Synopsis
A podcast of stories, ideas, and speculations from the Arthur C. Clarke Center for Human Imagination. Each month, we'll bring you into a conversation between visionaries from the worlds of arts, sciences, humanities, engineering, and medicine on the nature of the imagination and how, through speculative culture, we collaborate to create the future.
Episodes
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Craig Callender: A Graphic History of Time (#196)
16/11/2021 Duration: 01h15minCraig Callendar is a Professor of Philosophy, and Founding Faculty of, and Co-Director of, the Institute for Practical Ethics at UC San Diego in the Department of Philosophy. He is also on the Freedom and Responsibility in Science Committee of the International Science Council, Paris; and Founding Faculty at the Halıcıoğlu Data Science Institute at UC San Diego; Faculty, The John Bell Institute, Hvar, Croatia. From 1996-2000 I worked in the Department of Philosophy, Logic & Scientific Method at the London School of Economics. I obtained my Ph.D. from Rutgers University in 1997. His main area of research and teaching is the philosophy of science, with special emphasis on physics, time, and the environment. His book What Makes Time Special? (Oxford University Press, 2017) won the 2018 Lakatos Award. Here are some book reviews: Philosophy of Science, Philosophical Review, Metascience, BJPS, NDPR. He's also won two Chancellor's Associates Excellence Awards, the 2018-19 Award in Research and the 2007-8 Award in Gr
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Lee Cronin: The Chemistry of Life (#195)
09/11/2021 Duration: 01h09minLee Cronin was born in the UK and was fascinated with science and technology from an early age getting his first computer and chemistry set when he was 8 years old. This is when he first started thinking about programming chemistry and looking for inorganic aliens. He went to the University of York where he completed both a degree and PhD in Chemistry and then on to do post docs in Edinburgh and Germany before becoming a lecturer at the Universities of Birmingham, and then Glasgow where he has been since 2002 working up the ranks to become the Regius Professor of Chemistry in 2013 aged 39. He has one of the largest multidisciplinary chemistry-based research teams in the world, having raised over $35 M in grants and current income of $15 M. He has given over 300 international talks and has authored over 350 peer reviewed papers with recent work published in Nature, Science, and PNAS. He and his team are trying to make artificial life forms, find alien life, explore the digitization of chemistry, understand how
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Barry Barish Interviews Brian Keating: Part 2 (#194)
03/11/2021 Duration: 44minIn February 2021 Dr. Barry Barish, co-recipient of the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics for the LIGO experiment, interviewed me at his home in Los Angeles. The topic was his thoughts and reactions to my book, Losing the Nobel Prize (http://amzn.to/2sa5UpA). We discussed scientific leadership, academic stress, burnout, the role of mentors and managers in science and a lot about my book too. Losing The Nobel Prize By Brian Keating The inside story of a quest to unlock one of cosmology’s biggest mysteries, derailed by the lure of the Nobel Prize. What would it have been like to be an eyewitness to the Big Bang? In 2014, astronomers wielding BICEP2, the most powerful cosmology telescope ever made, revealed that they’d glimpsed the spark that ignited the Big Bang. Millions around the world tuned in to the announcement broadcast live from Harvard University, immediately igniting rumors of an imminent Nobel Prize. But had these cosmologists truly read the cosmic prologue or, swept up in Nobel dreams, had they been decei
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Barry Barish Interviews Brian Keating: Part 1 (#193)
03/11/2021 Duration: 54minIn February 2021 Dr. Barry Barish, co-recipient of the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics for the LIGO experiment, interviewed me at his home in Los Angeles. The topic was his thoughts and reactions to my book, Losing the Nobel Prize (http://amzn.to/2sa5UpA). We discussed scientific leadership, academic stress, burnout, the role of mentors and managers in science and a lot about my book too. Losing The Nobel Prize By Brian Keating The inside story of a quest to unlock one of cosmology’s biggest mysteries, derailed by the lure of the Nobel Prize. What would it have been like to be an eyewitness to the Big Bang? In 2014, astronomers wielding BICEP2, the most powerful cosmology telescope ever made, revealed that they’d glimpsed the spark that ignited the Big Bang. Millions around the world tuned in to the announcement broadcast live from Harvard University, immediately igniting rumors of an imminent Nobel Prize. But had these cosmologists truly read the cosmic prologue or, swept up in Nobel dreams, had they been decei
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Jorge Cham & Daniel Whiteson: Frequently Asked Questions About The Universe (#192)
02/11/2021 Duration: 53minYou’ve got questions: about space, time, gravity, and the odds of meeting your older self inside a wormhole. All the answers you need are right here. From the dynamic duo that brought you WE HABE NO IDEA comes FAQs ABOUT THE UNIVERSE!!! As a species, we may not agree on much, but one thing brings us all together: a need to know. We all wonder, and deep down we all have the same big questions. Why can’t I travel back in time? Where did the universe come from? What’s inside a black hole? Can I rearrange the particles in my cat and turn it into a dog? Researcher-turned-cartoonist Jorge Cham and physics professor Daniel Whiteson are experts at explaining science in ways we can all understand, in their books and on their popular podcast, Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe. With their signature blend of humor and oh-now-I-get-it clarity, Jorge and Daniel offer short, accessible, and lighthearted answers to some of the most common, most outrageous, and most profound questions about the universe they’ve received.
