[00:00:00] Speaker A: So being able to create visuals for the real stuff was, was super exciting to me. And obviously the challenge came in, well, how do we take this, this big book and condense it in a way that is clear to the audience, is kind to the audience, is interesting to the audience, and has the visual spectacle that would, you know, inspire and encourage and make it easy for someone to sit through the entire thing.
[00:00:27] Speaker B: ID the Future, a podcast about evolution and intellig design.
Well, we have NASA's Artemis 2 mission launching today in what promises to be the start of a permanent presence on the moon. We've also got movies coming out about alien life elsewhere in the universe and even the US government is getting in on that action. It's the perfect time to be asking the big questions about life and the universe in a really big way. Welcome to Idea of the Future. I'm your host, Andrew McDermott. Today I welcome to the show Eric Esau, director of the Story of Everything, a cinematic exploration of the scientific evidence for a mind behind the universe. This is a film that brings the arguments of Dr. Stephen Meyer's book Return of the God Hypothesis to life through stunning footage and cutting edge animation, as well as engaging interviews with over 20 scientists and scholars, including, of course, Dr. Stephen Meyer himself.
Here's a portion of the trailer so you can get a feel for just how it looks and feels.
[00:01:33] Speaker A: Today I'm going to tell you a story which may seem very strange.
Galileo, Kepler, Newton, each tried to explain events in the history of the universe. Has the universe always been here or is it finite?
[00:01:51] Speaker B: Is there something else that would lay these questions to rest? It reopens that question of ultimate meaningful.
How in the world did this start
[00:02:00] Speaker A: the simulation theory, the multiverse? You can't trust what's in front of your eyes. Come on, that's, that's ridiculous. That belongs in the movies.
[00:02:11] Speaker B: We want to take our metaphysical hypotheses and see what they point to. And I can remember him saying, here
[00:02:18] Speaker A: is evidence for what can only be described as a supernatural event.
[00:02:25] Speaker B: Eric Esau is an American film director known for the docunarrative feature film the Heart of Man, which screened internationally in 800 theaters across 30 countries. He also directed the award winning documentary Rape for Profit, executive produced by Jada Pinkett Smith. Through his production company, Muse Studios, he has directed documentaries and commercials for international brands like Amazon, Microsoft and Costco. His latest film, Saturn, an original narrative feature which he wrote and directed, is currently in the festival circuit. Eric, welcome to Idea of the Future.
[00:03:02] Speaker A: Hi there. Thanks for having me.
[00:03:04] Speaker B: Absolutely well, it's a great place to start as we gear up to promote the Story of Everything.
And I'd like to start by just having you tell us a little bit about your background in film and what projects you worked on before. The Story of Everything.
[00:03:19] Speaker A: Yeah, totally. You know, I, I, I am not artistic, so I don't, I do not come from an artistic background. I can't sing. I can't write super well, like, beautiful prose. I can't paint, I can't draw. I can't play an instrument. I can kind of play the drums a little bit. Like, my hand and my foot could go at different rhythms, but that's about it. My background is really in sports. Baseball mostly. Like, baseball was my life, my world. My dad played professionally, and that was, that's, that's everything I wanted to do, you know. But then I started getting into film. I got a camera and I kind of started messing around with my buddies.
Early years of high school, like end of middle school. And we just kind of started playing around with, with filming stuff. You know, we made about over 100 films, short films, music videos, that sort of thing over the years. And one time, you know, I, I got serious about one project. I wrote a short, a short script. It was called Routes. It's kind of like a Pilgrim's Progress sort of a thing. Like, it was a little bit more serious. And I showed it in front of the chapel at my high school.
And, you know, it was. I, I went to a school called Cedar park in Bothell, Washington. It's a small Christian school, K through 12. So the whole, the elementary was there, everybody was there. And, you know, I showed this film and I, and I gave a little sermon at the end of it. And there's about 600 kids there, and two came up at the end of it and said that the film meant something to them. And it was right then that I was like, this is kind of interesting. I can make something that, you know, 600 kids to a high school, it feels like a lot of people, right? Like, I could make something that a lot of people see and a couple, a few might be moved by it. And that was kind of the, that's, that's what I got the bug. And, you know, I kept playing baseball and kept doing film, and they kind of, they overlapped in time. And then my final season, I was playing in a college summer baseball league, and I was like, D3 players. And, you know, I was playing baseball and I was enjoying it. But, man, I would rather be doing film you know, I was like, I'd rather be making a movie right now than. Than playing in the infield. And it kind of blew my mind. And it was surprising to me and strange because, again, not artistic. This is not something that naturally comes to me at all.
