Oneness. Burst! ; Fear of darkness ; Transition ; Belief ; Oneness : beginnings ; The Pythagorean myth ; Living the Platonic dream ; God, the sun ; To hold the key to the cosmos in your mind-- ; Kepler’s mistake -- The asymmetry of time. The Big Bang confirmed ; The world in a grain of sand ; Light acts in mysterious ways ; The imperfection of electromagnetism ; The birth of atoms ; From creation myths to the quantum : a brief history ; Leap of faith ; The jitterbug cosmos ; The universe that we see ; The faltering Big Bang model ; Back to the beginning ; Exotic primordial matter ; A small patch of weirdness ; Darkness falls ; Darkness rules -- The asymmetry of matter. Symmetry and beauty ; A more intimate look at symmetry ; Energy flows, matter dances ; Violation of a beautiful symmetry ; The material world ; Science of the gaps ; Symmetries and asymmetries of matter ; The origin of matter in the universe ; A universe in transition ; Unification : a critique -- The asymmetry of life. Life! ; The spark of life ; Life from no life : first steps ; First life : the "when" question ; First life : the "where" question ; First life : the "how" question ; First life : the building blocks ; The man who killed the life force ; L’univers est dissyme?trique! ; The chirality of life ; From so asymmetric a beginning-- We are all mutants -- The asymmetry of existence. Fear of darkness II ; Is the universe conscious? ; Meaning and awe ; Beyond symmetry and unification ; Marilyn Monroe’s mole and the fallacy of a cosmos "just right" for life ; Rare earth, rare life? ; Us and them ; Cosmic loneliness ; A new direction for humanity -- Garden of delights.