Theories of Everything with Curt Jaimungal

As a listener of TOE you can get a special 35% off discount to The Economist and all it has to offer! Your browser does not support the audio element. Mentioned Books Either/Or by Søren KierkegaardIn Either/Or, using the voices of two characters - the aesthetic young man of part one, called simply 'A', and the ethical Judge Vilhelm of the second section - Kierkegaard reflects upon the search for a meaningful exist… ...

Your browser does not support the audio element. Mentioned Books Gödel, Escher, Bach by Douglas HofstadterWinner of the Pulitzer Prize A metaphorical fugue on minds and machines in the spirit of Lewis Carroll Douglas Hofstadter's book is concerned directly with the nature of "maps" or links between formal systems. Howe… Amazon· mentioned in 3 episodes The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World by Iain McGilchrist“authors. Take Gertel etcherbock or the master and his emissary. Two of the most demanding reads and consciousness studies on the popular market.” ▶ Play at 43:41 Amazon· mentioned in 4 episodes World Enough and Space Time by John Earman“And so physicists are going to want to say, hey, you know, that's not a physically reasonable, space time. That's not a physically reasonable model of GR.” ▶ Play at 5:54 Amazon

Many people think physics / reality is either guided by a probabilistic distribution or is “determined.” Actually, there’s a third, far‐more unsettling option. Curt Jaimungal explains why Einstein’s general relativity isn’t actually deterministic. He discusses how Cauchy horizons and closed time-like curves break predictability, showing that math and physics don’t always guarantee a set future for our universe. This is a solo deep‑dive. One that he’s been meaning to make for a while. ...

Professor John Donoghue explains why quantum physics and gravity actually work perfectly together. He tackles quadratic gravity, effective field theory, and random dynamics, arguing that grand unification and naturalness aren’t required for a theory of everything. As a listener of TOE you can get a special 20% off discount to The Economist and all it has to offer! Your browser does not support the audio element. Mentioned Books Quantum Field Theory by Anthony Zee Quantum Field Theory by Michael Peskin

Your browser does not support the audio element. Mentioned Books Consciousness Explained by Daniel DennettThis book revises the traditional view of consciousness by claiming that Cartesianism and Descartes' dualism of mind and body should be replaced with theories from the realms of neuroscience, psychology and artificial in… “the third point is very important as well. I am the new kid in the block. I have a new theory of consciousness and it's hard to get funds for, you know, for new theories, especially in consciousness, especially something that is multidisciplinary. You know, so like physicists will not understand” ▶ Play at 2:58:54 Amazon Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl Amazon· mentioned in 28 episodes The Almanack of Naval Ravikant by Eric JorgensonThis book collects and curates Naval’s wisdom from Twitter, Podcasts, and Essays over the past decade. The wisdom of Naval Ravikant, created and edited by Eric Jorgenson, with Illustrations by Jack Butcher, and a Forewor… ...

Curt Jaimungal argues that astrophysicists like Neil deGrasse Tyson and spiritual gurus Deepak Chopra and Thomas Campbell can’t logically claim they don’t hold beliefs. This “Theories of Everything” with Curt Jaimungal episode uses analytic philosophy to show why belief’s vital for understanding physics and consciousness, countering what Thomas Campbell and NASA scientist Nathalie Cabrol say. As a listener of TOE you can get a special 20% off discount to The Economist and all it has to offer! ...

What is mathematics, really? Mathematician David Bessis joins me to argue that math isn’t about numbers in a Platonic realm or a meaningless game of symbols—it’s a cognitive technology for rewiring your brain. We explore why the official definitions of mathematics have been unresolved for 2,300 years, why understanding something means finding it obvious, and how the gap between a beginner and Terence Tao looks less like genetic destiny and more like compound interest on intuition. When asked what mathematics fundamentally is, his answer cuts through millennia of philosophy: it’s what happens in your head when you pretend something is true until it feels real. ...

What if gravity is just entropy in disguise? Professor Erik Verlinde joins me to argue that gravity isn’t a fundamental force—it’s thermodynamic, emerging from quantum information the way gas pressure emerges from molecules bouncing around. We explore why spacetime may be stitched together by entanglement, and how dark energy and dark matter both pop out automatically without extra particles or parameters. Verlinde explains why the cosmological constant problem is a red herring, and why there may be no final theory of physics. When asked where the universe comes from, his answer is one word: chaos. ...

Hot off the press, Professor Subir Sarkar makes the case that dark energy doesn’t exist (and he’s not being provocative for its own sake). He’s the former head of Oxford’s particle theory group, serves on the Particle Data Group. Sarkar’s group has found that the cosmic acceleration supposedly driving the universe’s expansion is directional—not uniform as required by a cosmological constant—appearing only in the direction we’re moving through space. He claims the 2011 Nobel Prize-winning discovery rests on a century-old assumption of cosmic isotropy that his data now falsifies at over 5 sigma. “We need to go back to square one.” ...