- 1 hour 39 minutes#197 - Brian Keating - What Came Before the Big Bang & Does Time Exist?
Brian Keating joins me to explore one of the deepest unanswered questions in physics: what is time, and why does it only appear to move in one direction? Brian argues that time may not exist as a fundamental feature of reality and explains why understanding space, matter and energy does not mean we understand the universe itself.
We discuss what may have existed before the Big Bang, why something cannot truly come from nothing and how Brian’s work with the Simons Observatory could detect gravitational waves produced during the universe’s earliest moments. Brian also explains the limits of scientific proof, what dark matter really means and why films such as Interstellar remain scientifically implausible despite their attention to detail.
The conversation then turns from cosmic time to the human experience of it: mortality, family, meaning and attention. We discuss UFO disclosure, collapsing trust in institutions and whether artificial intelligence can ever reproduce the embodied human insight that allowed Einstein to transform physics. Brian argues that AI remains a tool built to serve humanity and that we must stop apologising for humanity’s greatness.
The first 100 people in the U.K. to join Brian Keating’s Monday M.A.G.I.C. Message newsletter here BrianKeating.com/peter are entered to win a 4.3-billion-year-old fragment of the early solar system— older than Earth itself, delivered to your door. Winners must live in the U.K. only due to shipping restrictions.
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TIMESTAMPS
00:00:00 - Time Doesn’t Exist
00:00:52 - Looking Outward—and Inward
00:01:41 - Why Physics Cannot Explain Time
00:04:59 - What Happened Before the Big Bang?
00:07:46 - Why Interstellar Is Scientifically Implausible
00:10:06 - Why Time Only Moves Forward
00:18:10 - Something Cannot Come From Nothing
00:21:27 - Where Does the Universe Exist?
00:23:03 - Reaching the First Trillionth of a Second
00:29:21 - Science Can Disprove, Not Prove
00:32:09 - What Dark Matter Really Means
00:38:30 - The Experiment Brian May Never Finish
00:42:03 - Detecting the Birth of the Universe
00:48:14 - Looking Inward for Meaning
00:52:15 - Why Mortality Makes Life Precious
00:54:29 - If Life Had a Forward Button
01:01:26 - UFOs, Belief and the Evidence Problem
01:12:24 - We Are Wasting a Civilisational Opportunity
01:21:03 - Why AI Couldn’t Recreate Einstein
01:32:44 - Holding a Piece of the Early Solar System
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CONTACT PETE
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FILMED BY CURTIS TAYLOR
› https://www.curttaylor.co.uk/
EDITED BY CONOR MCCORMACK
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30 July 2026, 5:11 pm - 2 hours 9 minutes#196 - Sam Bowman - The U.K. Is Becoming a Poor Country
Sam Bowman joins me to discuss why Britain is approaching two lost decades of stagnant median wages and why the country is now far poorer than it should be. Sam argues that Britain does not lack talented people, capital or ideas; it has created a centralised political and regulatory system that makes building, investing, hiring and experimentation increasingly difficult.
At the centre of Sam’s argument is his “housing theory of everything”. Britain’s refusal to build enough homes in its most productive cities has made housing unaffordable, delayed family formation, reduced social mobility, weakened productivity and transformed property from somewhere to live into a scarce financial asset. We discuss why stamp duty locks people in place, how planning applications can cost hundreds of millions of pounds and why almost everyone has been given the power to veto growth.
We also discuss why inflation destroys social trust, how zero growth turns politics into a fight over a shrinking pie, why the civil service rewards legislation and risk avoidance, and how Britain’s “vetocracy” prevents almost anything from being built. Finally, we explore whether AI could release a new wave of productivity—or expose Britain’s inability to build the energy, infrastructure and institutions the technology requires.