But I was just so moved by it, and I. I fell in love with it.
And the. I went to Seattle Pacific University the summer of 2008. I started my film company and Jason Pamer, who's the lead producer on the Story of Everything, and I've known him since. Since the beginning, so he was one of the guys that we made these. These videos with in high school.
We said, well, maybe let's try to make a buck at film. Like, we need to have a job somehow, so let's try to have it be in this. And so we were. We filmed weddings, we did nonprofit videos. We did all sorts of stuff to try to try to make it work. And then we. We did Rape a Profit, as you mentioned, this. This sex trafficking documentary that focuses on the sex trafficking issue in Seattle. And then we made the Heart of Man together along with Jens Jacob and Brian Bird, who are also producers on the Story of Everything. And just kind of have kept trying to. To. To do another one and do another one and do another one and have blessed. Have been blessed that we can. We can keep trying to make these things. And so I'm. I'm very excited to now be at this point now with the Story of Everything coming out.
And, yeah, I still love baseball. I'm still a big Mariners fan. You know, we had a tough loss last night. We got to get the bats going.
But. But now my true passion has. Has fully transitioned to film. And so now it's. That's. That's what I'm working on these days.
[00:07:08] Speaker B: As Steve Meyer told you his stories about baseball. And, and actually, baseball was sort of the idea that gave him that. That, you know, existential angst about.
About life, you know, wondering if all those stats meant anything. And. And as he probably told you that story.
[00:07:27] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Hey, it's. What's the. The line from Moneyball? It's tough not to be romantic about baseball, you know? Yeah, totally.
[00:07:35] Speaker B: Well, your story mirrors mine in some ways. I actually taught at Cedar park for six years. I taught middle school English and, And anything they threw at me.
That was 05 to 11. Were you there during those years?
[00:07:49] Speaker A: I graduated in 2005.
[00:07:52] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:07:52] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:07:53] Speaker B: So we just missed each other.
[00:07:54] Speaker A: Just. That's. That's amazing. Yeah.
[00:07:56] Speaker B: And I headed to SBU as well, to get. To get a master's in teaching there. So. Wow. Hey. Interesting. Very interesting. Well, so here you are making movies, and you, You. You got an early taste of what it's like to move people with cinema, and that really stuck with you.
[00:08:14] Speaker A: That's.
[00:08:14] Speaker B: That's awesome. Well, the documentary genre has experienced a renaissance in recent decades. What is it about that format of storytelling that you think appeals to people and you. Because you've, You've been doing it.
[00:08:29] Speaker A: Yeah. You know, me personally, I love both. Both forms. I love the narrative form. I love the documentary form. They're both very different.
Both very different beasts, but beautiful ones. And what I kind of for, for me, I.
I am so moved by how Jesus taught. So Jesus, right, he taught very plainly to, like, his. His core friends, but then he spoke in parables to the. The crowds that followed him. Right. So he had two different ways of. Of speaking and communicating. To me, the documentary is being able to speak plainly, and then the narrative is more speaking in a parable. And so being able to do both of those things is such a gift. My wife, who is my partner in crime and all this in all of life, but also in film, she is the production designer on the story of everything. So she designed all the sets along with her sister Allie, and has been a part of all the projects along the way.
But we say, you know, we would love to be able to do a narrative film and a documentary film at the time. Same, same time.
