Brian Greene, "Until the End of Time: Mind, Matter, and Our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe" (Random House, 2020)
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What inspired Brian Greene to write *Until the End of Time* and how did the idea develop?
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This is where we put books that we believe will be of interest to everyone who listens to the NBN across all the channels. We have such an interview today. And it will be of interest to everyone because it's about everything. It's with Brian Greene, of whom you may have heard. You might have seen him on television, for example, in the miniseries Elegant Universe. And he talked to John Weston, one of our best interviewers, about his book Until the End of Time. Mind, Matter, and Our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe. It's a fantastic interview, and Brian really does present a theory of everything, both in the sense of the state of the academic union, that is what all the disciplines think about everything, but also covering such things as cosmology, evolution, consciousness, computation, art, religion, and how we should understand who we are as humans and our place in the universe.
I found this mind-blowing, and I think you will too. So, without further ado, here's the interview.
Hello, and welcome back to New Books in Science, a podcast channel on the New Books Network. I'm John Weston, and today I'll be talking to Brian Greene about his 2020 book, Until the End of Time, Mind, Matter, and Our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe. Brian Green is a professor of mathematics and physics at Columbia University in the city of New York, where he is the director of the Institute for Strings, Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, and co-founder and chair of the World Science Festival. He's well known for his TV miniseries about string theory and the nature of reality, one of which is The Elegant Universe, which ties in with his best-selling 1999 book of the same name. Today we'll be talking about his latest popular book, Until the End of Time, Mind, Matter, and Our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe, published in 2020 by Penguin.
So welcome, Brian. Thanks for making the time to meet today. Oh, thank you. Pleased to be here. I just wanted to start off with a couple of general questions about the book. This is a popular level book. It's got 170 pages of references and end notes, so there's a lot of detail in there for the interested reader. It's about the cosmos and how we understand it. It gives the reader a theory of everything in the sense of both a state of the academic union covering cosmology, evolution, consciousness and computation, art and religion, as well as autobiographical vignettes, which you use to illustrate and personalize your explanations. But it shows us a way of responding to or apprehending the subject matter as well.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What inspired Brian Greene to write *Until the End of Time* and how did the idea develop?
0:00–15:14
2
How does Greene use the concept of nested stories to connect physics, biology, art and spirituality?
15:14–31:02
3
What is the role of entropy and the second law of thermodynamics in shaping our sense of time and memory?
31:02–45:46
4
How did Alan Guth’s discovery of cosmic inflation influence the book’s discussion of the universe’s early moments?
45:46–59:38
5
Why does Greene favor the de Broglie‑Bohm interpretation of quantum mechanics over the Copenhagen view?
59:38–1:14:11
6
What arguments does Greene give for the illusion of free will and its practical consequences?
1:14:11–1:29:06
7
How does the book reconcile scientific explanations with religious and spiritual experience?
1:29:06–1:46:00
8
What does Greene say about the ultimate fate of thought, Boltzmann brains, and meaning in an evolving universe?
1:46:00–1:58:49
Speakers
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