Description (podcaster-provided):
Coffee table conversations with people thinking about foundational issues. Multiverses explores the limits of knowledge and technology. Does quantum mechanics tell us that our world is one of many? Will AI make us intellectually lazy, or expand our cognitive range? Is time a thing in itself or a measure of change? Join James Robinson as he tries to find out.
Themes and summary (AI-generated based on podcaster-provided show and episode descriptions):
➤ Foundations of physics and quantum interpretations •Philosophy of science, realism, reductionism •Mind, consciousness, animal cognition •AI/LLMs impacts, ethics, computation limits •Maths, infinity, networks, complexity •Language, culture, aesthetics •Climate, energy, astrobiology
This podcast features extended, coffee-table-style conversations with scientists, philosophers, and researchers about foundational questions at the boundaries of knowledge. Across episodes, the focus is less on news or commentary and more on how big ideas are built, tested, and sometimes reframed when standard explanations run into paradox, uncertainty, or conceptual limits.
A major thread is philosophy of science in practice: what scientific theories claim about reality, how much can be reduced from one science to another, and how researchers themselves think about entities like electrons, measurement, or laws of nature. Physics and mathematics recur as sources of both rigor and mystery, with discussions that probe infinity, the structure of space and time, and interpretations of quantum mechanics, including many-worlds-style pictures and agent-centered alternatives.
Another set of conversations explores minds and cognition from multiple angles: theories of consciousness, animal minds, spontaneous thought and mind-wandering, and the relationship between language and thinking—alongside what these topics imply for artificial intelligence. AI is treated both technically and socially, including questions about machine limits, safety and governance, fairness constraints, responsibility, and how tools like large language models may reshape learning and knowledge-sharing.
The show also ranges into biology, evolution, and Earth systems—such as astrobiology and biosignatures, genomics and ancestry, plant development, and scaling laws in organisms and cities—often emphasizing how definitions (of life, mind, or net zero) shape research and policy. Interdisciplinary episodes connect scientific methods with culture and the arts, including language and music evolution, science-poetry exchanges, and experimental constraints in literature and even DNA-encoded texts.
|
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
|
Site • RSS • Apple Podcasts