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):
➤ Foundational science philosophy •Quantum mechanics, realism, infinity, mathematics •Mind, consciousness, cognition, animal minds •AI capabilities, ethics, future •Language, creativity, culture evolution •Climate, energy, astrobiology
This podcast centers on long-form conversations about foundational questions at the intersection of philosophy and the sciences. Across episodes, the host interviews researchers and thinkers in physics, mathematics, neuroscience, psychology, biology, linguistics, history of science, and technology, using their work as a way into broader issues about what we can know and how we should interpret our best theories.
A recurring theme is the status of scientific explanation: whether chemistry reduces to physics, how thought experiments generate understanding, and what working scientists believe about the reality of theoretical entities. The show often lingers at points where formal results meet philosophical puzzlement, such as infinity, the limits of computation, Gödel-style constraints, and competing interpretations of quantum mechanics, including probabilistic and “many worlds” frameworks.
Mind and cognition also feature prominently, with discussions of consciousness and theories that challenge purely computational accounts, comparisons between human brains and large language models, the role of spontaneous thought, and how to study minds in nonhuman animals. Several conversations explore how language structures thought and culture, including the evolution of linguistic systems and the philosophical scrutiny of everyday speech.
Technology and society appear through examinations of AI’s likely trajectories, ethics, safety, fairness trade-offs, responsibility, and potential shifts in knowledge-sharing practices. The scope extends to future-facing and Earth-systems topics—climate targets and carbon storage, alternative energy resources, and approaches to long-term scenario planning—alongside occasional forays into aesthetics and the arts, treating poetry and music as domains for empirical and conceptual investigation.
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Episodes:
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A Story For Humanity — Minhyong Kim on Why Maths Will Never End
2026-Feb-09
72 minutes
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Molecules & Mirrors —Vanessa Seifert on the Philosophy of Chemistry
2025-Dec-05
69 minutes
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Consciousness is not Computation — Christof Koch
2025-May-02
62 minutes
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Where Does It End? — Adrian Moore on The Infinite
2025-Mar-14
76 minutes
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37| Mind-Wandering — Kalina Christoff Hadjiilieva on the Science of Spontaneous Thought
2025-Jan-31
98 minutes
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36| History of Science: Mythmaking & Contingency — Patricia Fara
2024-Dec-23
89 minutes
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35| Hypercomputation: Why Machines May never Think Like Humans — Selmer Bringsjord
2024-Nov-08
99 minutes
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34| Animal Minds — Kristin Andrews on why assuming consciousness would aid science
2024-Aug-27
74 minutes
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33| Taking Chance Seriously — Alastair Wilson on Quantum Modal Realism
2024-Jul-19
85 minutes
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AI Moonshot — Nell Watson on the Near & Not So Near Future of Intelligence
2024-Jun-21
71 minutes
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Do Electrons Exist? — Céline Henne: Physicist's Views on Scientific Realism & Instrumentalism
2024-Jun-04
98 minutes
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30| Thinking Beyond Language — Anna Ivanova on what LLMs can learn from the brain
2024-May-15
99 minutes
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29 | What are words good for? — Nikhil Krishnan on Ordinary Language Philosophy
2024-Apr-12
97 minutes
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28| Music Evolution & Empirical Aesthetics — Manuel Anglada Tort
2024-Mar-28
96 minutes
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27| Why Knowledge is Not Enough — Jessie Munton
2024-Mar-14
84 minutes
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26| Networks, Heartbeats & the Pace of Cities — Geoffrey West
2024-Feb-29
114 minutes
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25| Peter Nixey — AI: Disruption Ahead
2024-Feb-15
77 minutes
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24| How Philosophy Serves Science — David Papineau
2024-Feb-01
76 minutes
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23| Paulina Sliwa — Moral philosophy as puzzles of daily life
2024-Jan-18
71 minutes
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22| Sean McMahon — Astrobiology: what is life & how to know it when we see it?
2024-Jan-04
80 minutes
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21| How and why do animals play? — Gordon Burghardt
2023-Dec-21
72 minutes
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20| Simon Kirby — Language Evolution & Emergence of Structure
2023-Dec-07
93 minutes
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19| The Meaning of Net Zero — Myles Allen
2023-Nov-16
54 minutes
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18| Feeling Right: Emotions & Ethics — James Hutton
2023-Nov-02
108 minutes
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17| Santiago Bilinkis — Artificial Intelligence: Risks & Rewards
2023-Oct-19
93 minutes
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16| Gábor Domokos — The Gömböc, a shape at the limit of possibility
2023-Oct-05
85 minutes
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15 | Simon Critchley — Philosophical itches & how to scratch
2023-Sep-21
89 minutes
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14| ChatGPT as a Glider — James Intriligator
2023-Sep-07
97 minutes
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13| Phylogeny & The Canterbury Tales — Peter Robinson
2023-Aug-24
68 minutes
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12 | The Long Now — Peter Schwartz
2023-Aug-10
87 minutes
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11| AI, Risk, Fairness & Responsibility — John Zerilli
2023-Jul-20
100 minutes
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10| Plants, Roots, Spirals and Palaeobotany — Sandy Hetherington
2023-Jul-13
82 minutes
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9| The Hunt for Hydrogen — Rūta Karolytė
2023-Jul-06
112 minutes
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8 | Harald Wiltsche — Thought Experiments, Mach, Galileo & Phenomenology
2023-Jun-29
99 minutes
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7| Anna Lewis — Genomics, polygenic risk scores, genetic ancestry, race & ethics
2023-Jun-22
107 minutes
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6| Christian Bök — Poetry, Constraints, DNA & The Xenotext
2023-Jun-15
111 minutes
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5| QBism: The World is Unfinished — Ruediger Schack
2023-Jun-08
93 minutes
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4| Science & Poetry — Sam Illingworth
2023-Jun-01
77 minutes
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3| Julian Barbour — Relational Space and Time
2023-May-25
75 minutes
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2 | David Wallace — The Emergent Multiverse
2023-May-18
87 minutes
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1 | Casey Handmer — Mining the Air
2023-May-11
91 minutes
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