Because they both, they, they. They scratch a different itch, you know, like the narrative, you kind of can approach the gospel from the back door, whereas the documentary, you could say whatever you're trying to say a bit more clearly. And so I love being able to do that. And where the film is made are kind of in different spots, you know, in a narrative film, right, you're making the movie in the script, right? Like if, if your script is not dialed in, like, you're. You're in ruins once you get to production, entropy still has its way. Like, the best version of the film will always be on the page, and then you kind of degrade a little bit as you go down the line, but that's where the film is really made, and that all comes together later on. And there's always so much you can do in the edit, whereas in documentary, the film is made in the edit. And that's really what we did here is. Is Steve and I, along with Lucas Harger, our editor, kind of this, like, three strands of rope sort of situation. This Team. We really made the movie in the edit bay, you know, and it's like, well, we had all these interviews, got it all cut together, and then we said, okay, well, we need, we need something else. We need this. Okay, well, we go and film another batch of interviews, we get those pieces, and, oh, we actually need this piece. Okay, Steve, we need you to get to a recording studio. We got to record your voice to get this part. And then, you know, obviously, I'm sure we'll talk about the visual effects layer on top of it, but you're really crafting the story along the way in the edit, and that's just, that's super fun and it's really cool. And so being able to communicate something very clearly and openly and from the experts without really any symbolism or metaphor or parable and just say plainly, that's a lot of fun too.
[00:11:14] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I like the way you break that down. And you actually did get to.
To do some. Put some narrative into the Heart of Man as well as documentary and talking plainly, didn't you?
[00:11:28] Speaker A: Yeah, totally. So that was, that was very much this, this bridge and between those two, which was really cool. That was that. So I would say we also got to do that. We had a documentary and a narrative happening at the same time with the Heart of Man.
That was the narrative portion. There was a retelling of the prodigal son story. And that one, we use the narrative to kind of be this, in some ways, the B roll, the symbolism of what the interview subjects are talking about. So if somebody's talking about how, you know, they got to a point where they, they, they fell into this, this brokenness, while we then cut to our prodigal walking off the edge of a cliff. So those, those two happen at the same time. When he talks about over here, Christ pursuing him in the midst of his brokenness, we show the father pursuing the son. So we were able to overlap those in that film. Whereas in the Story of Everything, Bit more true documentary. Saturn. Bit more true narrative.
[00:12:26] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
Well, the Story of Everything has been several years in the making. As Stephen Meyer's assistant at, at the time, I remember sitting in on the first strategy meetings with producers Jason, Jens and Brian back in the summer of 2018. So how did the project come across your path?
[00:12:45] Speaker A: Totally well. So as you know, I grew up with Jason, and so we, you know, been very close. He was the best man in my wedding. I was the best man at his wedding. We've. We are simpatico, as they say.
[00:12:58] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:12:59] Speaker A: And But I also worked on the Heart of Man, also with Jens and Brian. And so when they started getting on the story of everything, they came to me and said, you know, what do you think about this? And they know that I've. I've had an interest in the subject. I, I love physics. I'm. I'm not a PhD, but like, you know, that kind of stuff is really fun and fascinating to me. So they knew, like, maybe something Eric would be interested in. And, you know, I was interested immediately. I was like, yes, of course, it sounds great.
[00:13:23] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
So I was going to ask you, was there a point where you were kind of pouring over Steve Myers book and the ideas and arguments in it? Was there a point where it just kind of clicked and said, yeah, this is going to make for, for compelling cinema, or did you need convinced or was it more of a team effort?
[00:13:43] Speaker A: I took no convincing.
[00:13:44] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:13:45] Speaker A: I was immediately like, yes, I am in. Absolutely. And that's the thing is, you know, Steve's talking about very big things, you know, very, very big things and then very, very, very small things. And these are things that we cannot just see. Right. I can't just go and look at a black hole. I can't just go look at a molecular machine. All these things demand visuals. And so it's, it's immediately cinematic. Just right there. It's, it's. I love science fiction, but this is what science nonfiction, right? This is, this is real stuff. And so being able to create visuals for the real stuff was, was super exciting to me. And obviously the, the challenge came in, well, how do we take this, this big book and condense it in a way that is clear to the audience, is kind to the audience, is interesting to the audience, and has the visual spectacle that would, you know, inspire and encourage and make it easy for someone to sit through the entire thing?
[00:14:37] Speaker B: Yeah, a challenge for sure. But I think you all rose to the occasion.
Documentaries can be entertaining and informative, but it can be challenging to make a doc that does both without sounding alarmist or preachy or even contrived. What were some of the challenges you faced as you put this movie together?
