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
110 | Neil Johnson on Complexity, Conflict, and Infodemiology
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
109 | Jason Torchinsky on Our Self-Driving Future
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
108 | Carl Bergstrom on Information, Disinformation, and Bullshit
We are living, in case you haven't noticed, in a world full of bullshit. It's hard to say whether the amount is truly increasing, but it seems that everywhere you look someone is trying to convince yo...
3 Aug 20201h 24min
107 | Russ Shafer-Landau on the Reality of Morality
Despite occasional and important disagreements, most people are in rough agreement about what it means to be moral, to do the right thing. There's much less agreement about why we should be moral, or ...
27 Jul 20201h 30min
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 w...
20 Jul 20201h 25min
105 | Ann-Sophie Barwich on the Science and Philosophy of Smell
We gather empirical evidence about the nature of the world through our senses, and use that evidence to construct an image of the world in our minds. But not all senses are created equal; in practice,...
13 Jul 20201h 17min
