Professor Brian Cox: Life After Death & Finding Your Purpose in The Universe!
episodePreviously titled “Brian Cox: Why We Exist At All” — renamed by the publisher on Aug 4, 2026
Transcript
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Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
T-minus three, two, one.
Brian Cox is coming. Guys, come on!
What is Brian Cox’s new live show Emergence and how does it use immersive visuals?
Today, I am interviewing the inimitable. Hang on, let me just do that again. Today, I'm interviewing the inimitable Brian Cox. Not only is he just an absolute boss on astronomy, but he is also just a lovely guy. I can't believe it's you in true life. And he has a gift, and that is explaining things that are actually very complex in a way that even I can understand. Now, Brian, I don't want you to be too shocked, but I'm just going to show you this.
Brian, I'm so unbelievably honoured and excited to have you here. I'm such a huge fan. Me and Michael, my husband, are like massive, massive fans. So it means a lot to be graced by your presence today. Thank you. It's a grand introduction. Yeah, I don't want to embarrass you or anything. But first off, I want to talk about your show before we delve into your life and everything, because Emergence is... Have you just come back from Australia? Were those the first shows?
Yeah, and a bit of Europe before that, and actually a load of little warm-up shows. Little theatres. Lovely. So I've probably done about 100 of them. Wow. Already. But about 50 or 60 were the little theatres. And then we went to some in Europe and then Australia, New Zealand, Singapore. And then here in October.
The thing that really excites me about this show is your screen. Can we just talk about that for a moment? Because it looks a little bit like being at the Sphere in Vegas or something. I mean, it is an enormous...
How did Brian’s music career (Dare, PJ Harvey collaboration) shape his path to science communication?
It is.
You know, it's LED screen. And it was when we first started doing really big shows like arenas. And, you know, the question that arises, how do you do cosmology and astronomy in an arena? It's not like being a comedian. You're not telling jokes. You're talking about things. So what do you do? So LED is the best technology for that, especially because astronomy... You know, with a projector, the blacks on the screen aren't really black. And obviously, astronomy, the night sky, you need the blackness of it. We'll talk about that later. The terrifying darkness of the universe. And LED works for that. So we just, it's always a battle, actually. My promoters here listening, and I'm always saying, I want as much as you can fit into this thing.
And my promoter will say, she'll say, yeah, but that's 10 trucks. Like, I don't care. I want 10 trucks. This is actually living out my rock and roll sort of dream from when I was 18. For me, it's the more trucks, the better. And obviously for the person who's doing the accounts, it's like, no, the less trucks. Do you think it has to do with the microphone? No. And actually, the images we're getting back now from things like the James Webb Space Telescope or the surface of Mars, they're these incredible high resolution images. And I've had friends who've worked on those telescopes and those spacecraft who come and see the images for the first time. big because they used to just look on a computer screen.
You never see them. But they are ultra high resolution things. So you get this, as you said, this kind of immersive sense of the scale of the universe, which is part of the show. So, yeah. But mainly it's because I like the trucks. I just want all those flight cases. You know, when you're in music in the 80s and 90s, it's like flight cases.
Which book changed Brian Cox’s worldview and why does Kepler’s snowflake matter?
And I mean, talking about the music and obviously we're going to touch on this as well. But is it true you've just worked with PJ Harvey on the opening of the show?
Yeah, it was wonderful because she came to, you know, I was obviously a huge fan, but I never met her. And she came to one of my shows. It was a little show in Richmond, actually, Richmond Theatre. And she said, you know, I'd like to meet and say hello. I was like, wow, it's BJ. And then so about a year ago, I had this idea because part of the show, a little bit of the show is about the Voyager spacecraft. So these spacecraft that were launched in 1977. Yeah. So that 49 years in space. They're both in interstellar space now. 70s technology. And we're still talking to them.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–0:34
2
What is Brian Cox’s new live show Emergence and how does it use immersive visuals?
0:34–2:29
3
How did Brian’s music career (Dare, PJ Harvey collaboration) shape his path to science communication?
2:29–4:22
4
Which book changed Brian Cox’s worldview and why does Kepler’s snowflake matter?
4:22–7:10
5
How did the universe form from hydrogen and helium into the elements that make life?
7:10–8:05
6
What did gravitational wave discoveries reveal about where gold and heavy elements come from?
8:05–15:01
7
What does Brian Cox say about death, atoms, identity and why we are ‘patterns’?
15:01–17:04
8
Why does Brian argue space exploration and science shape society and global perspective?
17:04–1:30:49
Speakers
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