« Terra X – The big questions » with Prof. Harald Lesch on ZDF

Harald Lesch, what do you think of when you wake up in the morning: your breakfast, the political location or sometimes also the big existential questions?

I usually think of my family in the morning. The first thought is often: how nice that everyone is healthy – and let’s see what the day brings. In the meantime, you can only say « Ballaballa » about the world situation, I don’t need to discuss that. One can only hope that many of the crazy people who are acting in the world somehow disappear.

What does this attracted political and social situation do with them?

As someone who is very trained in rational thinking, you feel a little strange on planet earth. It has become so difficult because you can no longer really analyze what is currently happening. It is hidden in irrationality, behind a strange fog of a lot of insult. Psychology plays a major role – and I don’t know about that. I can no longer evaluate why people do that.

Can you give an example?

For example, I cannot understand that Putin attacked Ukraine. In its place I would have started a charm offensive towards Europe. I also don’t understand what Trump did with his tariffs. And I find it worrying when experts in US politics only twitch their shoulders and do not know what to say about it. If experts can no longer explain what is happening. That worries me. This obvious madness scares me and worries me.

How do you look at the situation in Germany? Did it annoy you that the topic of climate protection did not practically occurred in the Bundestag election campaign?

Of course, you can also evaluate it differently. There is a second story behind the silence of politics: that a lot happens. Otherwise we would not have more and more renewable in the electricity sector. You suddenly see voltaic systems on all possible roofs, you can see balcony taps and wind turbines where you couldn’t see any before. Regardless of the entire ramblings, something happens.

What?

That renewable energies are so much better with a view to efficiency and costs. Sure: there are the big screams who don’t want that, and the quieter complaints who find it ugly. And then there are those who do it. This happens without society noticing it. For example, I have had an electric car for some time and have been surprised by the network of charging stations. If you think there are none there, there are some.

What does this mean for heated debates like that about climate change?

Maybe it would be good if there disappeared from politics.

Really?

Yes, because they actually have to be clarified by experts. And not by politicians who essentially have to do with interests and not with content.

How realistic do you consider such expert commissions? At the moment the opposite seems to be the case worldwide …

Of course they see how naive I ran. But I just treat myself to this naivety. That can also be a position from which you can see a little more. Instead of always staying in the swamp of the practical. The naive is a kind of flight position: what would be possible if it were more beautiful and better? I think it is better for society if we preserve this political naivety in the sciences.

What would be better about that?

If we want to advise content, we cannot limit ourselves at the same time because we believe that one or the other politician does not listen to us anyway. I just go there like the fool at the king’s courtyard (laughs). And then I say: « The second main sentence of thermodynamics applies to you as well as to your political opponent. » Nature is not a party member. I stay – especially since it is a bit funny and provocative, as a foreign body in these political opinion discourses.

Should science no longer have to interfere politically in view of the current debates?

If I publish a paper about why nuclear power is too expensive and inefficient, it is already a interference in the political discussion. But even if I am always suspected of driving a green agenda: I only drive the agenda of thermodynamics. Energy has no color. And if so, it would probably be rainbow colors.

They have been referred to as an activist more often …

The name activist is praise for me. If someone asks me if I was one, I always ask back: « Why not? » Actually, we should be all activists when the world is the way it is. We would have to have a significant interest in getting better. Or it is because of my kind that I am called that.

Do you mean your facing?

Maybe I will come across too sympathetically. I am not hasty and am not a calibrator. And I have so many different procedures that even some people find that nice who don’t like me at all. (laughs) But I also strive to be generous, be happy. Simply being a pleasant contemporary. I don’t want more.

In their programs, they always incorporate their own experiences and embed this in their stories, a little like around the campfire …

I am a storyteller. If they had met me in the Middle Ages, I would have been sitting and telling me on the marketplace. (laughs)

But if you look back on the past few years and the increasing skepticism towards research: Has your way of changing science television?

There are always phases in which I can say that and nothing. When I am completely bare in view of the allegations, the hardness of the conversation and the indomitability of the positions. The scientific principle is: If a fact does not confirm the theory, the theory is wrong. End of the announcement. And then people still stick to it.

You can only stay speechless?

The other day I had an encounter with a subway driver who told me: « Mr. Lesch, nice that we see ourselves, I love your programs. But we don’t agree on one thing: ball or disc? » Of course, the earth is a ball, I replied. He denied that. I was stunned there. And that’s a funny example, of course there are these very hard and unpleasant variants. And that has reinforced over the years.

What is it most surprising?

How many personalities a person can contain! They use the technology and thus science in the basic form. And at the same time they believe in any magical things. Rose quartz, globules and such a stuff. That has increased. I’m more speechless, but I also have to smile more.

However, they tirelessly clarify in their programs. Do you also choose the choice of topics based on current relevant debates?

Of course, relevant topics always oscillate strongly. The next one follows. As a science journalist, it is important to me to search through the entire scientific landscape as possible and to make television or online access to the medium. Aristotle with the sentence is always next to me: « The beginning of science and philosophy is amazed. » That is what drives me: the remarkable – so: that it is worth noticing.

Is it another level for you if, as in your current three « Terra X » sequences, you will devote yourself to the « big questions » instead of political and livable issues?

The big questions are actually anthropological constants. We can’t really answer them. They are set up again and again in every generation. And then there are new indications of one or the other. And we also show things that are really incredible – and still detected in the scientific experiment. I couldn’t believe it!

In the programs, they devote themselves to the questions about the existence of soul, fate and alien. If someone could answer one of the questions immediately, which would you like to face?

I would like to know if there is a soul. For the individual fate – that is already in there – that would certainly be the biggest thing: if there was really a human soul – wow! The extraterrestrials, on the other hand, are far away, we are safe from that. Also: If they have watched us long enough, they won’t come from anyway. The whole Milky Way is currently on the phone how Ballaballa we are.