So I asked him and he accepted!

Note that at the time I believed that "physical lighting" specifically referred to volumetric lighting. In reality, what I want to accomplish with my game and what "physical lighting" means are two circles on a Venn Diagram with a moderate overlap.
You can read our correspondance here. In it, we discuss how to get started learning physically-based rendering (PBR), voxel cone tracing, light propagation volumes, and more. Alex's "meatiest" reply describes how to perform voxel cone tracing.
This has been a tremendously helpful experience, so a big Thank You is owed to Mr. Evans for his help and to Miss Hurlburt for helping us get in touch.