Podcasts · Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
366 | Jim Al-Khalili on Time, Quantum, Biology, and Cosmology
· 1 h 15 min · Episode 366
Episode 366 | Jim Al-Khalili on Time, Quantum, Biology, and Cosmology
Everyone lives through time, but we continue to struggle to fully understand it. We remain unsure whether time is fundamental or emergent, why it has an arrow pointing from past to future, and how that arrow connects to our experience of time's passage. Jim Al-Khalili's new book is On Time: The Physics that Makes the Universe Tick. We discuss what time is at the most basic level, and how it connects to open questions in biology, cosmology, and quantum mechanics.
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Blog post with transcript: https://preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2026/08/31/366-jim-al-khalili-on-time-quantum-biology-and-cosmology/
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Jim Al-Khalili received his Ph.D. in physics from the University of Surrey. He is currently Distinguished Emeritus Professor of Physics at Surrey. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society, and has served as past president of the British Science Association. He has been awarded the Michael Faraday Prize by the Royal Society, and has been appointed an appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire.
• Web site • University of Surrey web page • Google Scholar publications • Amazon author page • Wikipedia • YouTube
Links in the notes 10
- https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691267036/on-time
- https://statskey.ai/mindscape
- https://preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2026/08/31/366-jim-al-khalili-on-time-quantum-biology-and-cosmology/
- https://www.patreon.com/seanmcarroll
- https://www.jimal-khalili.com/
- https://www.surrey.ac.uk/people/jim-al-khalili
- https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=V9EAlmIAAAAJ&hl=en
- https://www.amazon.com/stores/Jim-Al-Khalili/author/B001HD1W88
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Al-Khalili
- https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLmaqaZoEaBONdWb3BuJPHy189Us_wq1d6
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