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 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 his ability to communicate complex issues of cosmology and physics in a way that is both accessible and fascinating to the lay person. We cover time, space and the universe, but not much more: from the Big Bang creation of the universe, to how time is experienced in Einstein’s relativity, to the fabric of space and the impact of gravity — and why there even is anything, and not nothing — this is a wide ranging conversation.
Greene is impressed with the way that science constantly tests its own hypotheses over time. Every concept, from Newtonian to Einstein to Witten. He 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, 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.
Brian Greene books:
The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality
The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory by Brian Greene
The Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos by Brian Greene
What he is reading:
The Stranger by Albert Camus
Animal Farm: A Fairy Story by George Orwell
1984 by George Orwell
The Trial by Franz Kafka
The Denial of Death by Ernest Becker
The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins
The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins
The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined by Steven Pinker
