I recently stumbled across a wonderful interview with Freeman Dyson on Youtube, from an organization called Web of Stories. They have interviews with a number of legendary scientists, though I have not checked out any of the other ones.

Dyson lived until the grand old age of 97, only passing in 2020! The interview took place in 1998, when Dyson was 75 or so. The interviewer, Sam Schweber, appears to have written a history of QED.

The whole interview is 7 hours long, and split into 157 clips. This is nice, but a problem for watching/listening without interruptions, because a) ads on Youtube, b) you have to keep the video running. (Youtube Premium would solve this, but I am not paying).

With the help of Claude, I downloaded the individual clips and stitched them into a single audio file. You can find it here. I might do this for some other interviews in future, or share the files / process for doing so. ChatGPT and Claude protested weakly when asked to download the files directly - ‘oh we could never download audio from Youtube’ - but happily assisted me in doing it piece by piece.

It’s amazing that this interview exists, and I’m grateful to the people who made it happen. It gives so much color to Dyson’s life and times.

What are your favorite interviews, oral histories, documentaries?