Robinson's Podcast

Craig Callender and Tim Maudlin, leading philosophers of science and physics, join Robinson to delve into the philosophy of time, discussing the reality of the past, present, and future, the direction of time, and its relationship to relativity and quantum mechanics. They explore the A-Theory and B-Theory of time, concepts like presentism, eternalism, and the four-dimensional view of time. They also touch on non-locality in quantum mechanics, measuring time in relativity, and the purpose of theorizing about time travel. Plus, they discuss the compatibility of time travel with physics and make a pitch for the John Bell Institute for the Foundations of Physics.

Eric Helms is an AUT Research Fellow at the Sports Performance Research Institute New Zealand (Auckland University of Technology) in the Strength & Conditioning and Sports Physiology and Nutrition research groups. He is also the Director and Chief Science Officer of 3DMJ, an organization devoted to strength training and education centered around the same, a competitive bodybuilder, co-host of the Iron Culture podcast—which comes highly, highly recommended by Robinson—and a founding editor and reviewer for Monthly Applications in Strength Sport. Eric is also the author of two terrific books on strength training and nutrition respectively, The Muscle and Strength Pyramid: Training and The Muscle and Strength Pyramid: Nutrition. In this episode, Robinson and Eric discuss one of his areas of expertise, nutrition, covering both broad topics like various approaches to structuring one’s diet and more specific questions like how much protein you should be consuming and what supplements you should be taking. Eric’s Instagram: @helms3dmj Iron Culture: https://ironculture.libsyn.com MASS: https://massresearchreview.com 3DMJ: https://3dmusclejourney.com OUTLINE 00:00 Introduction 03:36 Eric’s Academic Background 11:14 Should You Get Your Diet Advice From Bodybuilders? 18:28 The Benefits of Intuitive Eating 52:25 How to Determine Maintenance Calories 59:50 How Much Protein Should You Be Eating? 01:16:38 MASS 01:20:08 Creatine 01:30:43 Should You Take BCAAs? 01:38:33 The Role of Meta-analyses in Sports Science Robinson’s Website: http://robinsonerhardt.com Robinson Erhardt researches symbolic logic and the foundations of mathematics at Stanford University. Join him in conversations with philosophers, scientists, weightlifters, artists, and everyone in-between. 

David Spiegel is Willson Professor of Medicine and Associate Chair of Psychiatry at Stanford University School of Medicine. He did his undergraduate work at Yale and received his M.D. from Harvard Medical School. David is highly regarded as one of the most creative psychiatrists in the field, and has worked on a wide array of topics within the discipline. In this episode, Robinson and David discuss his pioneering work in hypnotherapy, as David is the world’s leading hypnotherapist and hypnotherapy researcher. More particularly, they discuss the origins of hypnotherapy, its relationship to hypnosis in popular culture, how therapeutic interventions fare compare to pharmaceutical interventions for mental illness, how hypnosis treats mental disorders, and how self-hypnosis can be a useful tool in everyone’s mental health arsenal. David is also the Co-Founder and Chief Scientific Officer of Reveri, which is a groundbreaking self-hypnosis application for your smartphone that can guide you through a wide variety of modules to help improve sleep, anxiety, eating habits and many other facets of life. Reveri: https://www.reveri.com Trance & Treatment: Clinical Uses of Hypnosis: https://a.co/d/0lLXoU2 OUTLINE: 00:00 Introduction 4:24 David’s Start in Hypnotherapy 10:28 Hypnotherapy’s Rising Popularity 16:46 Therapy Versus Medication? 23:50 PTSD, MDMA, and Hypnosis 30:37 What Is Hypnotherapy? 36:05 Hypnosis and Comedic Gags 39:24 Are You Hypnotizable 59:31 Is Hypnotherapy Supported by Research? 01:04:41 Can Hypnosis Treat Eating Disorders? 01:09:20 Hypnosis, Restructuring, Psychopathy, and Understanding the Self 01:15:32 Reveri and Self-Hypnosis Robinson’s Website: http://robinsonerhardt.com Robinson Erhardt researches symbolic logic and the foundations of mathematics at Stanford University. Join him in conversations with philosophers, scientists, weightlifters, artists, and everyone in-between. 

