Ralph Leighton

speaker

164 appearances 2 recordings 1 series first heard May 2026 last heard 29 May

Ralph Leighton’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in May 2026 with 2.

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Freakonomics Radio · The Vanishing Mr. Feynman (Update) · 29 May 2026 podcast

I think it's much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong.

I have approximate answers and possible beliefs and different degrees of certainty about different things, but I'm not absolutely sure of anything.

I don't feel frightened by not knowing things.

by being lost in a mysterious universe without having any purpose, which is the way it really is, as far as I can tell, possibly.

It doesn't frighten me.

It's a strange feeling that nothing is fixed.

I know that makes some people uncomfortable.

It's like, no, give me the answer now.

I want to know the formula.

Give me the formula.

Well, if you can get the attitude that it's okay that things are not fixed and it's fun to discover new material, the world's more interesting than you thought.

For many years, Feynman would go over to England with his family in the summer because his wife, Gwyneth, was from Yorkshire.

And one of those summers, a BBC documentary filmmaker named Christopher Sykes interviewed Feynman at length, sitting in a living room with a beautiful garden outside.

And apparently violating all of the rules at the time of what you do for a documentary.

Because here was a headshot of Feynman speaking and gesticulating, but no cutaways.

No fancy stuff, just a guy talking.

In January of 1988, I told Sykes, you better hurry up and get out here because I think Feynman is not doing well.

And so Sykes came out in January of 1988.

And you can tell from how Feynman looks in that documentary versus the others, how much he had changed in his physical appearance from those surgeries.

I was at one of my weekly dinners at the Feynman's and I told him how I was going to get a geography class to teach.

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