's, it's one of those concepts that becomes a, a place where you can't get out of it. But when I hear your way of describing it, and I realize, wait a second, just by saying it's, it's people's attention, then how am I spending my attention and where am I contributing to that? It's a much more personally oriented responsibility in that way.

Peter Schreiner German Scientist [00:58:23] That's, that's a fair way of putting it together. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:58:27] So one last kind of block of questions, 'cause I'm really interested to hear what you think of this. I, are you familiar with this concept, the Overton window?

Peter Schreiner German Scientist [00:58:37] No.

Vance Crowe [00:58:38] So the Overton window is the, is the window of acceptable thought in a given society. So at the center you might have policy like what we all go along with, but then on whatever axes, and you could say left or right or liberal or conservative, you could just say that as you move further out, you have things that are sensible and then acceptable. And then outside of that, they're not acceptable. So they're really either a radical idea or they're unthinkable. So there are some ideas that we just don't want them in society, things to do with sexuality of children might be included there, or certain aspects of war. Can you release an atomic bomb? Things like that. But when times of chaos and change, those overton windows open up because the old rules, the old tribes we followed, all the things that we were involved with, they don't necessarily apply. When you look around at the world, do you see that if the Overton window is open, where you guys are or new ideas coming into society, and if they are, what are some of the unexpected ones you've seen?

Peter Schreiner German Scientist [00:59:43] Well, new things happen all the time and new things come also into society. And I, I think that Overton window, if I understood it correctly, has opened a lot. So I mean that's, that's, I think that's a fact. And that is also what contributes to the world right now. I think that the world is, well, one can make two statements. First of all, in the, in the civilized, in quotes first world, we have never seen better times. I mean, the life expectation is very high. The health systems are great. Nobody's dying of hunger. Education is available. So you ask the question, why the hell are we so unhappy? And, you know, why are we bickering and battling all the time? You know, at the little scale, the large scale. And the answer is because we're very worried that we will lose all of this because the future has never been more undecided and more open at the same time, we see technological advances that are so rapid, you know, the digital digitization, you know, everything is basically available at your fingertip tips on your phone. That is a very scary thing. It's a very convenient thing, but it's also very scary thing because you think, what if I can't follow these developments? What if I don't understand how to operate a gismo like this? What if,

Vance Crowe [01:01:03] Yeah, what if something like GP three outpaces me and can all of a sudden start writing test questions and new thoughts faster than I ever could.

Peter Schreiner German Scientist [01:01:11] Yeah. And then you, you, you sort of fear that your, you know, aspirations are no longer relevant for anybody and your skills, your skillset is, is gone and you're gonna be be made obsolete. And I think this is, this is what's happening at the moment is that cleft between a great achievements we have in in the world on, on the one hand and that complete uncertainty of how this is going to evolve further.

Vance Crowe [01:01:41] I agree. And I think one of the things that I have observed during coronavirus more than any other time is that the, the old things that used to make change in society kind of acceptable or, or maybe better understood, is that we used to spend a lot more time together. So maybe people would go to church together, they'd have a civic group together or some kind of athletic group. And one of the functions of those things that people don't realize is you're exposed to people that it's more than a zero sum game, right? It's not your Facebook where it's like, I'm gonna obliterate you and you're gonna try and obliterate me. You have to see these people at your kids' soccer game the next week. Or you have to see them at church. So you're more open to the idea of like, yeah, they think something different than me, I'm gonna let 'em talk. And some of those ideas end up seeping in and hitting you. Maybe you still really disagree with a lot of things they say, but you've been exposed to nuanced ideas where somebody is saying it and you aren't imagining that they're yelling that idea at you the way that we do on Facebook. And I now am coming to the conclusion that I, I think I personally need to join more community organizations or try and start them because I think that may be the only path back so that we don't end up hating each other or oversimplifying everyone else's arguments.

Peter Schreiner German Scientist [01:03:02] Oh, this is couldn't be more true what you just said. We are social animals. You can see this now. And, and in times when we're locked down that, you know, zooming 24 7, we're not made for it. It's that simple. And you know, we've just about a month ago picked up I'm, you know, I'm an avid tennis player, so I go to a club and and play there three times a week and I see my buddies and I'm, I'm always thinking, you know, the beer afterwards is just as good as the playing itself. 'cause you know, he talks stupid stuff and you know, all kinds of opinions. And it's nice because it's, it's non-academic. So I meet people with all kinds of professions and attitudes and views of the world. It's wonderful. It's sort of my grounding. And I think we all need that. And now we, we are social animals. We like, we like to live in groups and exchange and we feel there's more now than than ever. And, you know, it keeps your sanity and keeps us more peaceful. I think if we do that,

Vance Crowe [01:04:02] I have already seen it happening with my wife. So she's a physical therapist and so is her business partner, and they have to wear masks. And one of the things that people don't realize is when you're getting feedback from your doctor or your personal trainer or somebody that is evaluating how is my progress going? A lot of what we as human beings relate to is how does their face look? Did they look like they really thought I was doing a good job because I can detect if they're just faking with me. But now that we've cut off those social signals by making it so a woman that's always communicated that she's happy by smiling, or a man that, that you know, makes sure that his gruff tone is offset by some other cue, that's all gone now. And I, I see this as like messing around with the very fabric that makes us human. The, the very thing that allows us to transcend disagreement is the fact that we can read emotions. So to me, the mask experience that we're having right now is far more scary than I just want to be able to see people's faces. I think it cuts off their humanity in a big way.

