Ep 75 - Dr. Michio Kaku ”The Future of Humanity”

The Deconstructionists

John Williamson

Religion, Religion & Spirituality

4.4 • 823 Ratings

🗓️ 24 April 2018

⏱️ 70 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This week we are thrilled to bring you our interview with Dr. Michio Kaku! Dr. Michio Kaku is the co-creator of string field theory, a branch of string theory. He received a B.S. (summa cum laude) from Harvard University in 1968 where he came first in his physics class. He went on to the Berkeley Radiation Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley and received a Ph.D. in 1972. In 1973, he held a lectureship at Princeton University. Michio continues Einstein’s search for a “Theory of Everything,” seeking to unify the four fundamental forces of the universe—the strong force, the weak force, gravity and electromagnetism. He is the author of several scholarly, Ph.D. level textbooks and has had more than 70 articles published in physics journals, covering topics such as superstring theory, supergravity, supersymmetry, and hadronic physics. He holds the Henry Semat Chair and Professorship in theoretical physics at the City College of New York (CUNY), where he has taught for over 25 years. He has also been a visiting professor at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, as well as New York University (NYU). Kaku has starred in a myriad of science programming for television including Discovery, Science Channel, BBC, ABC, and History Channel. Beyond his numerous bestselling books, he has also been a featured columnist for top popular science publications such as Popular Mechanics, Discover, COSMOS, WIRED, New Scientist, Newsweek, and many others. Dr. Kaku was also one of the subjects of the award-winning documentary, ME & ISAAC NEWTON by Michael Apted. He is a news contributor to CBS:This Morning and is a regular guest on news programs around the world including CBS, Fox News, CNBC, MSNBC, CNN, RT. He has also made guest appearances on all major talk shows including The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, The Colbert Report with Stephen Colbert, The Late Show with David Letterman, The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, Conan on TBS, and others. (Selected) Published Works: Hyperspace: A Scientific Odyssey Through Parallel Universes, Time Warps, and the Tenth Dimension; Parallel Worlds: The Science of Alternative Universes and Our Future in the Cosmos; Physics of the Impossible; The Future of the Mind: The Scientific Quest to Understand, Enhance, and Empower the Mind; The Future of Humanity: Terraforming Mars, Interstellar Travel, Immortality, and Our Destiny Beyond Earth. Guest Website/Social Media: http://mkaku.org http://bigthink.com/experts/michiokaku Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/michiokaku/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/michiokaku Special Guest Music Provided by: Aqualung Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AqualungOfficial Twiter: https://twitter.com/aqualungmusic iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/memory-man/499389350 https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/10-futures/941780895 Enjoy the songs? Songs featured on this episode were: “Cinderella, Pressure Suit, & Something to Believe in” from the album, Memory Man. “Seventeens” & “To The Wonder” ft. Kina Grannis from the album, 10 Futures. Aqualung’s music is available on iTunes, Apple Music, Spotify, and anywhere good music is sold! DECONSTRUCTIONISTS LIVE! We have a live event coming up this week in Denver, Colorado! Saturday, April 28th at The Savoy at Curtis Park at 7pm. Tickets are only $10 and can be purchased here: www.thedeconstructionists.com/events Donate/Patreon: Check out our website www.thedeconstructionists.com to become part of our Patreon family, listen to all of our past episodes, subscribe for future episodes, connect with us on social media, read our blog, or get your hands on one of our many cool t-shirt designs or pint glasses. Website designed by @ryanbattles The Deconstructionists Podcast is produced by Nicholas Rowe at National Audio Preservation Society: A full service recording studio and creative habitat, located in Heath, Ohio. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-deconstructionists/donations Advertisin Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Transcript

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0:00.0	Do you believe in God? They asked Einstein.
0:02.0	And Einstein said, well, there are two kinds of God.
0:05.0	There's the personal God, the God that you pray to, the God that smites the Philistines,
0:11.0	the God that gives you the bicycle at Christmas.
0:14.0	And Einstein thought that, no, God is much bigger than simply a God that kills your enemies and rewards you for being a good boy
0:23.1	at Christmas time. No, he didn't believe in a personal god. He believed in the god of Spinoza,
0:29.9	the god of harmony, beauty, simplicity, that the universe is so gorgeous and so simple that it could
0:37.3	not have been an accident. For example,
0:41.0	on a sheet of paper, you can write down almost all the known laws of physics, maxes equations for
0:47.0	light, Einstein's equations for gravity, and the standard model for subatomic particles. On a sheet of
0:53.0	paper, you can write down everything known about the universe, which is amazing.
0:58.0	Now, of course, that sheet of paper is incomplete.
1:00.3	That's where I come in.
1:01.9	I mean, I work on string theory, which we think can complete that sheet of paper.
1:05.9	But the very fact that we can talk about that is amazing.
1:09.7	So, Einstein thought himself as a young boy entering a
1:14.8	library, that this whole ocean of book was ahead of him, but all he could do is take the first
1:21.8	chapter of the first book, first paragraph, and read it. So this library was the universe, this universe of knowledge, and he could
1:31.5	only read the first chapter and the first paragraph. So he believed in the god, the god of
1:39.1	Spinoza, the god of order, harmony, simplicity, because the universe could have been random.
1:44.4	The universe could have been ugly. The universe could have been ugly.
1:46.0	The universe could have not any stable matter at all.
	...

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