Millennials, in particular, consider themselves to be spiritual, but they're not necessarily going to anybody's church. It's not like the world is becoming hardcore, Richard Dawkins-atheist, but people are looking to sort of synthesize science - people love science, especially the millennials.

Right now, culturally, we're seeing a really interesting evolution in ideas about spirituality and the world, right? The number of people who consider themselves to be religious and going to services is dropping, and the number of people who consider themselves to be spiritual but not religious is increasing.

Scientists and artists are both living in the cultural milieu that they come up in. They're always responding to what is happening culturally.

People have been talking about multiverses as a philosophical idea for a long time. But the current incarnations in physics, I think, are more indicative of problems with some things going on at the frontier of physics than ideas that are gonna last.

There's not a single shred of evidence for the multiverse. If, in order to explain this universe, you need a theory that invents an infinite number of parallel universes - that's not a very good theory.

People love science and all it offers, but they also feel a calling in themselves to the sense of what's deeper.

The ideas always have to be in service of the story. And that's what Scott and the writers did - they weren't trying to beat you over the head with an idea they had a story they wanted to tell, and they had ideas, so they used the story as a way of fleshing out the ideas. It all depends on where they want to go with it.

I'm found of what's called emergence - as the universe gets more complex, new laws can emerge. Like evolution - there's things that you just aren't able to explain, even if you had an understanding of atoms.

The way superheroes dominate the fictional landscape now, along with dystopian futures and zombies. Yeah, definitely - I think these stories function as a kind of mythology for us.