Peter Schreiner German Scientist [01:05:11] It does. And you know, this is, this is absolutely true what you say. And, and that is also the most difficult for machines. For instance, you know, people, I mean, machines can understand your language, you know, and probably an artificial intelligence can now sort of figure out what we're talking about and you know, write a summary about it. But if you ask the machine, okay, how did these two guys feel about talking to each other? They've never met before. And they suddenly talk about good stuff and the machine couldn't tell, they couldn't tell, you know, but a human, if, if they watched us, they could say, well, it looks like they're having fun because that's what we convey with, you know, nonverbal clues. So it's absolutely important, and I see this in, in teaching now, I also have to do teaching of course and teach a class now online. And for bandwidth issues, I typically have to ask the students to switch off the cameras. You know, if you have a hundred students and you do this with 30,000 on Monday morning, eight o'clock, then you know, there no bandwidth is gonna do that. And little time, and I'm just talking to a, a screen with little buttons and it's so weird because I have no idea, do these kids understand any, any of the things I say or are they just, you know, looking at me like with a big question mark on the forehead. It's all missing and it's, it's tough. We need these clues.

Vance Crowe [01:06:30] Yeah, and I, I have an intern and he was talking to me about the challenge that he has right now of his teachers don't want to to be there. He has some older teachers and so they don't want to expose them, but he was like, a big huge component of me being at college was to interface with other people. And so we were playing with the ideas, I wonder if students won't gather in a shared room and that the teacher won't be the, the telepresence in the room so that way they're not exposed. But these young people can continue to network and mix. I I think we will come up with all sorts of weird cultural things that, that remain as remnants in our society even long after we've passed coronavirus.

Peter Schreiner German Scientist [01:07:09] Yeah. You could ask the questions. We will ever shake hands again. Yeah, I mean that would be a good title for an article or a podcast, you know,

Vance Crowe [01:07:18] When was the last time you shook hands with someone?

Peter Schreiner German Scientist [01:07:22] That is a very good question. I think the answer really is, it must have been around March 8th or ninth or so,

Vance Crowe [01:07:31] In my culture and in the part that I run around in, in the city, it's one thing, but I'm, I'm connected with agriculture. If I decided that I wasn't going to shake hands even today, it would be a serious cultural move. You know, I don't think everybody would judge you incorrectly or, you know, they might say, well he is got a health condition he is looking out for, but people in the countryside are actively shaking hands and I think just more cognizant of it than they ever have been as a form of liberty like we were saying before.

Peter Schreiner German Scientist [01:08:02] Yeah. And so, you know, but that's a selfish liberty because, you know, I might be infected and I don't wanna transfer, transmit that disease to a third person if I care. If I say no, it's more important for me to actively execute that gesture even at the risks I transmit something I think that would not be acceptable for me.

Vance Crowe [01:08:26] Yeah. It's, it's a tough thing to think about because you're talking about a world in which the cooperation in the cities isn't, isn't necessary, but you do need to have a level of trust because oftentimes the people that are around you are gonna be the people that show up in, in a major emergency. There's no one to, to outsource that to. And so the handshake while being more dangerous, I think also has some role in society different in the countryside than it does in the city. But I take your point that you're making a decision,

Peter Schreiner German Scientist [01:08:59] Well that the handshake, you know, historically, you know where it comes from. It basically shows the open hand that you, you're not trying to harm the person, right. You, you, you don't have a weapon that in your right hand, assuming that most people are right-handers. Yeah. So it's a, it's an important gesture and you know, it is weird not to do it. It's, it's extremely weird. I always have to tell myself consciously, oh, don't do it now at this time it's not appropriate and nobody does it. I mean, people just have gotten used to it. Now

Vance Crowe [01:09:31] I find myself doing the action that I learned in Kenya because a lot of times when you would greet people in Kenya, you do a lot of handshaking, but you also do, you know, jumbo and you put your two hands up and it's, I think it is something to do. You have to have that visceral thing that you do to, to greet

Peter Schreiner German Scientist [01:09:47] No weapons, huh?

Vance Crowe [01:09:49] No weapons. Well I, I really had no idea where this conversation would go, but this has been a delight and I actually would love to have you on again to be the, the science guy from Germany that has a very interesting cultural perspective. If,

Peter Schreiner German Scientist [01:10:05] Yeah, this was a lot of fun.

Vance Crowe [01:10:07] If people wanted to get a hold of you, are you on social media? Do you like, could people reach out to you? The Von Liebig University?

Peter Schreiner German Scientist [01:10:16] Yeah, so I can be found easily. So if you type my name Peter Shriner chemist, then you find me. It's a Wikipedia and Twitter and what have you. Any other usual things. So it's very easy to get in touch with me.

Vance Crowe [01:10:31] Well this is a fascinating conversation and I would just throw out at the very end here in my mind, before we got on this call, I was very concerned, you know, will his German accent be too thick? Will the castle that he's speaking from be too dark to be lit? But as I look at you, you know, I have been to Germany, I've, I like, I worked with German colleagues and even I had this cultural perception about what was gonna be, but it was completely shattered when you showed up. So this is wonderful.

Peter Schreiner German Scientist [01:11:00] Get your kind. Thank you. You're a very kind person.

Vance Crowe [01:11:03] Great. We'll

Peter Schreiner German Scientist [01:11:03] Do it again soon. We enjoyed that.

Vance Crowe [01:11:05] Well that's gonna do it for today's interview. If you're interested in this month's book Club 1984 by George Orwell, don't forget that we're holding on Sunday at seven 30, the book club. You'll be able to join it, check it out, meet other people from the Articulate Ventures network. And if you're interested, you might decide to join. So if you would like to be invited to come to the book club, just send me a DM on Twitter and say, hey, this is my email and I'd love to get an invitation and we would love to have you. So we'll be back later on this week with more interviews. And thanks for tuning in.