Hello AD.
I’m Joe Gordon-Levitt, born and raised here in LA.
Welcome to CalTech.
[upbeat music]
So CalTech is short
for the California Institute of Technology.
I love technology dearly.
I mean, technology is what allows us to make movies,
do the things that I’ve earned my living with my whole life.
Everyone thinks LA is represented by Hollywood,
but LA’s the second biggest city in the country,
and it’s one of the greatest cities in the world.
And here at CalTech,
this is one of the greatest scientific institutions
in the world.
The word science, as far as I understand it,
it’s like an old Greek word for knowledge.
It’s just what do we know to be true?
How do we know that?
Can we test it?
Can we make sure it’s actually true?
Or are we just talking nonsense?
And I’m not a scientist,
but I’m deeply grateful
for what the scientific method has given us,
which is responsible for so much
of the positive changes we’ve seen in the human rights
over the last number of centuries.
But we have to face it that in addition to all the good
that new technology has brought to us,
it’s really brought some bad as well.
Everyone’s talking about AI, right?
The question is, what’s that impact gonna be?
Is it gonna be positive?
Is it gonna be negative?
Well, probably it’ll be both of course.
We collectively have it in us
to use technology to help people to make lives better.
Let’s have that future.
And we’re having a sort of a backwards moment right now
where science is having trouble getting a foothold
in this attention maximized landscape of public discourse.
But I hold on to faith that science will endure.
And CalTech right here in LA,
is one of the really preeminent hubs
of science and technology throughout the world.
People do research here and take classes here
and teach and learn and read and study,
and come up with important ideas that define the world.
If you listed all the things
that have been thought of and invented here,
it’s really quite impressive.
Americans would not have gone to the moon
if it hadn’t been for the work done here
and at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory,
which was spun out of this institution here.
[Voice Over] That’s one small step for man,
one die, leap for man.
They ended up founding
an institution called the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
The Jet Propulsion Laboratory became essentially
a part of NASA, and many of the un crewed spacecraft
that have been developed by the U.S. over the years,
from Voyager to the Mars Rovers have been designed
and built at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory
before they’re sent into space.
CalTech is also part of the broader Los Angeles world,
and that does include close relationships
with the film industry and with Hollywood.
Kip Thorne, who is a theoretical astrophysicist,
who’s an emeritus professor here at CalTech,
was deeply involved in the development
of the Christopher Nolan film Interstellar.
And the scientific ideas portrayed in that film
are the ideas of Kip Thorne,
that is theoretical astrophysics on the screen,
and wouldn’t have happened without the relationships
that developed between science and the creative arts.
We’re the greatest scientific communicators of our time.
Carl Sig talks about a balance
between reason and wonder.
Because early in any scientific process,
they have to have an idea first.
They have to think, well, maybe the world works like this.
There’s something similar between that and a storyteller,
you have to use your imagination.
So I feel like there really is a big overlap
between art and science.
Institutions like this one are being torn apart right now.
Defunded, undermined, disrespected, so many things
that science gives to us.
I can’t believe that it’s being so thoroughly disrespected
in my country today.
And so it’s important to celebrate
the institutions like CalTech
that uphold it and have for a long time.
[bright music]
CalTech was founded in 1891 as Throop University.
The core of the campus was built in the 1920s and 1930s,
and was led by the architect Bertram Goodhue,
who in 1915 had done the architecture at the World’s Fair
in Balboa Park in San Diego.
And those buildings follow Goodhue’s philosophy
and Goodhue’s architectural style
of Spanish colonial revival,
which was meant to borrow features
of the Spanish California missions.
Those features in particular include arcades
that connect buildings to each other
and that provide these shaded, arched outdoor spaces.
One of the visions of the leaders
of the institution at the time
was that that shade would encourage people to move
between buildings more, making it easier for scientists
to visit each other’s labs and work together.
I mean, first of all it’s a beautiful
and impressive environment to be in.
So it shows a certain amount of kind of respect
and reverence for the people here,
whether they’re young students
that are gonna become the scientists
that move our society forward,
or they’re the more seasoned professors and researchers
that are figuring it out today.
I love seeing people doing that kind of work.
It’s affirming of the best of what humanity has to offer.
[bright music]
So Linde Laboratory was built in 1932
as the Astrophysical Laboratory.
The astronomer, George Ellery Hale,
who was chairman of CalTech’s, board of trustees,
was leading the development of the largest telescope
in the world.
It was actually the third time in his life
that he led the development
of the largest telescope in the world
because he kept feeding his own records,
Linde Laboratory features a telescope
and an observatory dome.
And the telescope is continually tracking the sun.
It also typifies the way that CalTech does research
because it was about building particular kinds
of instruments and then being able to use those instruments
to look at nature in new ways.
In the 1960s, CalTech expanded and Beckman Auditorium
was one of the starting points of that expansion,
and it deviated dramatically
from the Spanish colonial revival style
and introduced a sense of architectural novelty
to the campus.
[bright music]
So the Los Angeles fires,
there was one to the very west of the city in the Palisades,
and then there was one to the very east,
which is quite close to here.
It really did an incredible damage.
My heart certainly goes out
to not just the folks in the Palisades,
but all the people and on the east side,
who suffered so greatly from these LA fires.
[Peter] The hills and mountains behind me
are where the Altadena fire occurred.
We have a number of members of the Catholic community,
faculty and staff in particular who lost homes.
There was a really strong sense of community support.
There was a program to provide temporary housing,
all sorts of different elements of helping people
with that unexpected and tragic transitional period
in their lives.
[bright music]
[energetic music]
What makes CalTech essential to LA’s future
and not just its past,
the future has got to be rooted in science.
I think it can keep going,
but it won’t happen by itself if we let the business people
overtake science and technology
and develop science and technology purely for profit motives
and see further concentration of power
into the hands of people
who don’t care about humanity at large,
but just care about money and power for themselves.
So we have to keep our faith and love and respect
for institutions like this
and the people who work here
who can I think, guide us towards something higher
than just profits.
[bright music]