Peter Dodds on Text-Based Timeline Analysis & New Instruments for The Science of Stories
"There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.”– Vladimir Ilyich LeninWhen human beings saw the first pictures of the Earth from space, the impact was transformati...
26 Nov 20201h 30min
Scott Ortman on Archaeological Synthesis and Settlement Scaling Theory
The modern world has a way of distancing itself from everything that came before it…and yet the evidence from archaeology supports a different story. While industrial societies tend to praise markets ...
11 Nov 202054min
Helena Miton on Cultural Evolution in Music and Writing Systems
Organisms aren’t the only products of the evolutionary process. Cultural products such as writing, art, and music also undergo change over time, subject to both the constraints of the physical environ...
29 Okt 20201h 1min
David Wolpert on The No Free Lunch Theorems and Why They Undermine The Scientific Method
On the one hand, we have math: a world of forms and patterns, a priori logic, timeless and consistent. On the other, we have physics: messy and embodied interactions, context-dependent and contingent ...
14 Okt 202052min
Vicky Yang & Henrik Olsson on Political Polling & Polarization: How We Make Decisions & Identities
Whether you live in the USA or have just been watching the circus from afar, chances are that you agree: “polarization” dominates descriptions of the social landscape. Judging from the news alone, one...
30 Sep 20201h 10min
Carl Bergstrom & Jevin West on Calling Bullshit: The Art of Skepticism in a Data-Driven World
Now, maybe more than ever before, it is time to learn the art of skepticism. Amidst compounded complex crises, humankind must also navigate a swelling tidal wave of outright lies, clever misdirection...
16 Sep 202058min
Natalie Grefenstette on Agnostic Biosignature Detection
Is there life on Mars? Or Titan? What are we even looking for? Without a formal definition, inquiries into the stars just echo noise. But then, perhaps, the noise contains a signal… To find life elsew...
2 Sep 202056min
The Information Theory of Biology & Origins of Life with Sara Imari Walker (Big Biology Podcast Crossover)
One of the defining characteristics of complex systems science is the shift in emphasis from objects to relationships and processes. How is information related to matter and energy, and how do the dis...
12 Aug 20201h 6min