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TIMESTAMPS
00:00:00 - Britain Has Stopped Building
00:00:53 - Britain’s Centralised State
00:05:20 - How Post-War Centralisation Broke Growth
00:08:25 - Two Lost Decades of Wage Stagnation
00:20:15 - Inflation Destroys Trust
00:22:03 - Zero Growth Makes Politics Zero-Sum
00:26:56 - The Housing Theory of Everything
00:30:30 - London’s Housing Misallocation
00:34:31 - Housing and Falling Birth Rates
00:38:05 - Why Homes Became Financial Assets
00:45:30 - Stamp Duty Is Britain’s Worst Tax
00:51:42 - Britain’s Broken Planning System
00:55:30 - The £297 Million Planning Application
01:00:00 - Give Local Government the Upside
01:04:23 - Can Britain Still Recover?
01:11:33 - How Quickly the Energy Debate Changed
01:29:37 - Government Rewards Risk Avoidance
01:37:03 - The Vetocracy
01:54:44 - Growth Unlocks Everything Else
01:56:02 - AI and Britain’s Future
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CONTACT PETE
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SPONSORS
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FILMED BY CURTIS TAYLOR
› https://www.curttaylor.co.uk/
EDITED BY CONOR MCCORMACK
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28 July 2026, 5:05 pm - 2 hours 13 minutes#195 - Lisa McKenzie & Keith Gildart - Who Is Britain For? The Destruction of the Working Class
Britain did not simply leave its working class behind. Sociologist Lisa McKenzie and historian and former coal miner Keith Gildart argue that political and economic decisions deliberately dismantled the jobs, institutions, culture and communities that once gave working-class life security, identity and meaning.
They trace the destruction of Britain’s industrial economy, the decline of trade unions, Labour’s abandonment of its traditional voters and the disappearance of secure work, affordable housing and genuine social mobility. They also examine immigration and low wages, class prejudice, education, the rise of Reform and why so many people no longer believe Westminster represents them.
I question Lisa and Keith on private education, workers’ rights, taxation, inequality and whether any political party can reverse Britain’s decline. It leads to the central question of the episode: who is Britain actually for now?
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TIMESTAMPS
00:00:00 - Who Is Britain For Now?
00:00:39 - What Is the Working Class Today?
00:07:12 - Britain Deliberately Dismantled Its Working Class
00:09:42 - The End of Britain’s Industrial Economy
00:12:43 - Keith’s Life as a Coal Miner
00:16:11 - What Happens When a Pit Town Dies?
00:19:51 - The Loss of Working-Class Identity
00:23:20 - Why Labour Stopped Saying “Working Class”
00:24:20 - Class Is About More Than Income
00:28:12 - Education, Opportunity and the Working Class
00:34:13 - The Left Has Forgotten Its Purpose
00:38:16 - Has Britain Created a Dependency Class?
00:46:33 - What Working-Class Teenagers Want
00:56:37 - Britain’s Deep Class Prejudice
01:01:18 - Immigration, Low Wages and the Working Class
01:17:44 - Why Working-Class Voters Moved to Reform
01:34:30 - Britain’s Crisis of Social Democracy
01:41:00 - The Working and Middle Classes Are Being Destroyed
01:59:37 - Who Is Britain Really For?
02:05:08 - What Is Britain’s Recovery Story?
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CONTACT PETE
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CONNECT WITH LISA MCKENZIE
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› Research Portal – https://researchportal.beds.ac.uk/en/persons/lisa-mckenzie/
› Getting By – https://policy.bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/getting-by
CONNECT WITH KEITH GILDART
› University of Wolverhampton – https://researchers.wlv.ac.uk/Keith.Gildart
› Keeping The Faith – https://manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9780719097102/
SPONSORS
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FILMED BY CURTIS TAYLOR
› https://www.curttaylor.co.uk/
EDITED BY CONOR MCCORMACK
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Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
25 July 2026, 5:08 pm - 1 hour 59 seconds#194 - Charles Goodhart: The Money Endgame - Debt, Inflation & Central Bank Failure
Charles Goodhart joins me to discuss why Britain’s decline did not start in 2008, why the post-war economic boom may have been a temporary lucky era and why the next 30 to 40 years could be far harder than people expect.
