Theories of Everything with Curt Jaimungal - Podcast Rankings and reviews

I like that this host simply asks questions and lets our best minds give their answers.

The questions he poses are deep with a lot of complexity and subtlety and yet are always spot on.

I’ve listened to two of his podcasts so far, Lee Smolin and Stephen Wolfram.

Wolfram speaks with such authority on every topic and you can tell he’s thought about it for so long and yet the host poses questions simple but deep questions where you can literally hear the gears in Mr. Wolfram’s head begin to strip as he grapples with the weight of the question.

It’s the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen and I’ve seen a lot.

Anyone who genuinely does not like this podcast is simply a hater. Curt has one of the most thoughtful, intellectually competent podcasts being made right now. He never tries to dominate a conversation, letting his guests grace us with their expertise. If you don’t enjoy technical conversation that goes deeper into subjects than most then this may not be the show for you. However, if your intellectual curiosity is insatiable, this is a must listen!

Curt has the bold curiosity and intellectual honesty that is so absent in most of the world. It’s so refreshing to hear deep scientific and philosophical topics discussed with such open mindedness and aversion dogma.

Pick one of Curt’s topics that you enjoy then listen to the episode twice a couple weeks apart and then you will realize how much Curt gets his guests in a place to make you learn. The second time you will be loaded with nuance and Curt’s well placed skepticism. My favorites involve logic, yours might be physics or consciousness.

The podcast is called Theories of Everything and he interviews some respected physicists/mathematicians (Borcherds, Ashtekar, O’Dowd), this seemed like something I would love. I was expecting a science podcast like Mindscape. However, a lot of discussions revolve around pseudo scientific topics like consciousness, AI, and UFOs. AI can be scientific if they talk about GANs, NLP, etc, but not when you talk about if computers really think like us or have emotions. This distinction between AI as a science and pseudoscience really encapsulates my review; the podcast has the potential to host meaningful conversations but choses not to

The podcast content itself feels like a bunch of buzz words got thrown in a blender. Randomly the host will ask the guest what they think of Jordan Peterson without any context. By asking Borcherds about Peterson (no connection between the two), he is giving clout to Peterson undeservingly while also allowing himself to post click-baity titles

If you care about consciousness, UFOs, Jordan Peterson then this is the right podcast for you. If you want to hear from academics at the foundations of science, look elsewhere

Unfortunately, Curt has begun to drop the conversational format and let guests deliver their standard lecture on their subject, with little interruption. This is practically unlistenable for the average podcast connoisseur. In the latest episode re an intro to QM, the preview section describing the no go theorems should have been dropped. Instead, Curt should have gone straight to concrete particulars re the first theorem (eg, by eliciting from the guest a technical description of the data that suggested the theorem in the first place). Conversation and concrete particulars are what the podcast listener craves, esp in the scientific genre. Return to the formula that made this podcast great and indispensable, and you’ll be golden.