I'm Alan Alder, and this is clear and vivid conversations about connecting and communicating.

Somehow we have to grapple with the fact that the objects were made from are wave-like. But it's a very, very strange thing to say. Because, you know, if I, as a physicist, am trying to explain to someone that they are made from waves, that the table is made from waves, the planet is made from waves, it's a very crazy statement because when have you or I ever seen something made from waves. It's a very crazy statement, because when have you or I ever seen

something made from waves? Nobody goes and takes ocean waves and builds a house out of them. I mean,

waves slosh, and then they spread out, and then they disappear. And waves just seem utterly

inadequate as building blocks. But that is where one of the other great mysteries of the universe

comes in. That's Matt Strassler. He's written a book called Waves in an Impossible Sea.

Matt's a physicist who's taken on the challenge of explaining to the rest of us the baffling language of quantum physics.

Wait, wait, don't go away just because I said quantum physics.

After all, it's a language that makes sense to physicists.

There ought to be a way to unbathle it for us, right?

So in this episode, I'll be the guinea pig.

Listen in on our conversation and see if the language gets any clearer for either one of us,

you or me.

We began with my recalling a time when a friend asked me a perfectly simple question

that I was helpless to answer.

This is going to be very interesting for me because we talk a lot about communication on this podcast,

and I had a disastrous communication a few years ago, and I need your help.

Okay.

Here is the scene.

I had just come back from a visit to the LHC, Large Hadron Collider, near Geneva.

I'm at dinner with friends, and one of them says,

so what is this Higgs particle thing?

...