118 | Adam Riess on the Expansion of the Universe and a Crisis in Cosmology
Astronomers rocked the cosmological world with the 1998 discovery that the universe is accelerating. Well-deserved Nobel Prizes were awarded to Saul Perlmutter, Brian Schmidt, and today's guest Adam R...
12 Okt 20201h 18min
117 | Sean B. Carroll on Randomness and the Course of Evolution
Evolution is a messy business, involving as it does selection pressures, mutations, genetic drift, and the effects of random external interventions. So in the end, how much of it is predictable, and h...
5 Okt 20201h 20min
116 | Teresa Bejan on Free Speech, Civility, and Toleration
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
115 | Netta Engelhardt on Black Hole Information, Wormholes, and Quantum Gravity
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
114 | Angela Chen on Asexuality in a Sex-Preoccupied World
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
113 | Cailin O'Connor on Game Theory, Evolution, and the Origins of Unfairness
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
112 | Fyodor Urnov on Gene Editing, CRISPR, and Human Engineering
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
111 | Nick Bostrom on Anthropic Selection and Living in a Simulation
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
