Host Curt Jaimungal launches #CORE1, a competition seeking high-level video explainers for physics, AI, and philosophy. If you're a researcher or student, you'll have a chance to win part of the $5,000 prize pool by sharing your technical expertise with the world.

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Professor Bas van Fraassen argues science doesn't deliver literal truth about reality, meaning unobservable physics is merely a model. He also contends the self isn't a thing and that logic permits free will, ultimately sharing how he maintains faith in God without relying on metaphysics.

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Sir Roger Penrose and Professor Ivette Fuentes analyze the Ron Folman T-cubed experiment and whether the equivalence principle holds in quantum mechanics. They also detail gravity's role in wave function collapse, the existence of gravitons, and cyclic cosmology.

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Curt Jaimungal dives into Kierkegaard’s three stages of life—aesthetic, ethical, and religious — showing how each promises freedom yet traps us in its own way. Through the lens of modern anxiety and constant choice, he explores why the “leap of faith” isn’t blind irrationality but a way of living with authenticity when reason hits its limits.

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Professor Ivette Fuentes makes impossible physics testable, with verified predictions on the Casimir effect and quantum vacuum. Now she's building a "third way" to quantum gravity, a surprisingly simple model that changes both quantum mechanics and relativity instead of forcing one to dominate the other.

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Why do physical laws have their specific form? Host Curt Jaimungal shows this question is a philosophical knot, because any "explanation" must itself stand on a law.

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Nobel laureate Sir Roger Penrose dismantles standard cosmology, arguing the Big Bang wasn't the beginning and quantum mechanics is fundamentally wrong. He then connects a real, gravitational wave function collapse to the non-computational nature of consciousness and why today's AI can't truly understand.

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The Libet experiment didn't kill free will, says professor of neuroscience Aaron Schurger; the brain's "readiness potential" is simply stochastic neural noise. We then tackle consciousness's role in initiating action, the hard problem, and what it'd take for neuroscience to truly disprove our choices. If you’re interested in the topics above, I think you’ll love this podcast.

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As a listener of TOE you can get a special 20% off discount to The Economist and all it has to offer! Visit https://www.economist.com/toe

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As a listener of TOE you can get a special 20% off discount to The Economist and all it has to offer! Visit https://www.economist.com/toe

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