There is a vast class of things that science has so far almost entirely neglected. They are central to the understanding of physical reality both at an everyday level and at the level of the most fundamental phenomena in physics, yet have traditionally been assumed to be impossible to incorporate into fundamental scientific explanations. They are facts not a ... Show More
Jan 20
Giuseppe Longo and Adam Nocek, "The Organism Is a Theory: Giuseppe Longo on Biology, Mathematics, and AI" (U Minnesota Press, 2026)
A bold reimagining of life that bridges science, philosophy, cybernetics, and the complexities of biological existence The Organism Is a Theory: Giuseppe Longo on Biology, Mathematics, and AI (Giuseppe Longo and Adam Nocek, 2026) is an intriguing synthesis of decades of interdis ... Show More
1h 13m
Jan 19
Steve Ramirez, "How to Change a Memory: One Neuroscientist’s Quest to Alter the Past" (Princeton UP, 2025)
As a graduate student at MIT, Steve Ramirez successfully created false memories in the lab. Now, as a neuroscientist working at the frontiers of brain science, he foresees a future where we can replace our negative memories with positive ones. In How to Change a Memory, Ramirez d ... Show More
50m 49s
Jan 18
Justin Gregg, "If Nietzsche Were a Narwhal: What Animal Intelligence Reveals About Human Stupidity" (Little, Brown, 2022)
What if human intelligence is actually more of a liability than a gift? After all, the animal kingdom, in all its diversity, gets by just fine without it. At first glance, human history is full of remarkable feats of intelligence, yet human exceptionalism can be a double-edged sw ... Show More
30m 38s
Oct 2021
167 | Chiara Marletto on Constructor Theory, Physics, and Possibility
<p>Traditional physics works within the “Laplacian paradigm”: you give me the state of the universe (or some closed system), some equations of motion, then I use those equations to evolve the system through time. <a href="https://www.constructortheory.org/" rel="noopener nor ... Show More
1h 35m
Jul 2021
Alyssa Ney, "The World in the Wave Function: A Metaphysics for Quantum Physics" (Oxford UP, 2021)
Quantum mechanics is full of weird findings – for example, that systems widely separated can somehow still be correlated, and that a system may be in two different possible states at the same time. Entanglement and superposition, among other phenomena, have prompted debate since ... Show More
1h 11m
Oct 2021
Roger Penrose, “The Cyclic Universe” (Open Agenda, 2021)
In the last twenty years, cosmology has unexpectedly emerged as one of the most exciting and dynamic fields of modern science. From astoundingly precise measurements of the cosmic microwave background to the ongoing mysteries of dark energy and dark matter, modern cosmology is un ... Show More
2h 31m
Feb 2021
#238 — How to Build a Universe
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Sam Harris speaks with Frank Wilczek about the fundamental nature of reality. They discuss the difference between science and non-science, the role of intuition in science, the nature of time, the prospect that possibility is an illusion, the cu ... Show More
59m 13s
Apr 2019
Will we ever know what the universe is made of?
We are all made of particles – but what are particles made of? It’s a question that’s been perplexing scientists for centuries - for so long, in fact, that listener Doug in Canada wants to know if there’s a limit to how much they can ever discover. CrowdScience heads out to CERN, ... Show More
35m 25s