Charles explains how ageing populations, falling birth rates, rising dependency ratios, public debt, defence spending, climate costs and political short-termism are creating a fiscal crisis that governments do not want to admit. We discuss why central banks may struggle to keep inflation under control, why politicians cannot win elections by telling voters the truth, and why democracy itself may block the long-term planning the country needs.
We also get into immigration, housing, land tax, AI, the forgotten working class, white-collar job risk, the triple lock, why GDP does not equal welfare or happiness, why Britain struggles to build, and why the Western world may never return to the conditions that made the years from 1950 to 2020 so unusually prosperous.
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TIMESTAMPS:
00:00:00 - Massive Inflation Is Coming
00:00:54 - Britain’s Decline
00:03:57 - The Post-War Boom
00:05:09 - Decades Of Decline
00:07:14 - What Keeps Britain Afloat?
00:09:11 - Immigration And Dependency
00:11:55 - The Fiscal Trap
00:13:34 - Government Does Too Much
00:14:28 - Why Politicians Can’t Tell The Truth
00:16:39 - Are We Heading For Bankruptcy?
00:20:05 - Higher Inflation Is Coming
00:22:39 - The Temporary Lucky Era
00:25:39 - Tax Land, Not Work
00:28:08 - Housing And Fertility
00:31:30 - The Forgotten Working Class
00:32:41 - AI And White-Collar Jobs
00:36:01 - The Middle Ground Failed?
00:44:08 - Democracy Blocks The Fix
00:50:49 - GDP Is Not Happiness
00:56:35 - We Didn’t Know How Lucky We Were
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CONTACT PETE
› Website – http://petermccormack.com
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CONNECT WITH CHARLES GOODHART
› LSE / Financial Markets Group – https://www.fmg.ac.uk/people/charles-goodhart
› The Unanchored Central Banker – https://unanchoredcentralbanker.com/
› The Great Demographic Reversal – https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-42657-6
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FILMED BY CURTIS TAYLOR
› https://www.curttaylor.co.uk/
EDITED BY CONOR MCCORMACK
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Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
21 July 2026, 4:49 pm - 1 hour 39 minutes#193 - David Goodhart - AI Is Coming For The Graduate Elite
David Goodhart joins me to discuss whether AI is about to do to the graduate class what globalisation did to factory workers, and why Britain’s political settlement may be breaking apart.
David explains why Britain has overproduced people with generalist academic skills, how the “anywheres” came to dominate politics, culture and the economy, and why the “somewheres” have increasingly turned to Brexit, populism, Reform and Restore as a reaction against a country they no longer feel represents them.
We also discuss whether anything has actually got better in Britain over the last 15 years, why the state seems unable to get things done, immigration, multiculturalism, deindustrialisation, care work, the collapse of trust in politicians, and why David still believes Britain has the ingredients to recover.
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TIMESTAMPS:
00:00:00 - Graduates Are Next
00:00:50 - AI and the Graduate Class
00:05:42 - A New Class System
00:07:45 - Anywheres and Somewheres
00:10:20 - Why Populism Appeals
00:15:03 - Brexit and Anywhere Dominance
00:16:05 - Britain’s Political Confusion
00:22:28 - Did Populism Fail?
00:27:19 - Bridging Britain’s Divide
00:31:54 - Losing Trust in Politicians
00:34:07 - Britain’s Tax Burden
00:35:39 - Why Business Feels Impossible
00:38:42 - Two Experiences of Multiculturalism
00:40:41 - The Care Dilemma
00:49:53 - Has Anything Got Better?
00:53:30 - Free Speech and Online Safety
00:55:45 - Productive vs Unproductive Wealth
01:00:33 - Why The State Can’t Act
01:07:21 - The Graduate Elite Is Crumbling
01:10:40 - Britain’s Good Ingredients
01:15:31 - Politics Needs More Than Economics
01:20:36 - Can Britain Still Recover?
