Deep Time: Infinity is Forever

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Wisconsin Public Radio

Prx, Philosophy, Knowledge, Wpr, Ttbook, Wisconsin, Society & Culture

4.7 • 844 Ratings

🗓️ 7 June 2025

⏱️ 53 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Contemplating the infinite is a time-tested way to shrink the present down to size. But if you think about it for very long, infinity can really mess with your mind. There’s something fundamentally paradoxical about it, and beautiful.

Deep Time is a series all about the natural ecologies of time from To The Best Of Our Knowledge and the Center for Humans and Nature. We'll explore life beyond the clock, develop habits of "timefulness" and learn how to live with greater awareness of the many types of time in our lives.

Original Air Date: June 07, 2025

Interviews In This Hour:
The glorious mathematics of infinity — Checking into the infinity hotel — Finding solace in the nature of space-time — The math and mysticism of Albert Einstein

Guests:
Jordan Ellenberg, Jon Halperin, Michelle Thaller, Kieran Fox

Never want to miss an episode? Subscribe to the podcast.
Want to hear more from us, including extended interviews and favorites from the archive? Subscribe to our newsletter.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hi friends, it's Anne. Today in our ongoing series on deep time, infinity, the longest, deepest time there is, almost impossible to imagine, and yet real enough that you can do math with it. For example, take something as small as the space between zero and one. You can actually divide up that space an infinite number of times. And each of those divisions can also be divided up an infinite number of times, which means infinity is infinitely expanding, or it comes in an infinite number
0:42.4	of sizes. This is head-spinning stuff, right? So this hour, a deeper look into the deepest time
0:49.6	there is infinity.
1:05.1	It's to the best of our knowledge.
1:09.7	I'm Anne Strain Champs, with a new episode in our series on Deep Time.
1:12.3	This is part six, if you're counting.
1:17.5	And in this one, we're tackling the biggest kind of time there is, infinity.
1:21.1	Infinity.
1:30.3	Time that goes on forever, immeasurable, uncountable, fathomless, and also strangely comforting.
1:47.7	Contemplating the Infinite is a time-tested way to shrink the present down to size,
1:53.5	to get a little relief from the pressure of current events. We could probably all use that today.
1:59.4	But if you think about it for very long, infinity will really mess with your mind,
2:03.3	because there is something fundamentally paradoxical about it.
2:16.7	Let me put it to play. Infinity sounds very philosophical and out there and opaque and weird, but if somebody just asks you how many different numbers are there, you're like, well, wait, like, why, how could there be at a limit?
2:23.8	Why would they ever stop? Right? So, on some level, infinity is both bizarre and abstract,
2:29.8	and extremely familiar. This is my neighbor, Jordan Ellenberg. He's one of America's best-known mathematicians, and Jordan and his fellow mathematicians have been fascinated by infinity
2:35.8	ever since the 19th century. That's when George Cantor discovered that, get this, infinity
2:41.8	comes in different sizes. I mean, the idea of a world with more than one kind of infinity
2:50.2	is glorious, but totally incomprehensible.
2:54.9	Does that mean you can add, subtract, divide with infinity?
2:59.3	Jordan says, yeah, but not the way you'd imagine.
3:03.1	Infinity plus one. Well, if you have infinitely many things and then you have one more,
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Wisconsin Public Radio, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Wisconsin Public Radio and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.