Uploaded March 2025 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago

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Dr. Thomas Rudelius, early universe cosmologist and professor of physics at Durham University, sits down with me to discuss whether cosmology indicates that the universe began to exist, what it might mean for spacetime to "emerge" from a deeper reality, and whether the fine-tuning of the laws of physics indicates design behind the universe.

EPISODE CHAPTERS
00:00:00 Introduction
00:00:06 Did the universe begin to exist?
00:06:18 The emergence of spacetime
00:13:32 Fine-tuning of the universe
00:16:10 "Other kinds of life" objection
00:24:22 "Future physics" objection
00:33:51 Different types of "fine-tuning" in physics
00:38:43 "Normalizability" objection
00:47:30 The measure problem
00:58:16 The design hypothesis
01:03:11 "Huge universe" objection to design
01:09:51 Is design a scientific or metaphysical hypothesis?