Who's a fascinating person and an an author of many books and a polymath of sorts and we've known each other by?

Electronic communication for quite a long time, it's it's something exceeding a decade

but we've never met either in person or electronically by video until now and

Howard is definitely well he's a singular sort of person and he has a very broad range of knowledge

As broad as anyone I've ever encountered

I would say and so what I'm going to do first is turn this over to him so that he can tell you a little

bit about himself and about what he's done and

Then we're gonna talk about his newest book which is called how I accidentally started the 60s and then well

We're gonna see where it goes from there, so Howard. Thanks for

Showing up here and let's let's see where we can go, so why don't you tell everybody about yourself?

Well, it's a pleasure to see you in person because I think it's about been about 14 years

maybe 15 years that we've known each other I

Put together a science of the soul initiative a long time ago, and and you were one of those kind enough to sign on

but I am the author of six books the first book is called the Lucifer principle a scientific expedition into the force of history and

Even though it's about 25 years old

People are buying it at because it feels like it was written yesterday

For tomorrow and people call it their Bible the second book is

global brain the evolution of masked mind from the Big Bang to the 21st century and

the office of the Secretary of Defense in the United States the reform based on one of the on that book and

brought in people from the State Department the Energy Department DARPA IBM and MIT

The third book is called the genius of the Beast a radical revision of capitalism

I preferred its original title which was reinventing capitalism porting soul the machine and that

Book the man who runs Dubai the Sheikh who runs Dubai

named a racehorse after one of that after that book the

His former minister of development who's on Dubai's ruling council and runs a thirty

Three billion dollar sovereign real estate company to built the tallest building in the world

went in front of the Arabian Business and Economic Forum and

told them there is a book that I particularly resonate with it's the genius of the Beast and

It contains the future of Dubai and he proceeded to read passages from that book and dr. APJ Kalam the eleventh President of India

Said that that book is a visionary creation

And this is despite the fact that the Sheikh who runs Dubai his former minister of development and dr. Abdul J

Column are all Muslims

And I'm a Zionist atheist Jew so if there's any sign of hope for peace in this world

That's it I've done lots and lots of other things just a few months ago. I

Founded and shared the Asian space technology summit with a large

groups of representatives from china the chinese academy of space technology and from

England space program, I've done the weirdest variety of things you've ever seen in your life

Oh, and I should not forget once upon a time. I found it. I knew nothing about popular culture

I founded the biggest PR firm in the music industry

I used my scientific tools since it's my background of science my life is science my bones and my flesh our science and

It became the most successful PR on that firm in the record industry

So I worked with Michael Jackson Prince Bob Marley about Midler ac/dc

Aerosmith kiss Queen Run DMC Billy Joel Paul Simon Peter Gabriel David Byrne Run DMC Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five

little things like that

Yeah, well it's a crazy biography

You'd think you'd have to think that someone was making that up if you didn't know it was true

And then you also accidentally started the 60s apparently yes, and it was just reading that book about a week ago

And thought what did you think of it? Oh? I thought it was very funny

It was it was it was I also thought

It was remarkable that you managed to have a foreword by or was it wasn't a foreword

I don't think it was caught it by Timothy Leary. Yes. Well. Let me tell you how that came about

There I was well. It was about 1981 and I

Started to go back to my science. Yes, I was running most successful PR firm the music industry

Yes, we were still on the ascent

Yes were establishing

Taking unknowns like prints and establishing them as major stars or joan jett who've been turned down by 23 record companies

And we made her double platinum in a year and a half

But I finally got a little time for you to go back to my science

And then I was taking a bunch of journalists out to Long Island to see REO

Speedwagon and a bunch of them said bloom all these ideas you keep talking about us

you need to write a book and one of them took me under his wing and

Actually mentored me Timothy white who wrote for The Associated Press and Rolling Stone

So I started working on a book in 1984 about

1988 I had gotten up and running and written the first chapters on a vacation and then I came down

Well for two things happen first. I really needed to get out of publicity in the music industry

I had satisfied all of my intellectual questions because there were SATA questions. I was answer answering

What are the mass exhilarations the mass ecstasy's the mass emotions that are the forces of history that power?

historical change

that's what I was after and you see that in miniature with the Beatles or with Michael Jackson or with Prince so I

Gotten as far as I could I mean you two would approach me to represent them. I wasn't interested

Mick Jagger had sent an emissary talk about representing him. I wasn't interested I'd been through all of this so

Let me ask you. Let me ask you a couple of questions there, so I mean the first question would be I think

How what is it that you had done that had prepared you for that and how and how did you manage it?

So I guess that's two questions, but also what did you?