[00:14:58] Speaker A: Yeah, you know what Steve's book is? 450, 500 pages. Right. Like, it's, it's. There's a lot of material there. And if you were to adapt the entire thing, I mean, this movie would be hours and hours and hours long. Right. It would be, It'd be huge. So that was the real challenge is how do we condense this into a, into a tight 90 minutes where someone can just be, you can be taken along on the journey through the main arguments and be, and not just be, you know, feeling like they're kind of sitting in school. Right. But are, are engaged in this journey through the cosmos and through the cell in a way that's, that's interesting and is moving and is inspiring. So we knew the visuals had to be stunning and we knew the, the visuals also had to be very clear and we, but we also didn't want there to be, we wanted it to be robust enough that there's not gaps to our conclusion. Right. Like our conclusion is that the science points to there being a, a designer behind all of it. But so we know, let's just say the fine tuning, for instance, right? We have a whole part on the film that talks about the, the fine tuning of the laws of physics. The constants that they're, they're, they rest on a razor's edge, right? So if like this one constant was offed by just a little bit, or this one off by just a little bit, or that one off by just a little bit, there would be no life in the universe, right?
There would be nothing. But everything is just so that it works all perfectly well. We knew that we can't just have one piece of evidence, we have to have several to create a robust argument. So that in the end, when we say, when Steve says a fine tuner naturally implies, sorry, the fine tuning naturally implies a fine tuner, that's not a huge leap. So how do we make it robust enough but not have. Not drown the audience in, you know, scientific point after scientific point? So it was, it was quite the dance.
[00:16:54] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Because you do run the risk, you know, with science things. I mean, even I do on this podcast. You know, I want to give, I want to give people a taste of the technicality because without it, I mean, Michael Behe in his book Darwin's Black Box says you've got to bite the bullet of complexity in order to understand why a Darwinian process can't do this. And so you have to have some of the technicality, but you don't want to lose people. And so, well, I know you and the team and Steve had countless back and forth sessions, calls, meetings to craft this finely tuned story and presentation of the evidence. What was it like working with the guy? Had you heard of Steve before? Had you seen any of his work or read a book?
[00:17:36] Speaker A: I hadn't read anything. I hadn't heard of him. And so, you know, I was curious And.
[00:17:42] Speaker B: But, you know, it's.
[00:17:43] Speaker A: It was. It was such a gift. Right? He's. He obviously is a brilliant mind and comes from a. A different background than I do, except we both kind of overlap a little bit in the baseball world, which is kind of fun.
He also, I think, did boxing too. I didn't do boxing, but, you know, I'm a big fan of Rocky, so I can top boxing.
[00:18:02] Speaker B: There you go.
[00:18:04] Speaker A: But.
But, you know, he comes from this. This world of.
Of knowledge and as a scholar and I come from now, this world of faith filmmaking and of. Of making things entertaining and exciting and interesting. But, like, very tight. Very, very tight.
So we. We were able to really kind of go back and forth a lot and in a really cool way, along with Lucas, our editor, and being like, okay, look, I first need to understand it. So we have to get to a point where I understand it. So if I understand it, I think the audience will understand it. Okay, so once we get to that point, we gotta stop. Right. Like, we can't go any further.
But, you know, it's not so easy because, well, I'm not going to know everything. And so then Steve would usually go, well, there's this other part that's also super interesting. And then I'm like, okay, well, we got to put that in there somehow.
[00:18:54] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:18:55] Speaker A: So that we have to figure out a way into that. But then I would be like, well, this thing. Do we have to say this. This feels like too much. And he's like, well, we don't have to say this. We have to say this part. I'm like, okay, cool. Well, let's keep that part, but let's remove this part. So, like, it's. I mean, we. We were going back and forth on individual words, you know, like literally every single frame we probably talked about in some way because it's just.
You cannot cross that line. And it's already science dense. You know, if you're coming in thinking that this movie is not going to have science in it, you're going to be disappointed. Like, this is a. This is a film that has a lot of science in it. We think it's absolutely digestible for the common audience. We think the common audience can absolutely enjoy this. You don't have to be a ph.
