Tara Smith on Coronavirus, Pandemics, and What We Can Do

How can, and should, we talk to each other, especially to people with whom we disagree? "Free speech" is rightfully entrenched as an important value in liberal democratic societies, but implementing i...

28 Sep 20201h 43min

Stephen Hawking made a number of memorable contributions to physics, but perhaps his greatest was a puzzle: what happens to information that falls into a black hole? The question sits squarely at the ...

21 Sep 20201h 27min

Sexuality is, and always has been, a topic that is endlessly fascinating but also contentious. You might think that asexuality would be more straightforward, but you'd be wrong. Asexual people, or "ac...

14 Sep 20201h 8min

You can't always get what you want, as a wise person once said. But we do try, even when someone else wants the same thing. Our lives as people, and the evolution of other animals over time, are shape...

7 Sep 20201h 19min

Not too long ago nobody carried a mobile phone; now almost everybody does. That's the kind of rate of rapid progress we're seeing with our ability to directly edit genomes. With the use of CRISPR-Cas9...

31 Aug 20201h 20min

Human civilization is only a few thousand years old (depending on how we count). So if civilization will ultimately last for millions of years, it could be considered surprising that we've found ourse...

24 Aug 20201h 20min

Physicists have traditionally simplified systems as much as possible, in order to shed light on fundamental properties. But small, simple parts build up into large, complex wholes. Are there new rules...

17 Aug 20201h 23min

It's easy to foresee that technological progress will change how we live; it's much harder to anticipate exactly how. Self-driving cars represent an enormous technological challenge, but one that is p...

10 Aug 20201h 18min