The Weaponisation of Science: How to Avoid a Global Catastrophe (Professor Carlo Rovelli)
Radical with Amol Rajan
BBC
4.5 • 919 Ratings
🗓️ 25 September 2025
⏱️ 69 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Physicist Carlo Rovelli thinks we need natural intelligence and not artificial intelligence in an age of confrontation.
Ten years ago he wrote a short book called Seven Brief Lessons on Physics, which became an international bestseller and catapulted him to scientific stardom.
A decade on he thinks the world is at a dangerous moment as the West’s dominance declines and global powers prioritise competition over collaboration.
One area he's most concerned about is AI, which he thinks is overhyped but needs to be controlled nonetheless.
He also explains some mind-bending ideas about time, space and why he thinks the Big Bang was actually a Big Bounce.
GET IN TOUCH * WhatsApp: 0330 123 9480 * Email: radical@bbc.co.uk Episodes of Radical with Amol Rajan are released every Thursday and you can also watch them on BBC iPlayer: https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/m002f1d0/radical-with-amol-rajan Amol Rajan is a presenter of the Today programme on BBC Radio 4. He is also the host of University Challenge on BBC One. Before that, Amol was media editor at the BBC and editor at The Independent.
Radical with Amol Rajan is a Today Podcast. It was made by Lewis Vickers with Grace Reeve. Digital production was by Gabriel Purcell-Davies. Technical production was by Phil Bull. The editor is Sam Bonham. The executive producer is Owenna Griffiths.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts. |
| 0:05.0 | Hello and welcome back to Radical, or indeed, welcome for the first time to any new listeners. |
| 0:11.8 | I'm going to start today on a slightly different note to usual by telling you a very, very, very brief story. |
| 0:17.5 | It's about me when I was a boy, because when I was a boy, I had a dream. |
| 0:21.1 | And that dream was to be the greatest spin bowler of all time. England's answer to my hero, |
| 0:27.7 | the late great Australian Shane Warren. But that dream didn't really work out because I wasn't |
| 0:32.4 | nearly good enough. So I got a different dream. And this dream, which kind of hijacked my life |
| 0:37.1 | for quite a long time, |
| 0:38.2 | was one that came from my dear dad, though I certainly shared it with him. And that was that I |
| 0:42.4 | should win the Nobel Prize. And we always thought my best shop might be the Nobel for literature, |
| 0:47.1 | which he was very keen for me to win. Bertrand Russell, Winston Churchill, two men who've been a big |
| 0:51.8 | influence of me, won the Nobel for literature in 1950 and 1953. |
| 0:55.7 | And who knows? It might yet happen. |
| 0:58.0 | But the really cool one, the greatest honour of them all, was the Nobel Prize for Physics. |
| 1:03.7 | And I really wanted to be a physicist. |
| 1:06.0 | I absolutely loved theoretical physics in particular when I was a teenager. I wanted to study at |
| 1:12.1 | university. I couldn't because I had the wrong A level. I did English maths and physics, but |
| 1:16.4 | if you want to do physics, kids, you've got to do further maths usually. So I ended up doing |
| 1:21.2 | English instead. But maybe in a parallel universe, I'd be presenting a podcast about physics. |
| 1:26.9 | And my two favourite books when I was a |
| 1:28.6 | teenager, the one that worked out, he wasn't going to be a cricket player, but did want to win the |
| 1:31.8 | Nobel for physics. My two favorite books, which you really, really must read. They were Stephen |
... |
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