Quantum Refuge

Radiolab

WNYC Studios

Science, Natural Sciences, History, Society & Culture, Documentary

4.6 • 43.5K Ratings

🗓️ 14 November 2025

⏱️ 48 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Qasem Waleed is a 28-year-old physicist who has lived in Gaza his whole life. In 2024, he joined a chorus of Palestinians sharing videos and pictures and writing about the chaos and violence they were living through, as Israel’s military bombardment devastated their lives. But Qasem was trying to describe his reality through the lens of the most notoriously confusing and inscrutable field of science ever, quantum mechanics. We talked to him, from a cafe near the Al-Mawasi section of Gaza, to find out why. And over the course of several conversations, he told us how this reality-breaking corner of science has helped him survive. And how such unspeakable violence actually let him understand, in a visceral way, quantum mechanics’ most counter-intuitive ideas. Special thanks to Katya Rogers, Karim Kattan, Allan Adams, Sarah Qari, Soren Wheeler, and Pat WaltersEPISODE CREDITS: Reported by - Lulu MillerProduced by - Jessica Yungwith mixing help from - Jeremy BloomFact-checking by - Emily Kreigerand Edited by - Alex Neason EPISODE CITATIONS: Videos - A Brief History of Quantum Mechanics with Sean Carroll, The Royal Institution (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hVmeOCJjOU) Introduction to Superposition, with MIT’s Allan Adams (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZ3bPUKo5zc) The Quantum Wavefunction, Explained (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOI4DlWQ_1w) Articles - Read a selection of Qasem’s published essays about his life in Gaza and the quantum world: I am stuck in a box like Schrodinger’s in Gaza (https://zpr.io/ALDVi9E5bRt8) Israel has turned Gaza’s summer into a weapon (https://zpr.io/YS4WK4hVQC5T) The Physics of Death in Gaza (https://zpr.io/hxsgxicVqPAd) Signup for our newsletter!! It includes short essays, recommendations, and details about other ways to interact with the show. Sign up (https://radiolab.org/newsletter)! Radiolab is supported by listeners like you. Support Radiolab by becoming a member of The Lab (https://members.radiolab.org/) today. Follow our show on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @radiolab, and share your thoughts with us by emailing [email protected]. Leadership support for Radiolab’s science programming is provided by the Simons Foundation and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Wait, you're listening?
0:03.1	Okay.
0:04.4	All right.
0:05.6	Okay.
0:07.0	All right.
0:08.7	You're listening to Radio Lab.
0:11.4	Radio Lab.
0:11.9	From W.N.Y.
0:13.9	C.
0:14.8	See?
0:15.1	Yeah. I guess where I really want to begin is actually just because so much of this is about reality
0:32.6	and different realities and inquiring about realities.
0:37.8	I wonder where you stand on the many world's interpretation,
0:42.8	this idea of many worlds parallel universes.
0:45.9	What do you think about that?
0:49.2	I think it's very interesting because for a person who lives this madness in Gaza,
0:55.0	imagining that there is another world, another peaceful world that is away from all this madness,
1:01.0	away from all this horror, where I have another version of me living peacefully, just living alive,
1:09.0	is very intriguing. But scientifically speaking, I don't actually believe in it so much.
1:14.6	You don't, okay.
1:15.6	Yeah, I don't believe in it.
1:17.6	This is Qasem Walid, a 28-year-old physicist who has lived his whole life in Gaza.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

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

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