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Sarah Rugheimer: Searching for Extraterrestrial Life (#191)
26/10/2021 Duration: 51minDr. Sarah Rugheimer is a Glasstone Research Fellow and a Hugh Price Fellow at Jesus College Oxford. Her research interests are modeling the atmosphere and climate of extrasolar planets with a particular focus on atmospheric biosignatures in Earth-like planets as well as modeling early Earth conditions. She is interested in anything related to the field of Astrobiology: the study of origin of life on Earth and the pursuit of detecting life on other planets/moons in the Universe.The questions of our origins and the distribution of life in the Universe are the main driving inspiration for her day-to-day work. Her Audible Exclusive book Searching for Extraterrestrial Life reveals what we know about detecting life on other planets. Over 10 eye-opening lectures, she will uncover the strides we’ve made in our search for finding habitable Earth-like planets. You’ll gain first-hand insights into how scientists search for signs of life and our latest attempts to find potential life on Mars, Venus, Europa, Titan, and ot
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Ryan Holiday | Courage Is Calling: Fortune Favors the Brave! @Daily Stoic (#190)
21/10/2021 Duration: 01h06minRyan Holiday’s best-selling trilogy - The Obstacle Is the Way, Ego is the Enemy, and Stillness is the Key - captivated professional athletes, CEOs, politicians, and entrepreneurs and helped bring Stoicism to millions of readers. Now, in the first book of an exciting new series on the cardinal virtues of ancient philosophy, Holiday explores the most foundational virtue of all: Courage. Almost every religion, spiritual practice, philosophy, and person grapples with fear. The most repeated phrase in the Bible is “Be not afraid.” The ancient Greeks spoke of Phobos, panic and terror. It is natural to feel fear, the Stoics believed, but it cannot rule you. Courage, then, is the ability to rise above fear, to do what’s right, to do what’s needed, to do what is true. And so it rests at the heart of the works of Marcus Aurelius, Aristotle, and CS Lewis, alongside temperance, justice, and wisdom. In Courage Is Calling, Ryan Holiday breaks down the elements of fear, an expression of cowardice, the elements of courage, a
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Jeremy England: Life is on FIRE
19/10/2021 Duration: 01h50minA preeminent physicist unveils a field-defining theory of the origins and purpose of life. Why are we alive? Most things in the universe aren't. And everything that is alive traces back to things that, puzzlingly, weren't. For centuries, the scientific question of life's origins has confounded us. But in Every Life Is on Fire, physicist Jeremy England argues that the answer has been under our noses the whole time, deep within the laws of thermodynamics. England explains how, counterintuitively, the very same forces that tend to tear things apart assembled the first living systems. But how life began isn't just a scientific question. We ask it because we want to know what it really means to be alive. So England, an ordained rabbi, uses his theory to examine how, if at all, science helps us find purpose in a vast and mysterious universe. Get the book: https://www.amazon.com/Every-Life-Fire-Thermodynamics-Explains/dp/1541699017 LinkedIn Jobs is the best platform for finding the right candidate to join your busi
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Astronaut Nicole Stott: BACK TO EARTH (#188)
13/10/2021 Duration: 59minInspired by insights gained in spaceflight, a NASA astronaut offers key lessons to empower Earthbound readers to fight climate change When Nicole Stott first saw Earth from space, she realized how interconnected we are and knew she had to help protect our planetary home. In Back to Earth, Stott imparts essential lessons in problem-solving, survival, and crisis response that each of us can practice to make change. She knows we can overcome differences to address global issues, because she saw this every day on the International Space Station. Stott shares stories from her spaceflight and insights from scientists, activists, and changemakers working to solve our greatest environmental challenges. She learns about the complexities of Earth’s biodiversity from NASA engineers working to enable life in space and from scientists protecting life on Earth for future generations. Ultimately, Stott reveals how we each have the power to respect our planetary home and one another by living our lives like crewmates, not pa
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Chris Hadfield: The Apollo MURDERS! (#187)
