We all live by the clock, but what if the ticking hands measure something that doesn’t truly exist? In the first episode of a new podcast series called ‘After the End’, Professor Patricia Kingori from Oxford Population Health’s Ethox Centre and Dr Felix Flicker from Bristol University discuss whether time really exists and living after the end of the universe
Over the course of 14 episodes, Professor Kingori explores endings and their aftermaths, asking who decides when an ‘end’ has been reached, whether ‘the end’ for one person is the end for everybody, and what happens after these so-called endings?
In ‘Does Time Exist?’, Professor Kingori and Dr Flicker discuss the nature of time and how physicists conceptualise it, questioning whether time really exists in the way that we imagine it. Dr Flicker explores whether time really flows arguing that physical theories describe distinct events as points in space and time, rather than the transitions between them.
Patricia Kingori, Professor of Global Health Ethics, said ‘After the End explores who decides when something has truly ended and what happens afterward. The project began during the Ebola epidemic in Sierra Leone, when travel restrictions halted plans to record people’s experiences. Instead, local collaborators suggested studying what life was like after the epidemic and what remained once the world’s attention had moved on.
‘This idea sparked broader questions about what “after” means, whose experiences count, and how often researchers actually return to study the aftermath of events. The After the End series brings together scholars from many fields to examine time, temporality, power, and endings. It looks at how the idea of an “end” is challenged in areas like physics and natural history, explores Indigenous and non-linear concepts of time, and considers situations where people long for an ending that never seems to come, contrasting these with how endings are understood in health and science.’
Drawing on Einstein’s relativity and philosopher Julian Barbour’s idea of reality as separate “photographs” Dr Flicker suggests that time might simply be a collection of moments rather than a continuous stream. He also presents a speculative ‘gas in a box’ thought experiment, imagining consciousness arising as a random fluctuation after the universe’s heat death, meaning we could be living after the end of the universe.
Listen to the first episodes of After the End on YouTube.