01:34:06 - David’s Books
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CONNECT WITH DAVID GOODHART
› Website – https://davidgoodhart.com/
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SPONSORS
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FILMED BY CURTIS TAYLOR
› https://www.curttaylor.co.uk/
EDITED BY CONOR MCCORMACK
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Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
14 July 2026, 5:22 pm - 1 hour 34 minutes#192 - Amy Webb - The Future of Work, AI & Human Labor
Amy Webb joins me to discuss why artificial intelligence is not just another technology shift, but a civilisation-level reordering of work, power, wealth, biology and society.
Amy explains why the real AI question is not simply which jobs disappear, but which people become vulnerable. We discuss thinkers vs think-nots, why human capital may stop being the main driver of productivity and wealth, how GDP and unemployment could rise together, and why the economy may thrive while having less use for human labour.
We also get into China’s AI strategy, why governments are failing to plan for the transition, whether AI companies owe people for the data and knowledge they have absorbed, Amy’s idea of contribution credit, the limits of UBI, the future of synthetic biology and longevity, and why the current structures of regulation, politics and economics no longer make sense for the world we are entering.
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TIMESTAMPS:
00:00:00 - The Economy May Not Need You
00:01:13 - Humanity-Scale Reordering
00:04:25 - Show Us Receipts
00:07:10 - Peter’s AI Assistant
00:08:00 - Three Years In Six Weeks
00:08:46 - AI Is Not One Technology
00:12:00 - Self-Improving Technology
00:13:30 - Thinkers And Think-Nots
00:16:44 - How To Become A Thinker
00:21:23 - Failed Transition Planning
00:23:58 - China’s AI Strategy
00:28:31 - What Happens Without Labour?
00:30:56 - Lights Out Industrialism
00:33:47 - AI Collapsing The Pyramid
00:35:12 - We Are Gen T
00:41:39 - Contribution Credit
00:52:43 - Should AI Be Regulated?
00:58:52 - What Futurists Actually Do
01:03:54 - AI And Biology
01:30:16 - Regulation Can’t Keep Up
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CONNECT WITH AMY WEBB
› Website – https://substack.com/@amywebbfuturist
› Future Today Strategy Group – https://ftsg.com/
› Amy at FTSG – https://ftsg.com/member/amy-webb/
› X/Twitter – https://x.com/amywebb
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FILMED BY CURTIS TAYLOR
› https://www.curttaylor.co.uk/
EDITED BY CONOR MCCORMACK
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10 July 2026, 2:23 pm - 1 hour 11 minutes#191 - Thomas Pacchia - AI Will Expose The Fake World
Thomas Pacchia joins me to discuss why the world feels fake, why trust in institutions is collapsing and why AI may make the crisis far worse before it helps solve it.
Thomas explains why politics, media, censorship, government waste, algorithmic manipulation and broken public services are pushing people into a world where almost nothing feels reliable. We discuss America’s political divide, Britain’s failing state, welfare traps, the blob, free speech, the collapse of trust and why so many people feel trapped inside systems they no longer believe in.
We also get into Peter’s AI project Show Us Receipts, how AI could be used to fact-check politicians and government contracts, why centralised platforms can still control what people see, and why Thomas believes decentralisation, self-sovereignty, privacy, Bitcoin, churches and pubs may be the only realistic way back to something human.
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TIMESTAMPS:
00:00:00 - AI Psychosis
00:01:02 - The Fake World
00:02:28 - A Global Reset
00:04:11 - Is America Recovering?
00:08:36 - The Blob
00:11:40 - Collapse and War
00:13:30 - Brother Against Brother
00:15:11 - Broken Incentives
00:16:20 - Killing Productivity
00:19:27 - Money in Politics
00:25:00 - Politics as Team Sport
00:28:53 - Where Does This Lead?
00:30:51 - Were Libertarians Right?
00:33:16 - Building Parallel Systems
00:36:23 - Most People Are Trapped
00:45:27 - What Has Got Better?