12/10/2021 Duration: 57minIn 1973: a final, top-secret mission was planned to go to the Moon. Three astronauts in a tiny spaceship, a quarter-million miles from home. A quarter-million miles from help. NASA is about to launch Apollo 18. While the mission has been billed as a scientific one, flight controller Kazimieras "Kaz" Zemeckis knows there is a darker objective. Intelligence has discovered a secret Soviet space station spying on America, and Apollo 18 may be the only chance to stop it But even as Kaz races to keep the NASA crew one step ahead of their Russian rivals, a deadly accident reveals that not everyone involved is quite who they were thought to be. With political stakes stretched to the breaking point, the White House and the Kremlin can only watch as their astronauts collide on the lunar surface, far beyond the reach of law or rescue. The Apollo Murders is a high-stakes thriller unlike any other. Chris Hadfield captures the fierce G-forces of launch, the frozen loneliness of space, and the fear of holding on to the outs
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Heather Heying & Bret Weinstein: A Hunter Gatherer's Guide to the 21st Century. Frogs, Family, Freedom (#186)
05/10/2021 Duration: 01h49minHeather Heying and Bret Weinstein are evolutionary biologists. They both earned PhDs in Biology from the University of Michigan, where their research on evolution and adaptation earned awards. They've been visiting fellows at Princeton University, before that were professors at the Evergreen State College for fifteen years. Heather researched the evolution of social systems across a range of organisms, including humans, and my 2002 book, Antipode, is based on experiences in Madagascar studying the sex lives of poison frogs. In 2002, Bret published The Reserve-Capacity Hypothesis, which proposed that the telomeric differences between humans and laboratory mice have led scientists to underestimate the risks new drugs pose to humans in the form of heart disease, liver dysfunction, & related organ failure. They resigned from Evergreen in the wake of 2017 campus riots that focused in part on their opposition to a day of racial segregation and other college "equity" proposals. They cohost weekly livestreams of the
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Brian Keating: Think Like a Nobel Prize Winner! Why I wrote it (#185)
28/09/2021 Duration: 32minI’m so excited to share that my new book, Think Like a Nobel Prize Winner, is now live in the Universe! I couldn’t be more excited. I wrote it for YOU! ***This week only**** I have priced the ebook at 99 cents for this week only to make it easier for you to leave a “verified” review. Get it here: https://urlgeni.us/amzn/TLANPW Get the Audible audiobook edition of Think Like a Nobel Prize Winner for FREE when you start your free trial using this magic link https://audible.com/impossible Would you be so kind as to leave a “Verified review”? These reviews validate that you’ve purchased the item you’re reviewing, which makes them appear more legitimate to readers! All you have to do is follow this link to my book and click on the ‘Write a customer review’ button down in the reviewer section of the Amazon page: https://urlgeni.us/amzn/TLANPW PS: Don't forget to visit this website for Bonus Content, a link to my new Think Like a Nobel Prize Winner Podcast, and more! https://briankeating.com/think_book.php
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Anthony Aguirre: Cosmological Koans (#184)
21/09/2021 Duration: 01h27minPhysicist Anthony Aguirre studies the formation, nature, and evolution of the universe, focusing primarily on the model of eternal inflation—the idea that inflation goes on forever in some regions of universe—and what it may mean for the ultimate beginning of the universe and time. He is the co-founder and associate scientific director of the Foundational Questions Institute, which supports research on questions at the foundations and new frontiers of physics and cosmology. Anthony is also a co-founder of the Future of Life Institute, an organization aiming to increase the probability that life has a future, and of Metaculus, an effort to optimally aggregate predictions about scientific discoveries, technological breakthroughs, and other interesting issues. Cosmological Koans: A Journey to the Heart of Physical Reality, physicist Anthony Aguirre explores deep questions about the nature of reality, using an approach inspired by Zen koans to take the reader on a thought-provoking tour of the cosmos and the core
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Ben Shapiro: The Science™ of Authoritarianism (#183)
14/09/2021 Duration: 01h01minI spoke with Ben Shapiro about his thoroughly discursive new book: The Authoritarian Moment. Ben is prolific to say the least: his second book in just about a year. Some of you aren't Big Ben fans, but I hope you'll provide to me, and to him, some forbearance in this, the Yom Kippur season. Speaking of Yom Kippur we discussed forgiveness and tolerance and even Ben's biggest regret. Topics: ⚛️ Science vs. The Science™
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Part 2 of 2: Eric Weinstein n- WTF Happened in 1971: An INTO THE IMPOSSIBLE Birthday Extravaganza
13/09/2021 Duration: 01h07minLearn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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Part 1 of 2: Eric Weinstein n- WTF Happened in 1971: An INTO THE IMPOSSIBLE Birthday Extravaganza