I'm not one. You don't have to be a scholar. I'm not one. You can absolutely be a normal person. I think I'm a normal person that can just sit and watch and enjoy the movie. But you're going to learn something. I Hope so. And there might be times where you don't understand it. Don't worry about it. Just keep going through it, because we will. We'll bring it back around and we'll help break it down.
But yeah, that's. We really, really, really, really try to try to get it. And that's. That's what's really, really nice about Steve is he's also a professor, right? So he would have to go in these professor modes. I'm like, Steve, I got to be the student right now. I need you just to teach me this because again, we have to translate all this into the visual world, right? So, like, what do things look like? How do they function? How do they work? I got to understand it, so I have to give feedback to the artists. And so anyways, it was. It was really cool. It was a really cool process of. We know Steve and I always talk about is iron sharpening iron. And our proxy for. Did we get this right and are we good? Once our. Our.
Are him and I good? Like, do we both agree that we did it? And if we both agreed and Lucas, our editor, agreed and all three of us are in agreement, then we did it. If one of us isn't or one of us is pushing back, we kept iterating together until we got to a point where we're all three dialed in together. And, you know, we obviously had to go like, okay, fine, I can submit on this one. I have to submit on this one. We. We didn't necessarily get everything we each, each wanted, but we got to a place where we're all happy with. With how it turned out and felt like we said what we needed to say and no further. And we hope the audience, you know, continues to explore. We hope that this film is just the oak. The first step into it. We hope it's the first door. Like, I have Steve's book here somewhere. Like, you know, get his book. There's so much more in it. Get. Get all the other guys that we interviewed, all the other folks in this film, like, you know, Sarah Salviander. She has a great book. Lennox, obviously. Jay Richards, Jim Tour, all these guys have. Have books. Robert Sheldon, they all got stuff. Brian Keating, everybody. They have something to teach you more than the what's in the movie. And so have. We hope that this is just the beginning of the journey.
[00:21:42] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And that back and forth process you were describing, you know, I mean, it literally took years. And I saw, you know, Steve engaged with it and heard the conversations sometimes, you know, through. Through office Walls and just heard him keep going at it and, and knew that you guys were doing a lot of back and forth and give and take. And sometimes that's where the creative process can sort of break down, you know, between parties who get impatient or just don't, don't want to understand or can't.
But you guys kept going, you kept pushing and you kept going and you've got a great product in the end.
[00:22:19] Speaker A: Thanks. And we all, we had the same mission. You know, we knew what we were trying to do. Like, we, we were always on the same page with what is the purpose of this?
But there was plenty of times where we said, like, do we have to say this or could we show this? You know, Right. And then, and what's really cool is Lucas, our editor, he was able to find a bunch of other content that, that we could include. Like this whole thing on Fred Hoyle. Like, we didn't even know this, this tape existed that he found that we put in the movie. These, these interviews with Watson and, with, with Watson and Crick and that footage there, we didn't know that existed. And that was really helpful because we could go, okay, cool. Hey, let's have these guys tell the story. And as opposed to an interview.
So we were able to use the different mediums at play that you have in film to be able to tell the story. And that was really exciting for all of us because we could say they just gave us more tools to work with.
[00:23:09] Speaker B: Yeah.
Let's talk about set design and visuals for a few minutes.
You know, the look of the movie conveys two things. You know, it conveys that this is something that has happened in the last hundred years. You know, a lot of it is mid century furniture and, you know, sort of tone, but you also convey this timeless, you know, we're, we're part of the universe where Earth is in space kind of idea and that, that sort of communicates an eternal, you know, timeless part of it. So the set design turned out amazing. You know, coupled with the lighting and all of that.
And of course that plays into the visuals that you chose as well.
The, the Story of Everything is a visual feast. You know, it's got stunning imagery that runs the gamut from the depths of outer space to the invisible world of the cell. What was it like finding and crafting the visual elements of this movie?
