18 | Clifford Johnson on What's So Great About Superstring Theory

18 | Clifford Johnson on What's So Great About Superstring Theory

String theory is a speculative and highly technical proposal for uniting the known forces of nature, including gravity, under a single quantum-mechanical framework. This doesn't seem like a recipe for creating a lightning rod of controversy, but somehow string theory has become just that. To get to the bottom of why anyone (indeed, a substantial majority of experts in the field) would think that replacing particles with little loops of string was a promising way forward for theoretical physics, I spoke with expert string theorist Clifford Johnson. We talk about the road string theory has taken from a tentative proposal dealing with the strong interactions, through a number of revolutions, to the point it's at today. Also, where all those extra dimensions might have gone. At the end we touch on Clifford's latest project, a graphic novel that he wrote and illustrated about how science is done. Clifford Johnson is a Professor of Physics at the University of Southern California. He received his Ph.D. in mathematics and physics from the University of Southampton. His research area is theoretical physics, focusing on string theory and quantum field theory. He was awarded the Maxwell Medal from the Institute of Physics. Johnson is the author of the technical monograph D-Branes, as well as the graphic novel The Dialogues. Home page Wikipedia page Publications A talk on The Dialogues Asymptotia blog Twitter

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84 | Suresh Naidu on Capitalism, Monopsony, and Inequality

84 | Suresh Naidu on Capitalism, Monopsony, and Inequality

Nations generally want their economies to be rich, robust, and growing. But it's also important to person to ensure that wealth doesn't flow only to a few people, but rather that as many people as pos...

17 Helmi 20201h 26min

83 | Kwame Anthony Appiah on Identity, Stories, and Cosmopolitanism

83 | Kwame Anthony Appiah on Identity, Stories, and Cosmopolitanism

The Greek statesman Demosthenes is credited with saying "I am a citizen of the world," and the idea that we should take a cosmopolitan view of our common humanity is a compelling one. Not everyone agr...

10 Helmi 20201h 38min

82 | Robin Carhart-Harris on Psychedelics and the Brain

82 | Robin Carhart-Harris on Psychedelics and the Brain

The Convention on Psychotropic Substances was a 1971 United Nations treaty that placed strong restrictions on the use of psychedelic drugs — not only on personal use, but medical and scientific resear...

3 Helmi 20201h 17min

81 | Ezra Klein on Politics, Polarization, and Identity

81 | Ezra Klein on Politics, Polarization, and Identity

People have always disagreed about politics, passionately and sometimes even violently. But in certain historical moments these disagreements were distributed without strong correlations, so that any ...

27 Tammi 20201h 21min

80 | Jenann Ismael on Connecting Physics to the World of Experience

80 | Jenann Ismael on Connecting Physics to the World of Experience

Physics is simple; people are complicated. But even people are ultimately physical systems, made of particles and forces that follow the rules of the Core Theory. How do we bridge the gap from one kin...

20 Tammi 20201h 26min

79 | Sara Imari Walker on Information and the Origin of Life

79 | Sara Imari Walker on Information and the Origin of Life

We are all alive, but "life" is something we struggle to understand. How do we distinguish a "living organism" from an emergent dynamical system like a hurricane, or a resource-consuming chemical reac...

13 Tammi 20201h 23min

78 | Daniel Dennett on Minds, Patterns, and the Scientific Image

78 | Daniel Dennett on Minds, Patterns, and the Scientific Image

Wilfrid Sellars described the task of philosophy as explaining how things, in the broadest sense of term, hang together, in the broadest sense of the term. (Substitute "exploring" for "explaining" and...

6 Tammi 20202h 1min

Holiday Message 2019: On Publishing Books

Holiday Message 2019: On Publishing Books

Welcome to the second annual Mindscape Holiday Message! No substantive content or deep ideas, just me talking a bit about the state of the podcast and what's on my mind. Since the big event for me in ...

22 Joulu 20191h 6min

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