The Biggest Ideas in the Universe: Introduction

The author is [link] Shortly after Covid19 started last year, he started a series of videos called "The Biggest Ideas in the Universe", playlist here: [this video] I've watched quite a lot of this so-called 'popular' hard science material on youtube, and this series was by far the best I've run across. His approach is a bit different from most others, and his presentation is engaging, approachable but also fairly substantial. Specifically, he doesn't elide all of the relevant math, but doesn't get too deep at the same time. You'll see a lot of integrals, derivatives and graphs. For example, he talks about an hour on the big idea of 'Change', and another "Space". Perhaps even more interesting are the followup Q&A videos, which are as long as and perhaps even more detailed than the source. Do give the linked six minute intro video a watch.

Ignoring the moral question in the story, many people are satisfied by saying "haha funny, the cat is both dead and alive" and they just move on. Reading Pratchett for almost 30 years, it has fueled quite an interested in quantum mechanics in me, he subtly introduces QM teasers in almost every book I read. Particularly Mort. As I dropped out of highschool, I didnt have the luck to properly study physics, but in my 30s, I my existential crisis hit, as they say, a man dies twice, and the stupid half dead cat wouldn't leave me alone. And one night the omnipotent youtube algorithm recommended Susskind's lectures to me, then Feynman, Shankar, .. it just kept going. Now I watch and re-watch them but take screenshots and send them to claude when I am confused (which is still most of the time). If you are a layman like me and just want to know what is up with the cat, I encourage you to watch Sean Carroll's lectures (dont miss the Q&A videos) and it will for sure allow you to ask at least better questions. I love that cat so much. --- Sean Carroll: [this video] Richard Feynman: [link] and [link] Leonard Susskind: [link] Ramamurti Shankar: [link] Barton Zwiebach: [link] Carl Bender: [link] If you struggle with calculus, I found Herb Gross to be partucularly good Herb Gross: [link] Of course watch 3blue1brown, alphaphoenix, styropyro etc as well