Phymaths podcast # 39 || Dr. Antonio Padilla

Dr. Antonio Padilla is a cosmologist at the University of Nottingham, working on the problems of cosmology, black holes, modified gravity, and string theory. He is well known for his videos on Numberphile and sixty symbols (links given below). He authored the book, "Fantastic Numbers and Where to Find Them" (link below). Some links 1) His book: https://www.amazon.com/Fantastic-Numbers-Where-Find-Them/dp/0374600562 2) His videos on Numberphile: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLt5AfwLFPxWL8KAJKO3WfHhJcWrJfjgfU&si=klpd8E9cNC8Nvb5M 3) His videos on sixty symbols: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLcUY9vudNKBPJmX64Jay51cdZTKMz4ACs&si=70ng6G21LrWdGS9n Contact Info My website: hassaansaleem.com Follow on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hassaan.3142/ Follow on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Hassaan_PHY Time stamps (0:00) Coming Up (0:20) Intro (0:36) Introduction of the guest (1:11) His interest in cosmology (2:50) His interest in numbers (3:10) His book (Fantastic Numbers and Where to Find Them) (4:10) His interest in numbers (continued) (7:37) Procedure to make a numberphile video (10:41) His most favorite video ever (11:50) Shortest papers ever (13:27) Lessons from doing popular science (16:09) Countering misinformation on string theory (26:59) Academic jobs for young people (27:55) Shamit Kachru leaving the field (31:54) Does string theory have de Sitter spacetime? (38:33) His views on DESI results (43:00) His views on anthropic reasoning (46:20) Modified gravity and MOND (51:20) Undergrads in the Publications race (55:00) A breakthrough in maths required? (56:51) Grad school with bad grades (58:36) His work on integration techniques (1:03:07) Two titles for his book (1:04:05) Goodbye