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.
A Story For Humanity — Minhyong Kim on Why Maths Will Never End
Gauss famously described mathematics as the queen of the sciences. But how should we think of this discipline? Is it an aloof ruler, mysteriously governing the laws of nature? A vital tool for bettering our lot? Or a story that helps us understand nature?
Professor Minhyong Kim directs the International Centre for Mathematical Sciences and the Centre for Mathematics for Humanity in Edinburgh. He is an accomplished number theorist — particularly within the field of diophantine equations (the Kim in Chabauty-Kim). And a best-selling author on popular mathematics in Korea.
5 Dec 2025
Molecules & Mirrors —Vanessa Seifert on the Philosophy of Chemistry
Why do molecules have a "handedness" when the physics that determines their structure does not?*
This is a question emblematic of the philosophy of chemistry; at times, it has been used to argue that chemistry cannot be reduced to physics. However, Vanessa Seifert has a different — yet equally intriguing — answer. This symmetry breaking is closely linked to that contentious area of quantum mechanics: the measurement problem.
Vanessa is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow based at the University of Athens and a visiting fellow at the University of Bristol. In addition to molecules, we discuss the project of reductionism, laws, and alchemy.
I found this to be a wonderful example of the fruitfulness of turning the philosophical gaze to sciences beyond physics.
*(Note, it can't be explained by the chirality of the weak nuclear force)
Links
vanessa-seifert.com [https://www.vanessa-seifert.com/] has links to Vanessa's publications and popular writing — her articles on philosophy in Chemistry World are a great introduction to a broad range of topics
multiverses.xyz [https://www.multiverses.xyz/] Multiverses home
2 May 2025
Consciousness is not Computation — Christof Koch
Christof Koch is a pioneering neuroscientist and one of the most prominent advocates of a scientific approach to consciousness. He has spent decades working at the intersection of neuroscience, philosophy, and computation.
Christof is one of the foremost proponents of Integrated Information Theory (IIT) — a radical proposal that attempts to explain consciousness in terms of causal structure. IIT begins not with the brain, but with experience itself. It takes as its starting point what is undeniable: that something is happening right now — that experience exists. It then looks at the features of conscious experience, for example, that is unified yet composed of parts, and contentful. From there, it builds a theory describing which physical systems support conscious states.
In this conversation, Christof and I explore what a scientific theory of consciousness might need to achieve, and why behavior alone — even the impressive feats of AI is not enough. Nor indeed is any computational account of consciousness: consciousness is about structure, two structures may lead to the same outcomes, but their form might mean that one is conscious and the other not. But we also touch on experience beyond theory — Christof's reflections on psychedelic experiences and the dissolution of the self.
This is a conversation about what it means to be a whole, what makes a system truly unified — and what it might take to understand, and perhaps even expand, the field of consciousness. Christof's latest book is Then I Am Myself the World: What Consciousness Is and How to Expand It.
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YouTube views
131,139
Score snapshot 15 Sept 2025
Apple Podcasts (US)
5.0 / 5
1 ratings
Spotify
5.0 / 5
6 ratings
Podcast Authority Score: 67 / 100
A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.
Quality
73
Social presence
0
YouTube
82
Engagement
68
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