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
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
