106 | Stuart Bartlett on What "Life" Means

Someday, most likely, we will encounter life that is not as we know it. We might find it elsewhere in the universe, we might find it right here on Earth, or we might make it ourselves in a lab. Will we know it when we see it? "Life" isn't a simple unified concept, but rather a collection of a number of life-like properties. I talk with astrobiologist Stuart Bartlett, who (in collaboration with Michael Wong) has proposed a new way of thinking about life based on four pillars: dissipation, autocatalysis, homeostasis, and learning. Their framework may or may not become the standard picture, but it provides a useful way of thinking about what we expect life to be.

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Stuart Bartlett received his Ph.D. in complex systems from the University of Southampton. He is currently a postdoctoral researcher in the Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences at Caltech, and was formerly a postdoc at the Earth Life Science Institute at the Tokyo Institute of Technology.


Episoder(415)

Holiday Message 2025 | The Romance of the University

Holiday Message 2025 | The Romance of the University

Time for the holiday message! Rounding off the year with a brief and casual reflection on some issue that doesn't quite rise to the level of a full solo podcast. And hopefully something uplifting. Thi...

22 Des 202542min

AMA | December 2025

AMA | December 2025

Welcome to the December 2025 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are funded by Patreon supporters (who are also the ones asking the questions). We take questions asked by Pa...

15 Des 20253h 36min

338 | Ryan Patterson on the Physics of Neutrinos

338 | Ryan Patterson on the Physics of Neutrinos

The story goes that Wolfgang Pauli, who first proposed the existence of neutrinos, was embarrassed to have done so, as it was considered uncouth to hypothesize new particles that could not be detected...

8 Des 20251h 26min

337 | Kevin Zollman on Game Theory, Signals, and Meaning

337 | Kevin Zollman on Game Theory, Signals, and Meaning

Game theory is a way of quantitatively describing what happens any time one thing interacts with another thing, when both things have goals and potential rewards. That's a pretty broad class of intere...

1 Des 20251h 17min

336 | Anil Ananthaswamy on the Mathematics of Neural Nets and AI

336 | Anil Ananthaswamy on the Mathematics of Neural Nets and AI

Machine learning using neural networks has led to a remarkable leap forward in artificial intelligence, and the technological and social ramifications have been discussed at great length. To understan...

24 Nov 20251h 14min

AMA | November 2025

AMA | November 2025

Welcome to the November 2025 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are funded by Patreon supporters (who are also the ones asking the questions). We take questions asked by Pa...

17 Nov 20253h 34min

335 | Andrew Jaffe on Models, Probability, and the Universe

335 | Andrew Jaffe on Models, Probability, and the Universe

Science has an incredibly impressive track record of uncovering nonintuitive ideas about the universe that turn out to be surprisingly accurate. It can be tempting to think of scientific discoveries a...

10 Nov 20251h 17min

334 | Daniel Whiteson on the Physics of and by Aliens

334 | Daniel Whiteson on the Physics of and by Aliens

The universe as revealed by physics is objective: it's out there, existing and behaving in ways that are completely independent of human thought. But the process by which we learn about the universe, ...

3 Nov 20251h 14min

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