Physicists are not like you and me. That’s because they don't see the world the same way we do.

Take information, for instance. When you have a question or an interest in some topic, and you want more information about it, chances are you look for answers by reading a book, searching the Internet, or even listening to a radio program. But that's not how physicists view information. They want to know what it's actually made of. And that idea leads to a whole lot of weird and quirky views of how the universe works.

The Physics of Information was the topic of a recent public forum, sponsored by Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Ontario, and moderated by Bob McDonald. And Quirks was there to record the event. Do ideas about information and reality inspire fruitful new approaches to the hardest problems of modern physics?