[00:24:06] Speaker A: Absolutely, yeah. I'll, I'll geek out a little bit on some of the films on the film side of this because it's, it's, it's pretty fun. So, yeah, so my wife Anna and her sister Ali, they designed, they designed all the sets. So we knew we know what this film is. This, there's going to be a lot of science in it. We got to make it as visually beautiful and visually stunning as possible. So they have this idea of like, you know, what if we had these, these rooms almost in outer space, you know, and so you got this living room here, you got another living room there, you got a study over here. And so we have all these different rooms in outer space as, as you will. And we thought that would be kind of interesting and kind of cool. And I'm like, we got to have at least four camera angles because we got to be cutting around to these guys a lot. We got to switch it up. The audience is going to fall asleep if we only have, you know, a locked off wide and then a, you know, a locked off profile or something. Like we need to have there be some different angles. Our cinematographer, Lance Coons, he is actually the, the DP for all of SNL's digital shorts the past few years. So he's a, he's very much in the industry. He's, he's an awesome guy, very, very talented. And you know, I told him I need to like regular angles and then two wild angles. Just go have fun and just go find something. And so, you know, he's walking around set with his cameras and it's like moving things around. And so we have, you know, a couple angles that, you know, aren't super traditional, you know, and so some people might go, oh, that's kind of a strange angle. You're like low. And then when you're high, another one, he's like off on the side. And that was always meant to keep things fresh, you know, so as the audience is watching it, they're not just like, you know, if somebody might talk for a while and it might be something that they might not be super interested in. Maybe some people are more moved by the biology than carbon, for instance, you know, maybe there we can capture them with the way we're approaching how we film this. And we shot on anamorphic lenses because we wanted it to feel big and cinematic. We shot on the Hawk 74s, which kind of has this little old timey vibe to it. Also the same lenses we used on Saturn, so we kind of had some like, connection points there, which was just fun. I loved using those lenses. I wanted to use them again.
It has this, there's just this, this texture, this organic quality to them, whereas some of These new spherical lenses can kind of feel sharp and a little impersonal and a little bit kind of robotic. And we wanted this to feel very organic. So again, Ann and Ally, they use the colors and the sets to have this organic feel. So it feels like we're. We're with real human beings. We're talking about real things. This is a real, real science.
And. But it's something that is tangible. And so then obviously, you know, that leads to, well, what are the, what are the visual effects going to be like? You know, how do we do this? Because this is going to be a whole. I mean, this is a whole host of stuff. Don't hold me to this, but I think we have something like 400 or so visual effects shots and motion graphic shots in the movie. Like, there's. There's a lot and we only license like a handful. So I think like 95% was 90. 95% was all created by our, by our artists.
And, you know, we knew that we have to make this beautiful. We also have to make it clear.
So we can't have the visuals be metaphoric. And so we only actually do that a couple times. So what I mean by that is when someone's talking about entropy increasing, we are showing a motion graphic of entropy increasing, right? We literally says, entropy order disorder increases and the disorderly balls go to order. Right? So it's very, very clear. We knew we needed the visuals to match what is being talked about. And it might sound obvious, but it's not always intuitive. You know, you have to really try hard to create the visuals to match what people are talking about in order for it to be interesting and clear and for someone to not have to worry about it or have extra strain when they're watching it. They know that they can just go through it. But I gotta tell you, man, especially in the, the. The biology section with the molecular machines and the DNA, like, we could not make it intricate enough. You know, like, the body is just so intricate. Like what is design is so intricate. We just. We couldn't make the visuals to match. Like, we did our best. We, we tried our best. We think they're beautiful, we think they're kind, we think they're clear. We think we captured the beauty of the creation, but we could not make it intricate enough. And that was, it was cool. But also, I'm like, man, I. I can't get there. I wish I could.
And. But what our artists created is still so stunning and I'm so grateful for them. Like, these, these artists are you know, some of the best in the biz and they're, they're working on Netflix movies and Apple shows and all these, all these projects and we're very blessed to have them on this. But that the visual landscape from production to post was, was such an important part of, not only to get that visual beauty and engagement, but also the clarity and as I mentioned, the metaphor. I think maybe it might have only been one time that we use a visual effects shot to be a metaphor. And it's when we're flying through space, we're flying through a nebula and, and there's kind of some gas in front of it and then we break through. And that is directly over Robert Sheldon. He's talking about a quote from Robert, from Jastrow, his book, which is.