12/09/2021 Duration: 01h06minWhat happened in 1971 (besides my birth on September 9th, 1971)? Answer: a lot! Topics: GU update, Science vs. Politics, Elon Musk vs. Physics, and WTF is a Kayfabe? I'd be honored if you'd get me two (free) birthday presents
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Julian Barbour: The Janus Point and the Arrow of Time (#180)
09/09/2021 Duration: 01h48minJulian Barbour is the author of the highly regarded The Discovery of Dynamics and the bestseller The End of Time and now, The Janus Point. He received his PhD in physics from the University of Cologne in 1968. He is a past visiting professor of physics at the University of Oxford and lives on the edge of the scenic Cotswolds, UK. A major new work of physics, The Janus Point will transform our understanding of the nature of existence. In a universe filled by chaos and disorder, Julian Barbour makes the radical argument that the growth of order drives the passage of time — and shapes the destiny of the universe. Time is among the universe's greatest mysteries. Why, when most laws of physics allow for it to flow forward and backward, does it only go forward? Physicists have long appealed to the second law of thermodynamics, held to predict the increase of disorder in the universe, to explain this. In The Janus Point, physicist Julian Barbour argues that the second law has been misapplied and that the growth of o
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Stephon Alexander: Fear of a Black Universe (#179)
31/08/2021 Duration: 01h28minStephon Alexander is a Professor of Physics at Brown University and the President of the National Society of Black Physicists (NSBP). Alexander has had previous appointments at Stanford University, Imperial College, Penn State, Dartmouth College, and Haverford College. He is a specialist in the field of string cosmology, where the physics of superstrings are applied to address longstanding questions in cosmology. In 2001, he co-invented the model of inflation based on higher dimensional hypersurfaces in string theory called D-Branes. In such models, the early universe emerged from the destruction of a higher dimensional D-brane which ignites a period of rapid expansion of space often referred to as cosmic inflation. Years ago, cosmologist Stephon Alexander received life-changing advice: to discover real physics, he needed to stop memorizing and start taking risks. In Fear of a Black Universe, Alexander shows that great physics requires us to think outside the mainstream — to improvise and rely on intuition. H
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Danny Miranda and Dr. Brian Keating – How Religion Helps An Astrophysicist Make Sense Of The Universe (#178)
26/08/2021 Duration: 01h31minDr. Brian Keating is an American physicist who is a Distinguished Professor of Physics at the Center for Astrophysics & Space Sciences in the Department of Physics at the University of California, San Diego. In this conversation, we spoke about Losing The Nobel Prize, his latest book, Galileo, how one of his mentors let him down, and Judaism. In this conversation, we spoke about Losing The Nobel Prize, his latest book, Galileo, how one of his mentors let him down, and Judaism. Dr. Keating's Twitter – https://twitter.com/DrBrianKeating Dr. Keating's YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmXH_moPhfkqCk6S3b9RWuw Dr. Keating's Website – https://briankeating.com/ Find Danny Miranda: Podcast – https://dannymiranda.com/podcast/ Twitter – https://twitter.com/heydannymiranda Instagram – https://instagram.com/heydannymiranda YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/dannymiranda Newsletter – https://dannymiranda.com/tuesday-treasure/ Support our Sponsors! LinkedIn Jobs! Use this link to post your first
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Paul Halpern: Flashes of Creation (#177)
24/08/2021 Duration: 57minPaul Halpern is Professor of Physics at the University of the Sciences in Philadelphia. A prolific author, he has written sixteen science books and numerous articles. His interests range from space, time and higher dimensions to cultural aspects of science. The recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, Fulbright Scholarship, and an Athenaeum Literary Award, he has appeared on C-SPAN, the History Channel, the Discovery Channel, the PBS series "Future Quest," and "The Simpsons 20th Anniversary Special." Halpern's books include Time Journeys, Cosmic Wormholes, The Cyclical Serpent, Faraway Worlds, The Great Beyond, Brave New Universe, What's Science Ever Done for Us?, Collider, What's the Matter with Pluto?, Edge of the Universe, Einstein's Dice and Schrödinger's Cat, The Quantum Labyrinth, Synchronicity and Flashes of Creation. In his most recent book, Flashes of Creation, Professor Halpern breaks down the great debate over the Big Bang and the continuing quest to understand the fate of the universe. In Flashes of