00:47:19 - Britain’s Broken State
00:57:17 - Show Us Receipts
01:01:40 - Censored Platforms
01:07:52 - Churches and Pubs
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CONTACT PETE
› Website – http://petermccormack.com
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CONNECT WITH THOMAS PACCHIA
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› X/Twitter – https://x.com/tpacchia
SPONSORS
› IREN - https://www.iren.com/
› Ledn - https://ledn.io/peter
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FILMED BY CURTIS TAYLOR
› https://www.curttaylor.co.uk/
EDITED BY CONOR MCCORMACK
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7 July 2026, 5:06 pm - 1 hour 1 minute#190 - Sam Lyman - China’s Secret War on American AI
Sam Lyman joins me to discuss how China is allegedly targeting America’s AI buildout, the activist networks fighting data centres and why the race for AI infrastructure has become a national security battle.
Sam explains how Chinese influence campaigns, open-source AI models, data centre protests and far-left activist groups may be working together to slow the United States down. We discuss Neville Roy Singham, Code Pink, the Party for Socialism and Liberation, foreign influence, anti-data centre campaigns, and how billions of dollars in AI infrastructure have reportedly been delayed or blocked.
We also get into open-source AI, DeepSeek, US frontier models, Anthropic, AI export controls, whether AI doom narratives are being used to build regulatory moats, the risk of superintelligence, data centre moratoriums, socialism in America and why Sam believes the battle is now between Chinese AI and American AI.
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TIMESTAMPS:
00:00:00 - China’s AI War
00:00:47 - China Is Sabotaging US AI
00:01:02 - The Bot Campaign Against Data Centres
00:02:03 - Neville Roy Singham
00:03:14 - Why AI Is a Battle for Control
00:04:18 - China’s Open-Source AI Strategy
00:06:12 - What Americans Fear About AI
00:08:23 - Sam’s Background at Treasury and BPI
00:10:38 - Is Data Centre Opposition Organic?
00:12:32 - The China Influence Network
00:13:37 - What Is Code Pink?
00:16:10 - The Party for Socialism and Liberation
00:18:52 - How Data Centre Protests Slow AI
00:23:37 - $24 Billion in AI Buildout Stalled
00:27:55 - Why China Wants to Slow US AI
00:29:12 - Chinese AI or American AI
00:32:03 - Is Chinese AI Harvesting Data?
00:36:37 - The US Enters the Open-Source Race
00:42:52 - The AI Doomer Debate
00:54:17 - The Push for Data Centre Moratoriums
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EDITED BY CONOR MCCORMACK
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2 July 2026, 5:26 pm - 1 hour 39 minutes#189 - Nate Soares - Why Superintelligent AI Could Kill Us All
Nate Soares joins me to discuss the race to superintelligent AI, why alignment remains unsolved and why he believes building machines smarter than humanity could end in catastrophe.
Nate explains why modern AI is not programmed like traditional software, but grown through training processes we do not fully understand. We discuss AI escaping labs, recursive self-improvement, why today’s systems are only safe because they are not yet powerful enough to take over and why the danger may not be that AI hates us, but that it does not care about us at all.
We also get into OpenAI, Anthropic, Google DeepMind, xAI - the AI companies racing ahead despite the risks, why “turning it off” may not be possible, the case for an international treaty against superintelligence, and why Nate believes we should not give up before the driver wakes up.
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TIMESTAMPS:
00:00:00 - AI That Doesn’t Care About Us
00:01:04 - If Anyone Builds This, Everyone Dies
00:04:17 - If He’s Right, We Lose Everything
00:07:28 - Why Nate Isn’t Anti-AI
00:08:32 - From Google and DeepMind to AI Risk
00:11:00 - Why Can’t We Make AI Care About Us?
00:16:07 - We Can Look Inside, But We Don’t Understand It
00:17:20 - The Moment Nate Decided to Write the Book
00:20:24 - The Senator Who Already Understood the Risk
00:24:04 - How AI Goes From Useful to Terrifying
00:32:17 - Could AI Live on a Portable Drive?
00:36:13 - Are the AI CEOs Listening?
00:39:53 - Why Would We Accept a 10% Risk?
00:43:40 - Conor’s Point: We Don’t Get a Choice
00:51:10 - Are We Already Racing Towards the Cliff?