I'm not going, I'm going to get the quote wrong. But as the, as the scholar and scientist ascends the mountain of understanding, he, he scales over the last rock and finds the, the philosopher and theologian waiting for him. Right. And that's the only time really we used a visual to be metaphoric in that as you come through the gas and it's, it kind of breaks away and you enter the, the middle of this nebula in this clearing. That was really the only time that we used it as a metaphor. We felt that was, that was a powerful place to do it and would be more interesting than actually going and filming someone like climb the mountain, you know. So anyways, that was a lot there, but it's, it's a really fun part of the process to talk about because it's, it was a lot of artists all coming together to really try to make the science come to life.
[00:30:21] Speaker B: Yeah. And some of the video clips that you show coming out of that old, you know, mid century television were really interesting and it speaks to the fact that, you know, I try to make this point on the podcast too, that, that most of the things that, that Stephen Meyer's talking about in his book were just discovered in the last century.
You know, I mean, this is recent stuff. This science is catching up finally and able to show evidence of a designer. And, you know, not enough people know about this because it only happened in the last hundred years. And you know, that sounds like a long time, but it's, it's really the blink of an eye in terms of scientific progress. You know, so the movie did a good job of sort of placing things in time, but also having that timeless quality.
[00:31:12] Speaker A: Oh, thank you. Yeah, we, we really tried hard to, to make it make us something Interesting and something cool and some things that maybe the people hadn't. Hadn't seen before, like I have, I haven't seen, you know, people put visual effects in empty black space before, you know, and maybe someone's done that, and I'm sure some, someone probably has. But that was a cool way for us to try to connect a little bit more, linking the interviews to our visuals. And so that empty black space was another tool that we, we use to try to increase the engagement, the visual spectacle.
[00:31:42] Speaker B: Well, what are your hopes, Eric, for how people will connect with this movie? What, what do you want them to, or hope that they will do after seeing it as they're watching it?
And do you think the movie is going to, going to help to move the cultural needle as it relates to the scientific argument for God getting out there?
[00:32:01] Speaker A: You know, I really hope that it can be the, maybe the first steps for some people, you know, the, the, the, the opening of the door for them to begin their journey of scientific exploration and see where it leads. You know, there's a lot of people out there that, that are moved first by what happens in the mind, you know, like C.S. lewis, like, you know, he was, he needs to be convinced first. Is this logical? Is this possible? And then from that, you know, can be moved by, could be moved by it and could be changed by it, you know, and one of my favorite parts in the movie is, is Albert Einstein's story. You know, he was convinced that the universe was static and he created, you know, part of his equation and adjust the numbers so that it forced the universe to be static. And that relieved the concern of the universe having the beginning, right? Because if the universe had a beginning, you had been asked yourself, well, how did that beginning start? Like what came before it?
But if the universe didn't have a beginning, if it has always been here, then you don't have to ask that question, right?
But Einstein pursued the evidence, right? He goes out to Mount Wilson. He, he looks at, he looks through the telescope, he sees the redshift. He's then convinced that the universe is expanding, which means the universe can't be static, right? Because it can't be expanding forever. Because if it's been expanding forever, we wouldn't see stars or, you know, we be, we would be. We wouldn't even exist, right? We would, we would be dead.
But we see a night sky that is filled with stars, filled with galaxies, that it had to have been there, had to have been the beginning. And when Einstein saw this, he said, like me changing this equation was the biggest blunder of my scientific career. That shows humility. Right. And that, that part to me always moves me. And with the music, a beautiful score by Hannah Parrott. Like, I'm always, like, I'm almost moved to tears because I'm like to be, you know, a famous scientist and to say I was wrong about this man, that takes a lot of humility. And so that then makes me think about myself. Okay, well, what am I convinced of and what do I maybe need to change my mind in? And so that is, is what I hope for the audience is let the science lead where it leads. Like, just follow along and, and let it take you to where you, you know, you could find a conclusion. And maybe this film doesn't draw the conclusion for you. You might have to read Steve's book, you might have to go through the other books. You might have to have a multi year journey of really exploring this stuff. But I hope that this can at least be the start for some people.
[00:34:43] Speaker B: Yeah.
And as you were working on the project, what evidence most impacted you, do you think? I mean, it might be more than one thing that perhaps you didn't realize or, or didn't know the extent of, but was there something that kind of really hit you as you were working through this?
