This week on our Masters in Business radio podcast, we sit down with Brian Greene, who runs the Institute for Theoretical Physics at Columbia University, and is the organizer of New York City’s 10th annual World Science Festival, which begins this week on May 30th. He is the author of numerous books on Cosmology, including The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory.
Professor Greene’s gift is an ability to communicate complex issues of cosmology and physics in a way that is both accessible and fascinating to the layperson. Our conversation covers time, space and the universe (not much more than that), including the Big Bang creation of the universe, how time is experienced in Einstein’s relativity, the fabric of space and the impact of gravity — and why there even is anything, and not nothing. It is a very far ranging conversation, spanning the entire history of time and space.
Greene is impressed with the way that science constantly tests its own hypotheses over time. He notes that every concept, from Newtonian Physics to Einstein’s relativity to Witten’s string theories have undergone peer review, comment and criticism. He also explains how the New York City’s 10th annual World Science Festival came about, and why science should be part of everyone’s life.
All of the books we discuss are here.
You can stream/download the full conversation, including the podcast extras, on iTunes, SoundCloud, Overcast and on Bloomberg. Our earlier podcasts can all be found on iTunes, Soundcloud, Overcast and Bloomberg.
Next week, we speak with William Sharpe, Nobel Prize laureate who created the Capital Asset Pricing Model and a method for calculating risk-adjusted return that has become known as the Sharpe Ratio.
