Few questions could ever be as vexing or confounding: why is there something instead of nothing? Faced with that inquiry, most people would just shrug their shoulders. The writer and reporter Jim Holt took a much different approach. He went on an epic journey to uncover past and present attempts to tackle the biggest of questions, and to find out if we’re just a few Einsteins short of getting our origins straight. Holt joins us to help us wrap our minds around an infamously knotty concept. (Rebroadcast)

Jim Holt is a longtime contributor to the New Yorker and a frequent contributor to the New York Times. He has written articles about string theory, time, infinity, numbers, truth and bullshit. His book is called Why Does the World Exist?: An Existential Detective Story. [ Amazon / Indiebound ]