Get curated editors’ picks, peeks behind the scenes, film recommendations and more.
Leonard Susskind, a professor of theoretical physics at Stanford University in California and a self-described ‘beauty-symmetry-elegance heretic’, rejects the popular notion that there’s something wonderfully symmetrical and simple about the building blocks of our world. Rather, he contends, conceptions of physics as elegant and uncluttered are shortcuts created by our pattern-seeking brains that rarely hold up to scientific scrutiny. In this interview from the PBS series Closer to Truth, Susskind argues that, dating back to the Ancient Greeks, what’s often been perceived as elegant simplicity was almost always a fiction or an approximation covering for a much messier reality.
Video by Closer to Truth
video
Film and visual culture
Our world has very different contours when a millimetre is blown up to a full screen
8 minutes
video
Bioethics
What a 1970 experiment reveals about the possibility and perils of ‘head transplants’
6 minutes
video
Beauty and aesthetics
Can you see music in this painting? How synaesthesia fuelled Kandinsky’s art
10 minutes
video
Astronomy
The remarkable innovations inspired by our need to know the night sky
5 minutes
video
Knowledge
Why it takes more than a lifetime to truly understand a single meadow
11 minutes
video
Physics
Groundbreaking visualisations show how the world of the nucleus gives rise to our own
10 minutes
video
Earth science and climate
There’s a ‘climate bomb’ ticking beneath the Arctic ice. How can we prepare?
8 minutes
video
Political philosophy
The radical activist couple who fought for social change in the courtroom
21 minutes
video
Physics
To change the way you see the Moon, view it from the Sun’s perspective
5 minutes