Victor Davis Hanson is a renowned classicist, military historian, and political commentator. He is the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow in Residence in Classics and Military History at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. Among numerous other awards, Victor was presented the National Humanities Medal in 2007. In this episode, Robinson and Victor discuss his latest book, The Dying Citizen. More particularly, they talk about the Ancient Greek origin of a flourishing egalitarian society centered around the notion of citizenship, the way this history has been subverted and recast, the perils of judging the past through the lens of the present, how citizenship is threatened in the United States today, and the nature of human progress. Keep up with Victor on Twitter, through his website, and on his podcast, The Victor Davis Hanson Show.  Victor’s Website: https://victorhanson.com Victor’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/VDHanson The Victor Davis Hanson Show: https://art19.com/shows/the-victor-davis-hanson-show  The Dying Citizen: https://a.co/d/dPocUJg OUTLINE 00:00 In This Episode… 01:18 Introduction 04:10 The Dying Classics 10:28 Ancient Greece and the Perils of Revisionist History 20:55 Don’t Judge the Past Against the Present 24:32 The Difference between Citizens and Residents 40:04 The Importance of Citizenship 47:37 On Our Obsession with Inequality 51:23 Is Humankind Making Progress? Robinson’s Website: http://robinsonerhardt.com Robinson Erhardt researches symbolic logic and the foundations of mathematics at Stanford University. Join him in conversations with philosophers, scientists, weightlifters, artists, and everyone in-between. 

Avi Loeb is Frank B. Baird Jr. Professor of Science in the Department of Astronomy at Harvard University, and former chair of the department. Before joining Harvard he spent fifteen years working in theoretical astrophysics at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. He is also the Director of the Institute for Theory and Computation, the Founding Director of the Black Hole Initiative at Harvard, and Head of the Galileo Project. In this episode, Avi and Robinson discuss his controversial and compelling research on—and theories about—Oumuamua, a comet that passed through the solar system in 2017, and which Avi believes was a spacecraft of extra-terrestrial origin. They also talk about the likelihood of life outside earth, Avi’s current investigations into the same, and his upcoming book Interstellar: The Search for Extraterrestrial Life and Our Future in the Stars, which will be released on August 29, 2023. Interstellar: https://a.co/d/8Or10aM Avi on Medium: https://avi-loeb.medium.com   OUTLINE 00:00 In This Episode 01:38 Introduction 04:56 Avi’s Interest in Extra-Terrestrial Life 25:04 Avi’s Background in Astrophysics 33:14 The Fermi Paradox 45:09 Was Oumuamua an Alien Spacecraft? 01:31:27 Interstellar Robinson’s Website: http://robinsonerhardt.com Robinson Erhardt researches symbolic logic and the foundations of mathematics at Stanford University. Join him in conversations with philosophers, scientists, weightlifters, artists, and everyone in-between. 

Daniel Kahneman is Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Public Policy at Princeton University. He won the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences in 2002 for joint work with Amos Tversky in which they revealed the biases and heuristics with which humans operate, thereby deviating from the rationality presumed by economic theory at the time. Among this and many other awards, Danny was also given the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Barrack Obama. While Danny is likely best known outside of psychology for his book Thinking Fast and Slow, he and Robinson discuss his latest a book, co-authored with Olivier Simony and Cass Sunstein, called Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment, which concerns the astonishingly prevalent and damaging variability inherent in human judgment. Noise: https://a.co/d/hbKBQKD OUTLINE 00:00 In This Episode… 00:55 Introduction 06:16 Danny’s Childhood 11:23 The Difference Between Noise and Bias 16:21 Some Themes from Noise 18:57 Noise in the Judicial System 32:36 Noise in the Medical System 37:59 The Difficulty of Spotting Noise 39:58 Psychology and the Descriptive, Prescriptive, and Normative 43:14 Decision Hygiene for Reducing Bias and Noise in Judgment 54:32 Limiting Intuitions to Improve Decision-Making 01:00:38 Understanding Regression to the Mean Robinson’s Website: http://robinsonerhardt.com Robinson Erhardt researches symbolic logic and the foundations of mathematics at Stanford University. Join him in conversations with philosophers, scientists, weightlifters, artists, and everyone in-between. 

Slavoj Žižek, international director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities, discusses wokeness, psychoanalysis, and quantum mechanics. They explore the role of psychoanalysis in cultural criticism, the relationship between truth, science, and philosophy, and what quantum theory reveals about reality. They delve into free speech, trans ideology, violence, gender, and unconscious, fate, freedom, and falling in love, truth, science, and quantum theory, and Nazis, the Jew, and psychoanalysis. They also touch on unholy alliances, analytic and continental philosophy, world War III, life as a quantum theory video game, and a dirty joke related to quantum theory. Lastly, they discuss topics like torture devices, permissiveness, sexual identity, Freud's concept of the unconscious, Hitler's influence, conflicts of ideologies, analytic philosophers, and the shocking story of Nazi torture tools.

