Building from the last episode, Episode 2 of Inertia moves beyond the surface question of whether time exists to ask something more precise: if the universe is a static four-dimensional structure, why does it feel like it moves? We navigate the mechanics of this illusion by tracing the path from McTaggart’s logical paradoxes to the geometric reality of Minkowski spacetime, before confronting the "statistical" arrow of entropy and the microscopic leakage of quantum decoherence. The episode explores the Past Hypothesis and the "Mentaculus" to explain why we possess records of the past but none of the future, ultimately weighing whether human agency can survive the fixity of a block universe. By the end, we’re left with the realisation that the feeling of time passing is merely a specialised biological interface that allows a static world to feel alive.

Music: LEMMiNO - Cipher

CC BY-SA 4.0

Episode 1 of Inertia digs into a question that keeps resurfacing once you look at it closely: if relativity bends time, entropy pushes it forward, and quantum theory sometimes ignores it, what are we actually experiencing from one moment to the next? The episode follows this tension through the physics, then into the philosophical fallout, where eternalism, presentism, and McTaggart’s challenge raise doubts about whether the flow of time is anything more than a feeling. Princeton philosopher Joe Schmidt joins to unravel how these ideas collide with everyday assumptions about choice, responsibility, and what it means for a person to persist at all.

Music: LEMMiNO - Cipher

CC BY-SA 4.0