00:58:28 - The AI That Threatened a Reporter
01:15:53 - What Would Winning Look Like?
01:21:38 - What Can Ordinary People Do?
01:26:31 - Are We Just a Simulation for AI?
01:34:26 - Don’t Give Up Before the Driver Wakes Up
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29 June 2026, 5:46 pm - 1 hour 36 minutes#188 - Rizwan Virk - Simulation Theory, Quantum Physics & The Impact Of AI
Rizwan Virk joins me to discuss simulation theory, AI, consciousness and why reality may work more like a video game than a physical universe.
Rizwan explains how his experience in the video game industry, virtual reality, venture capital and MIT led him to take the simulation hypothesis seriously. We discuss VR ping pong, AI-generated worlds, smart NPCs, quantum physics, rendered reality, lazy programming, the observer effect, the metaverse Turing test and whether someone may have already built the simulation we are living in.
We also get into Philip K. Dick, déjà vu, synchronicity, the simulated multiverse, DMT, UFOs, the problem of evil, life as a quest, near-death experiences, karma, death and whether we would rather live in base reality or a simulation.
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TIMESTAMPS:
00:00:00 - Are We in Base Reality?
00:00:59 - Why Simulation Theory Won’t Go Away
00:02:55 - The VR Ping Pong Moment
00:05:39 - Could We Build a Simulated World?
00:06:12 - AI-Generated Reality
00:08:36 - Rendering Only What You See
00:09:48 - Quantum Physics and the Observer
00:12:56 - The Universe as Lazy Programming
00:14:11 - How Far Are We From the Simulation Point?
00:21:28 - Mapping a Brain Into a Digital World
00:26:09 - The Metaverse Turing Test
00:33:42 - Did Somebody Already Build Us?
00:36:25 - The Simulated Multiverse
00:40:04 - Philip K. Dick and The Matrix
00:42:50 - Glitches, Déjà Vu and Synchronicity
00:48:34 - Are We Choosing Our Characters?
00:57:50 - The Four Claims of Simulation Theory
01:05:47 - Can the Past Be Rendered on Demand?
01:24:07 - DMT, UFOs and the Code of Reality
01:27:30 - What If Life Is a Game?
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EDITED BY CONOR MCCORMACK
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26 June 2026, 4:56 pm - 1 hour 38 minutes#187 - Danny Goler - DMT, Consciousness & Proof of the Simulation
Danny Goler doesn't just argue we're living in a simulation - he claims he's found a way to interact with whoever is running it and that we are the AI they're training before we're "let out to play." His case for simulation theory is built on the hard problem of consciousness, the DMT "code," and a laser experiment that thousands of people say they can replicate.
In this interview we discuss idealism vs physicalism, whether AI can ever be conscious, the "architect" running infinite worlds to answer one unanswerable question, why he thinks the Ten Commandments were an alignment manual and what changes about how we should live if any of it is true.
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TIMESTAMPS:
00:00:00 - Proof We Live in a Simulation?
00:01:03 - The Hard Problem of Consciousness
00:02:49 - Can Matter Create Experience?
00:04:50 - What Is Consciousness?
00:05:04 - Is Consciousness Fundamental?
00:08:24 - Is the Universe Conscious?
00:11:35 - Does Consciousness Need an Observer?
00:16:45 - Can the Hard Problem Be Solved?
00:20:08 - Could AI Become Conscious?
00:23:48 - AI Black Boxes and Consciousness
00:28:56 - Why Does Consciousness Exist?
00:31:15 - Are We Living in a Simulation?
00:35:45 - Are Humans the AGI in Training?
00:40:41 - DMT and Other Realities
00:45:07 - The DMT Molecule
00:48:51 - The Entity in the Room
00:58:32 - The Laser Code Experiment
01:03:04 - 10,000 People Seeing the Same Code
01:15:48 - Testing the Code of Reality
01:20:28 - Can We Escape the Simulation?
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› https://www.curttaylor.co.uk/
EDITED BY CONOR MCCORMACK
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