Chiara Mingarelli is a gravitational-wave astrophysicist and a professor in the Department of Physics at Yale University. She studies supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies and their mergers using data about gravitational waves that are detected by pulsar timing array experiments. In this episode, Robinson and Chiara discuss PTAs, gravitational waves, black holes, how and why they merge, and the fresh release of NANOgrav’s fifteen-year data set, which gives the first ever evidence of a gravitational wave background in the universe, an unprecedented discovery that marks the dawn of a new era of astrophysical research. Chiara’s Website: https://www.chiaramingarelli.com/ Chiara’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/Dr_CMingarelli OUTLINE 00:00 In This Episode... 00:30 Introduction 02:58 Chiara’s Interest in Black Holes 10:25 What Are Gravitational Waves 15:47 Detecting Gravitational Waves 31:39 How to Visualize Black Holes 40:55 Black Holes and Gravitational Waves 48:51 Two Different Backgrounds 53:46 Collecting and Interpreting Data 56:36 Why Do Black Holes Anchor Galaxies? 58:34 Why Do Black Holes Form Binaries? 01:04:25 Lingering Questions 01:11:33 Cosmic Strings 01:17:35 NANOgrav’s Data Release and the Gravitational Wave Background Robinson’s Website: http://robinsonerhardt.com Robinson Erhardt researches symbolic logic and the foundations of mathematics at Stanford University. Join him in conversations with philosophers, scientists, weightlifters, artists, and everyone in-between. 

Kevin Dorst is a professor in the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy at MIT. He works at the intersection between philosophy and social science, focusing on rationality. In this episode Kevin and Robinson discuss just this: They begin with classical theories of rationality and where they fall short before discussing instances where the empirical literature shows that humans do not reason rationally at all, touching on the gambler’s fallacy, sunk-cost reasoning, and the hindsight bias. They then move on to discuss the phenomenon of political polarization, which draws both on our capacity for rationality and irrationality. Make sure to check out Kevin’s Substack, Stranger Apologies. Stranger Apologies: https://kevindorst.substack.com Kevin’s Website: https://www.kevindorst.com Kevin’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/kevin_dorst OUTLINE 00:00 In This Episode… 01:02 Introduction 04:14 Rationality and Philosophy 15:14 Bayesian Reasoning 45:10 The Hindsight Bias 56:53 What is Bias? 01:04:03 The Gambler’s Fallacy 01:15:00 Sunk-Cost Reasoning 01:19:07 Political Polarization 01:40:12 Talking Through Disagreement Robinson’s Website: http://robinsonerhardt.com Robinson Erhardt researches symbolic logic and the foundations of mathematics at Stanford University. Join him in conversations with philosophers, scientists, weightlifters, artists, and everyone in-between. 

David Albert is the Frederick E. Woodbridge Professor of Philosophy at Columbia University and Director of the Philosophical Foundations of Physics program at Columbia. David is a prior guest of the Robinson’s Podcast multiverse, having appeared on episodes #23 (with Justin Clarke-Doane), #30, and #67 (with Tim Maudlin). Sean Carroll is Homewood Professor of Natural Philosophy at Johns Hopkins University and fractal faculty at the Santa Fe Institute. He is also host of Sean Carroll’s Mindscape, a terrific show (that influenced the birth of Robinson’s Podcast ) about science, society, philosophy, culture, arts, and ideas. Sean also had a great conversation with David on Mindscape, linked below. Both David and Sean are rare breeds—philosophers who are physicists, and physicists who are philosophers—and in this episode Robinson, David, and Sean speak about some of the philosophical concerns at the foundations of physics. They first discuss the Many-Worlds theory of quantum mechanics before turning to the apparent fine-tuning of our universe for life and the possibility of Boltzmann Brains, or complex observers in the universe that arise spontaneously due to quantum fluctuations or the random motion of matter. Preorder David’s A Guess at the Riddle: https://a.co/d/4MUEJZN Sean’s Website: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com Sean’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/seanmcarroll The Biggest Ideas in the Universe: https://a.co/d/dPKZ40X David Albert on Sean Carroll’s Mindscape: https://youtu.be/AglOFx6eySE  OUTLINE 00:00 In This Episode… 00:59 Introduction 08:11 Superposition and The Many-Worlds Theory of Quantum Mechanics 22:34 Decoherence 27:20 Probability 41:32 Some Thought Experiments Concerning Probability 01:08:35 Parsimony 01:12:03 The Fine-Tuned Universe and Quantum Theory 01:14:52 Entropy 01:45:37 Intelligent Design 01:47:22 Boltzmann Brains Galore Robinson’s Website: http://robinsonerhardt.com Robinson Erhardt researches symbolic logic and the foundations of mathematics at Stanford University. Join him in conversations with philosophers, scientists, weightlifters, artists, and everyone in-between.