TrueSciPhi

Podcast Profile: MULTIVERSES

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41 episodes
2023 to 2026
Median: 87 minutes
Collection: SciPhi-Adjacent

Description (podcaster-provided):

Themes and summary (AI-generated based on podcaster-provided show and episode descriptions):

This podcast is built around long-form conversations with scientists, philosophers, and technically minded thinkers about “foundational” questions—places where established methods meet conceptual uncertainty. Across episodes, the host uses interviews to probe how knowledge is formed, what counts as explanation, and where the limits of current theories and technologies might lie.

A major thread is philosophy of science and physics: discussions revisit quantum mechanics and its competing interpretations, the status of unobservable entities, and how probability, possibility, and “many worlds” might connect scientific models to metaphysical claims. Other episodes take up big mathematical and conceptual notions such as infinity, symmetry breaking, and the nature of time, often emphasizing paradoxes and the way formal ideas strain intuition.

Another recurring focus is mind and cognition. Guests explore what a scientific theory of consciousness would need to explain, whether computation is sufficient for consciousness, and how brain organization relates to language and reasoning. The show also examines spontaneous thought and mind-wandering as measurable cognitive phenomena, and extends questions about mentality beyond humans to animal behavior and comparative psychology.

Technology—especially artificial intelligence—appears both as an object of analysis and as a force reshaping society. Conversations address the near-term impacts of large language models on work and knowledge-sharing, longer-run concerns about safety, ethics, responsibility, and fairness, and debates about whether machines could match or exceed distinctively human forms of reasoning.

Alongside these themes are episodes that bring foundational reflection to applied and empirical domains: climate concepts like “net zero” and carbon removal, energy futures including natural hydrogen and synthetic fuels, astrobiology’s problem of defining and detecting life, and broad “scaling law” approaches to organisms and cities. The podcast also makes room for how scientific and cultural practices evolve—through the history of science, language evolution experiments, and links between science, art, and literature—treating creativity and inquiry as connected parts of understanding the world.

Episodes:

A Story For Humanity — Minhyong Kim on Why Maths Will Never End 2026-Feb-09 72 minutes

Molecules & Mirrors —Vanessa Seifert on the Philosophy of Chemistry 2025-Dec-05 69 minutes

Consciousness is not Computation — Christof Koch 2025-May-02 62 minutes

Where Does It End? — Adrian Moore on The Infinite 2025-Mar-14 76 minutes

37| Mind-Wandering — Kalina Christoff Hadjiilieva on the Science of Spontaneous Thought 2025-Jan-31 98 minutes

36| History of Science: Mythmaking & Contingency — Patricia Fara 2024-Dec-23 89 minutes

35| Hypercomputation: Why Machines May never Think Like Humans — Selmer Bringsjord 2024-Nov-08 99 minutes

34| Animal Minds — Kristin Andrews on why assuming consciousness would aid science 2024-Aug-27 74 minutes

33| Taking Chance Seriously — Alastair Wilson on Quantum Modal Realism 2024-Jul-19 85 minutes

AI Moonshot — Nell Watson on the Near & Not So Near Future of Intelligence 2024-Jun-21 71 minutes

Do Electrons Exist? — Céline Henne: Physicist's Views on Scientific Realism & Instrumentalism 2024-Jun-04 98 minutes

30| Thinking Beyond Language — Anna Ivanova on what LLMs can learn from the brain 2024-May-15 99 minutes

29 | What are words good for? — Nikhil Krishnan on Ordinary Language Philosophy 2024-Apr-12 97 minutes

28| Music Evolution & Empirical Aesthetics — Manuel Anglada Tort 2024-Mar-28 96 minutes

27| Why Knowledge is Not Enough — Jessie Munton 2024-Mar-14 84 minutes

26| Networks, Heartbeats & the Pace of Cities — Geoffrey West 2024-Feb-29 114 minutes

25| Peter Nixey — AI: Disruption Ahead 2024-Feb-15 77 minutes

24| How Philosophy Serves Science — David Papineau 2024-Feb-01 76 minutes

23| Paulina Sliwa — Moral philosophy as puzzles of daily life 2024-Jan-18 71 minutes

22| Sean McMahon — Astrobiology: what is life & how to know it when we see it? 2024-Jan-04 80 minutes

21| How and why do animals play? — Gordon Burghardt 2023-Dec-21 72 minutes

20| Simon Kirby — Language Evolution & Emergence of Structure 2023-Dec-07 93 minutes

19| The Meaning of Net Zero — Myles Allen 2023-Nov-16 54 minutes

18| Feeling Right: Emotions & Ethics — James Hutton 2023-Nov-02 108 minutes

17| Santiago Bilinkis — Artificial Intelligence: Risks & Rewards 2023-Oct-19 93 minutes

16| Gábor Domokos — The Gömböc, a shape at the limit of possibility 2023-Oct-05 85 minutes

15 | Simon Critchley — Philosophical itches & how to scratch 2023-Sep-21 89 minutes

14| ChatGPT as a Glider — James Intriligator 2023-Sep-07 97 minutes

13| Phylogeny & The Canterbury Tales — Peter Robinson 2023-Aug-24 68 minutes

12 | The Long Now — Peter Schwartz 2023-Aug-10 87 minutes

11| AI, Risk, Fairness & Responsibility — John Zerilli 2023-Jul-20 100 minutes

10| Plants, Roots, Spirals and Palaeobotany — Sandy Hetherington 2023-Jul-13 82 minutes

9| The Hunt for Hydrogen — Rūta Karolytė 2023-Jul-06 112 minutes

8 | Harald Wiltsche — Thought Experiments, Mach, Galileo & Phenomenology 2023-Jun-29 99 minutes

7| Anna Lewis — Genomics, polygenic risk scores, genetic ancestry, race & ethics 2023-Jun-22 107 minutes

6| Christian Bök — Poetry, Constraints, DNA & The Xenotext 2023-Jun-15 111 minutes

5| QBism: The World is Unfinished — Ruediger Schack 2023-Jun-08 93 minutes

4| Science & Poetry — Sam Illingworth 2023-Jun-01 77 minutes

3| Julian Barbour — Relational Space and Time 2023-May-25 75 minutes

2 | David Wallace — The Emergent Multiverse 2023-May-18 87 minutes

1 | Casey Handmer — Mining the Air 2023-May-11 91 minutes