Carlo Rovelli, the globally celebrated physicist and bestselling storyteller of science, talks to Niki Seth-Smith about the history - and sheer wonder - of quantum theory. How did a feverish young man named Werner Heisenberg, working alone on the North Sea island of Helgoland in 1925, develop a radical insight that would shake the world of physics? What’s its legacy for how we think about the nature of reality and perception itself? And how does the ‘relational’ interpretation of quantum mechanics transform the way that we might see not only the physical world, but our relationships and politics, too?
A fascinating conversation about collaboration and mentorship, our attachment to truth and certainty, and the humbling power of science.
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Hosts: Niki Seth-Smith and Samira Shackle
Exec producer: Alice Bloch
Sound engineer: David Crackles
Artwork: Christopher Wahl (photograph), Ed Dingli (artwork)
Music: Danosongs
Further reading:
'Helgoland' (2021), Carlo Rovelli
'There Are Places in the World Where Rules Are Less Important Than Kindness' (2020), Carlo Rovelli
'The Order of Time', (2018), Carlo Rovelli
'Reality Is Not What It Seems: The Journey to Quantum Gravity' (2016) Carlo Rovelli
'Seven Brief Lessons on Physics' (2015), Carlo Rovelli
'‘‘The beauty in physics is the kind of beauty that people have embodied in art’’
A Q&A with Frank Wilczek (2015) by Daniel Trilling, New Humanist magazine.
Inside The New Space Race, with Nicholas Schmidle
Black Resistance and Racist Policing, with Adam Elliott-Cooper
(M)otherhood and Choice, with Pragya Agarwal
Bonus: Rutger Bregman and Philippe Sands - Are Humans Naturally Good? From How To Academy
Why our minds need the wild, with Lucy Jones
Learning from our ancestors, with Alice Roberts
How to Fix the Internet, with Chris Bail
Writing and Recovery, with Michael Rosen
The Cosmos & Us, with Jo Marchant
Deporting Black Britons, with Luke de Noronha
Activism and Belief, with Rosemary Hancock
Desire in the age of Consent, with Katherine Angel
Looking back in anger at 'Cool Britannia' with Jason Arday
Escaping the logic of work, with Mareile Pfannebecker
Sensuous knowledge and black feminism, with Minna Salami
The symbolic power of charity, with Jon Dean
Taking sex robots seriously, with Kate Devlin
Faith, fraternity and the Orange Order, with Joe Webster
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