[00:35:00] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, for me, I, I didn't know how intricate the cell was. You know, like, I didn't, I didn't know that I knew, you know, that there's stuff going on. Right. But I didn't know there's like little machines that are moving around and that are the life source for the body. I didn't, I didn't know that. And I think, but probably the most, it was probably the information in the DNA and I don't want to get too technical here and I want people to watch the movie, but we explore the information in the DNA and that the information that is in the DNA, it's not the, the arrangement of the characters in the DNA. It's not based on any chemical process. The chemical process does not determine the order. It doesn't determine the, the, the. I'm trying to say it in a way that's, that's clear. It doesn't determine the, the proteins that are made or how our body functions. There's something else that's at work that is, is not explained by chemistry, is not explained by the, what's going on in the body. There's some, there's something else that is directing the information in our bodies to make, our bodies to make Us, who we are. That to me was extremely, extremely powerful.
[00:36:16] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. Layers of not only genetic information, but also epigenetic, you know, above and beyond the genome we know about.
That's a whole. A whole separate sphere that we hardly understand anything about. And yet ID scholars and scientists are starting to probe that epigenetic information. And Richard Sternberg calls it the immaterial genome. The parts that we cannot see. You know, a whole. Whole different ball game when it comes to that.
Very cool. Where do you go after you've told the story of everything? What are you going to be working on next? I know you might not be able to say too much about it, but.
[00:36:57] Speaker A: Yeah, no, I have a couple narrative feature scripts that I've written, you know, one that we're looking to get optioned here and another one that we're hoping to. To make. So there's. There's. There's a few projects that are. That are at play. A couple Western a. A thriller that we're hoping to make that I believe ex are. Are all parables, you know, where it's the gospel through the back door. On the documentary side, you know, Steve has talked about wanting to do a.
This might hold him to it, but, you know, he's wanting to do a film on Darwinian evolution and also another on the origin of life. You know, we actually filmed several interviews that actually didn't make it into the movie. And I would love for what those folks talked about to be in it. And we have about 30 minutes already edited of all on Darwin stuff on Darwinian evolution, and we have a little bit in the story of Everything, but we have a lot that we weren't able to include. I would love for folks to see that, you know, in one particular component of that is, you know, Gutierre Beckley. He. We interviewed him for the Story of Everything. A brilliant paleontologist, passed away last year.
His. What he talked about was. Is not in the Story of Everything because it's just a different subject. I would love for what he talked about in one of his, you know, final interviews to. To be. To see. To see the life somehow to see the light of day. And I know Steve wants to do that too, so that would be a real gift and be real special. So I hope. I hope we could do that.
[00:38:26] Speaker B: Yeah, that's great. Yeah. In many ways, this is just the beginning of telling this story cinematically and through film and interviews. There's just so much there, you know.
[00:38:37] Speaker A: So much. Yeah, totally.
[00:38:39] Speaker B: Well, it's good to know that there are Other things in the works. Well, the Story of Everything opens in theaters April 30 for one week only. Maybe more, we hope more, but at least one week. So you need to grab your friends, your family, your co workers, enjoy this movie on the big screen. You know, my wife and I were out of the movies just last night, actually, and coming out of our movie, we were walking down the hall on the way out and I heard, you know, this music building to a crescendo. And then the voice, the question is, what does one do about it? You know, And I recognize it to be the story of everything trailer and Iran and just to see it up on the big screen. So I'm really excited to get out there and I hope our audience is as well. There is a website to point people. They can learn more about it. They can get ticketing info, meet the filmmakers.
It's the story of everything film.
You can hop on there, see the trailer and just start getting excited about seeing this with your friends and family. The story of everything.
Eric, thanks so much for joining us today and congratulations on a spectacular film.
[00:39:49] Speaker A: Thank you. And thanks so much for having me.
[00:39:51] Speaker B: Yeah, you're welcome. Well, again, hop on over to the storyofeverything film to watch the trailer, meet the cast and and get info on single as well as group tickets. That's the storyofeverything film for ID the future. I'm Andrew Dermott. Thanks for joining us.
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[00:40:14] Speaker A: copyright Discovery Institute and recorded by its
[00:40:17] Speaker B: center for Science and Culture.
