72 | César Hidalgo on Information in Societies, Economies, and the Universe
Maxwell's Demon is a famous thought experiment in which a mischievous imp uses knowledge of the velocities of gas molecules in a box to decrease the entropy of the gas, which could then be used to do ...
11 Nov 20191h 16min
71 | Philip Goff on Consciousness Everywhere
The human brain contains roughly 85 billion neurons, wired together in an extraordinarily complex network of interconnected parts. It's hardly surprising that we don't understand the mind and how it w...
4 Nov 20191h 34min
70 | Katie Mack on How the Universe Will End
Cosmologists are always talking excitedly about the Big Bang and all the cool stuff that happened in the 14 billion years between then and now. But what about the future? We don't know for sure, but w...
28 Okt 20191h 23min
69 | Cory Doctorow on Technology, Monopoly, and the Future of the Internet
Like so many technological innovations, the internet is something that burst on the scene and pervaded human life well before we had time to sit down and think through how something like that should w...
21 Okt 20191h 17min
68 | Melanie Mitchell on Artificial Intelligence and the Challenge of Common Sense
Artificial intelligence is better than humans at playing chess or go, but still has trouble holding a conversation or driving a car. A simple way to think about the discrepancy is through the lens of ...
14 Okt 20191h 22min
67 | Kate Jeffery on Entropy, Complexity, and Evolution
Our observable universe started out in a highly non-generic state, one of very low entropy, and disorderliness has been growing ever since. How, then, can we account for the appearance of complex syst...
7 Okt 20191h 12min
66 | Will Wilkinson on Partisan Polarization and the Urban/Rural Divide
The idea of "red states" and "blue states" burst on the scene during the 2000 U.S. Presidential elections, and has a been a staple of political commentary ever since. But it's become increasingly clea...
30 Sep 20191h 52min
65 | Michael Mann on Why Our Climate Is Changing and How We Know
We had our fun last week, exploring how progress in renewable energy and electric vehicles may help us combat encroaching climate change. This week we're being a bit more hard-nosed, taking a look at ...
23 Sep 20191h 17min
