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
History of science
How we came to know the size of the Universe – and what mysteries remain
26 minutes
video
Knowledge
Why David Deutsch believes good explanations are the antidote to bad philosophy
10 minutes
video
Architecture
A lush tour of Fallingwater – the Frank Lloyd Wright design that changed architecture
14 minutes
video
Philosophy of mind
‘Am I not at least something?’ A surreal dive into Descartes’s Meditations
3 minutes
video
History of science
Ideas ‘of pure genius’ – how astronomers have measured the Universe across history
29 minutes
video
Art
Background music was the radical invention of a trailblazing composer
17 minutes
video
Metaphysics
What do past, present and future mean to a philosopher of time?
55 minutes
video
Computing and artificial intelligence
Why large language models are mysterious – even to their creators
8 minutes
video
Beauty and aesthetics
In art, the sublime is a feedback loop, evolving with whatever’s next to threaten us
9 minutes