291 | Venki Ramakrishnan on the Biology of Death and Aging
Aging and death happen to the best of us, but there are increasing efforts to do something about it. That effort requires that we have some reasonable understanding of why aging happens, and what proc...
30 Sep 20241h 20min
290 | Hahrie Han on Making Multicultural Democracy Work
It's a wonder democracy works at all -- a collection of people with potentially different interests have to agree to abide by majority vote even when it goes against their desires. But as we know, it ...
23 Sep 20241h 15min
289 | Cari Cesarotti on the Next Generation of Particle Experiments
As an experimental facility, the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Geneva has been extraordinarily successful, discovering the Higgs boson and measuring multiple features of particle-physics interactio...
16 Sep 20241h 21min
288 | Max Richter on the Meaning of Classical Music Today
It wasn't that long ago, historically speaking, that you might put on your tuxedo or floor-length evening gown to go out and hear a live opera or symphony. But today's world is faster, more technologi...
9 Sep 20241h 6min
AMA | September 2024
Welcome to the September 2024 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 P...
2 Sep 20243h 50min
287 | Jean-Paul Faguet on Institutions and the Legacy of History
One common feature of complex systems is sensitive dependence on initial conditions: a small change in how systems begin evolving can lead to large differences in their later behavior. In the social s...
26 Aug 20241h 32min
286 | Blaise Agüera y Arcas on the Emergence of Replication and Computation
Understanding how life began on Earth involves questions of chemistry, geology, planetary science, physics, and more. But the question of how random processes lead to organized, self-replicating, info...
19 Aug 20241h 20min
285 | Nate Silver on Prediction, Risk, and Rationality
Being rational necessarily involves engagement with probability. Given two possible courses of action, it can be rational to prefer the one that could possibly result in a worse outcome, if there's al...
12 Aug 20241h 11min