What did you learn from all of that well these were these are very good questions to prepare me for this Martin Gardner

From the time I was 10 I was reading two books a day

My teachers hated me because I was reading a book under the desk at all times and never ever paid attention

to them and many of these were science books and I read the Scientific American from cover to cover and

Martin Gardner who was a mathematician

Had a column called mathematical games, and I learned what I know from mathematical games it taught me certain techniques

I was able to bring into the record industry, so so that's it's a hell of a stretch

I mean yeah, but singular story, so okay, so elaborate on that well what it taught is how to look for correlations?

and more than

mathematical techniques for finding correlations it gave you a gut feel of what a correlation looks like so that you

didn't have to

Go off to a world of mathematics of a cell or Kane that had no relationship to reality you could take the search for

Correlations into the real world I listen to music as obsessively from the time

I was about 10 years old my uncle and I used to stand next to a huge old

Burlwood radio that was as tall as I was at the time

And it had a giant speaker in Jordan in those days 12-inch speakers nobody to receive 12in speakers

but it had one, and we've listened to the classical music station in Canada because we were in Buffalo on the border and

we would compete to see who can identify a

Piece of music by its first four notes well often we could both identify the piece of music by its first note however

It was all classical music it was Rachmaninoff Barto Beethoven Stravinsky

Mozart stuff like that so I can't really say that I was properly prepared

Because I was hated by the other peak it's my age in Buffalo nior and my parents didn't have any time for me

So I was an outcast and the crowd of people that shut me out

Listen to popular music, so popular music. What started is with Elvis Presley

What was around before Elvis Presley and then moved on that was alien music to me?

and I wasn't the least bit interested in it and but in the

1970 will late 1960s and early 1970s

I

Knew I had fellowships at for grad schools in what is now called neuroscience at that point?

It was a do-it-yourself proposition

I was going to have to take courses in the med school at Columbia and put them together with courses in psychology

At Columbia and make my own neuroscience because there were no neuroscience courses

But I had four fellowships to do this, and I realized that grad school would be Auschwitz for the mine

Why because I was fascinated by these ecstatic mass

fashions that

give people that boost people out of themselves that lift them into something much bigger than themselves a

deep need that every human has to feel at some point a part of something much bigger than his or herself and

Those are the mass passions that create historical change

They are the forces of history, and I was not going to get to study mass fashions

I was not going to get to make contact with mass fashions if I went on to an academic career

I'd be spending the rest of my life

Giving paper and pencil tests to 22 college students in exchange for a psychology credit now exactly how much

Ecstatic experience are you going to see in a classroom of that sort with paper and pencil tests 0 the entire?

Phenomena I wanted to understand would not be there anywhere in my life

So I took advantage of the fact that I had basically been kidnapped in my junior year

By the poet in residence at NYU who had said he'd said look bloom when everybody rose out of the room

Close the door

I thought I need to talk to you well Jordan that means a bawling out right

So I waited till everybody left. I shut the door I sat down and you're about to be bawled out chair and

the poet in residence

Said to me look last year I asked you to be on the staff of literary magazine

You didn't even show up this year. You are the literary magazine

You don't even have a faculty advisor the minute you walk out that door

You're it now walk out that door and I walked out the door looking totally

Baffled because I hated literary magazines they were the most boring things you had ever seen you could have a group of

Vikings each of whom had drunk a quart of ale

Bunk parking up against the wall on bonking each other

And if you put a literary magazine in the room that pale blue cover and the mists chosen type would

Make you I'd to put everybody to sleep instantly or would drive them out of the room

So I looked very confused and a student walked up to me and said you look troubled about something can I help you?

Why don't I take you down for a cup of coffee?

I didn't know what a cup of coffee was I grown up with lab rats and and hamsters

not with human beings

but but I followed him obediently down the stairs and

When we sat down at the we shop, and I ordered water, and he ordered coffee

He said if you could do anything you want with this magazine. What would it be and I said a picture book so

That that'd be Jordan. I learned that question that question is a very valuable tool

So I turned it into experimental a graphics magazine

And it was a wild hit and it was a wild hit not just on campus where they doubled our budget for the second issue

It was a wild hit in the art directorial community

I think I think you covered that in in how I started accidentally started the 60s right I think yeah there

Yeah, you know so what that allowed me to do

is

When I and my wife was putting pressure on me

She had had a previous husband who was assuming she was tired of having student husbands

She made it clear in a kind of sotto voce way that if I went off to grad school at Columbia

I could kiss her goodbye not a nice idea after three years of marriage so with all these pressures on me I

threw my lot in with the artists that I'd assembled for this magazine we we formed an art studio and

the first year we are in $75 a piece which is

Which is just enough to get you food and possibly a little bit of shelter in New York City

But eventually I made another cover of Earth Direction magazine. I invented a new

animation technique for NBC TV and most important my studio did all of the graphics for

ABC 7 FM stations at a time when there was a revolution taking place in radio there was this brand new form of radio called

rock radio or album radio or progressive radio it was ditched which disc jockey said actually play what they wanted and

I was there because ABC 7 FM stations all converted to this new progressive format

And they used me and my art studio to get that across

to kids all over the YC, I see so yeah, you're responsible that was I got to thank you for that because I

Listen to album-oriented FM stations a lot when I was a kid and so and a lot

I mean lots of people did but I didn't know you were you had a hand in that so that was very good thing

Well, I thank you for the thanks. I had a hand in that and

ABC asked me to form an advertising agency to handle all of their advertising and

Jordan I didn't want to get involved in time buying that was just too dry for me

But because I was walking into a we did one other thing there was a new magazine

With a bunch of Harvard kids. It was a monthly version of the annual Harvard Lampoon

It was called the National Lampoon and my art studio art directed the first seven issues that that it was ABC

PG o Ruth got his start there. Yes exactly and I acted in a Michael. O'Donoghue script that we did for the Evergreen revue

Which was leading a bohemian publication of the time it's art director was all those people who had called me

After he saw the Washington Square review the student literary the graphics magazine that that I've been putting together

But the the promotion person at ABC was

Extremely kind to me and every time I walked in I'd hear Carole King or James Taylor who were the biggest people in