Episode
Episode 120: Popper on Trial
- Podcast
- The Theory of Anything
- Published
- Nov 11, 2025
- Duration seconds
- 6676
- Processing state
processed
Actions
POST https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/the-theory-of-anything-859886/episodes/episode-120-popper-on-trial/transcription-requests
Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode.GET https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-theory-of-anything-859886/episode-120-popper-on-trial.md
Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource.
Summary
This week Bruce puts Popper on trial. Specifically, through the lens of Michael Stevens’s book, The Knowledge Machine , which argues that science works because it follows the “iron law of explanation” where scientists must (at least in public) put aside philosophy, politics, and theology and only follow empirical evidence. Bruce asks, how compatible is this view with the epistemology of Karl Popper?And does Strevens' critique of Popper ring true? Or is it a strawman?