The concept of time has puzzled human beings for centuries. Many physicists have suggested that the problem is that time is not actually real but a property that emerges from something more fundamental – just as an object can feel solid even though it is mostly made up of empty space. Lee Smolin, who is a researcher at Canada’s Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, takes the opposite view. He thinks time is real – so real, in fact, that even the supposedly timeless laws of physics – are subject to it. Having published numerous scientific papers about his theories of time, Smolin has now put his main ideas into a new popular-science book called Time Reborn, the thinking behind which he explains in this podcast.

Listen to the podcast now to hear more of Smolin’s views on the nature of time.