From Ancient Egypt to Leibniz... Brand‑new interview out with Robert Spekkens of the Perimeter Institute, one of the sharpest minds working on quantum foundations. In 2004, he constructed a classical toy theory where your maximum knowledge is always incomplete—and out popped the no-cloning theorem, teleportation, and interference effects Feynman deemed impossible to reproduce classically. Spekkens compares our situation to Egyptian hieroglyphs before Champollion: a category mistake where we treat quantum states as descriptions of reality when they actually describe knowledge of reality. If you’re interested in the topics above, you’ll love this podcast.As a listener of TOE you can get a special 20% off discount to The Economist and all it has to offer! Visit https://www.economist.com/toeSUPPORT:- Support me on Substack: https://curtjaimungal.substack.com/subscribe- Support me on Crypto: https://commerce.coinbase.com/checkout/de803625-87d3-4300-ab6d-85d4258834a9- Support me on PayPal: https://www.paypal.com/donate?hosted_button_id=XUBHNMFXUX5S4JOIN MY SUBSTACK (Personal Writings): https://curtjaimungal.substack.comLISTEN ON SPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/show/4gL14b92xAErofYQA7bU4eTIMESTAMPS:- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - LINKS MENTIONED:Journals, papers, books:- https://www.rwspekkens.com- https://pirsa.org/speaker/Robert-Spekkens- https://arxiv.org/pdf/2507.01122- https://arxiv.org/pdf/quant-ph/0401052- https://arxiv.org/abs/0706.2661- https://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0406166- https://arxiv.org/pdf/2207.11779- https://amazon.com/dp/1108066488?tag=toe08-20- https://www.jstor.org/stable/687269- https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qm-copenhagen/- https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/identity-indiscernible/- https://www.fourmilab.ch/etexts/einstein/specrel/specrel.pdf- https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/spacetime-holearg/- https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/mathematics/hidden-variable-theory- https://www.nature.com/articles/299802a0- https://arxiv.org/pdf/2011.01286- https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF02058098- https://arxiv.org/abs/2005.07161- https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/engineering/maxwells-equation- https://www.einstein-online.info/en/spotlight/equivalence_principle/- https://perimeterinstitute.ca/- https://amazon.com/dp/9810241054?tag=toe08-20- https://journals.aps.org/pr/pdf/10.1103/PhysRev.47.777- https://arxiv.org/abs/1111.3328- https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/rosetta-stone-hieroglyphs-champollion-decipherment-egypt-180980834/- https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0160932707000282Videos:- https://youtu.be/gEK4-XtMwro- https://youtu.be/YWbjI-QsH2E- https://youtu.be/fU1bs5o3nss- https://youtu.be/NKOd8imBa2s- https://youtu.be/6I2OhmVWLMs- https://youtu.be/Tghl6aS5A3M- https://youtu.be/HIoviZe14pY- https://youtu.be/bprxrGaf0Os- https://youtu.be/4MjNuJK5RzM- https://youtu.be/c8iFtaltX-s- https://youtu.be/9AoRxtYZrZo- https://youtu.be/uOKOodQXjhc- https://youtu.be/3mhctWlXyV8- https://youtu.be/gsSJPLX-BTA- https://youtu.be/FFW14zSYiFY- https://youtu.be/HhWWlJFwTqs Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices