COMPLEXITY
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Cris Moore on Algorithmic Justice & The Physics of Inference
15 Jan 2021
It’s tempting to believe that people can outsource decisions to machines — that algorithms are objective, and it’s easier and fairer to dump the burden on them. But convenience conceals the
Science in The Time of COVID: Michael Lachmann & Sam Scarpino on Lessons from The Pandemic
23 Dec 2020
COVID-19 hasn’t just disrupted the “normal” of everyone’s social practices in what we take for granted as “daily life.” The pandemic has also, more granularly, changed the way scientists
Artemy Kolchinsky on "Semantic Information" & The Physics of Meaning
11 Dec 2020
Matter, energy, and information: the holy trinity of physics. Understanding the relations between these measures of our world are one of the big questions of complex systems science. The laws of
Peter Dodds on Text-Based Timeline Analysis & New Instruments for The Science of Stories
26 Nov 2020
"There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.” – Vladimir Ilyich Lenin When human beings saw the first pictures of the Earth from space, the impact was
Scott Ortman on Archaeological Synthesis and Settlement Scaling Theory
11 Nov 2020
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
Helena Miton on Cultural Evolution in Music and Writing Systems
29 Oct 2020
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
David Wolpert on The No Free Lunch Theorems and Why They Undermine The Scientific Method
14 Oct 2020
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
Vicky Yang & Henrik Olsson on Political Polling & Polarization: How We Make Decisions & Identities
30 Sep 2020
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
Carl Bergstrom & Jevin West on Calling Bullshit: The Art of Skepticism in a Data-Driven World
16 Sep 2020
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
Natalie Grefenstette on Agnostic Biosignature Detection
2 Sep 2020
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
The Information Theory of Biology & Origins of Life with Sara Imari Walker (Big Biology Podcast Crossover)
12 Aug 2020
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
Fractal Conflicts & Swing Voters with Eddie Lee
23 Jul 2020
Since the 1940s, scientists have puzzled over a curious finding: armed conflict data reveals that human battles obey a power-law distribution, like avalanches and epidemics. Just like the fractal
Fighting Hate Speech with AI & Social Science (with Joshua Garland, Mirta Galesic, and Keyan Ghazi-Zahedi)
15 Jul 2020
The magnitude of interlocking “wicked problems” we humans face today is daunting…and made all the worse by the widening schisms in our public discourse, the growing prominence of hate speech
The Art & Science of Resilience in the Wake of Trauma with Laurence Gonzales
6 Jul 2020
Each of us at some point in our lives will face traumatizing hardship — abuse or injury, lack or loss. And all of us must weather the planetwide effects of this pandemic, economic instability,
Geoffrey West on Scaling, Open-Ended Growth, and Accelerating Crisis/Innovation Cycles: Transcendence or Collapse? (Part 2)
25 Jun 2020
Cities define the modern world. They characterize the human era and its impacts on our planet. By bringing us together, these "social reactors" amplify the best in us: our creativity, efficiency,
Scaling Laws & Social Networks in The Time of COVID-19 with Geoffrey West (Part 1)
17 Jun 2020
We’re living through a unique moment in history. The interlocking crises of a global pandemic, widespread unemployment, social unrest, and climate change, show us just how far human civilization
Better Scientific Modeling for Ecological & Social Justice with David Krakauer (Transmission Series Ep. 7)
8 Jun 2020
Mathematical models of the world — be they in physics, economics, epidemiology — capture only details that researchers notice and deem salient. Rather than objective claims about reality, they
The Future of the Human Climate Niche with Tim Kohler & Marten Scheffer
2 Jun 2020
Humans, like any other organism, occupy a niche — a “Goldilocks Zone” for which our biology is suited, relatively to the extreme diversity of habitats on Earth. But to understand the natural
Exponentials, Economics, and Ecology with David Krakauer (Transmission Series Ep. 6)
11 May 2020
If COVID-19 has made anything obvious to everyone, it might be how the very small can force the transformation of the very large. Disrupt the right place in a network and exponential changes ripple
Embracing Complexity for Systemic Interventions with David Krakauer (Transmission Series Ep. 5)
4 May 2020
It takes effort to embrace complexity. Simple models, simple narratives seem easier up front, their consequences only obvious in retrospect. When we talk about COVID-19 transmission rates, we’re
Rethinking Our Assumptions During the COVID-19 Crisis with David Krakauer (Transmission Series Ep. 4)
27 Apr 2020
COVID-19 has delivered an extraordinary shock to our assumptions, be they in how we practice education, business, research, or governance. When we base forecasts on bad data, even solid logic gives
On Coronavirus, Crisis, and Creative Opportunity with David Krakauer (Transmission Series Ep. 3)
20 Apr 2020
Our histories constrain what opportunities we notice and can take in life. The genes you have define the shape your body can grow into, in concert with environmental influences. But the cards
Caroline Buckee on Improving COVID-19 Surveillance & Response
17 Apr 2020
For this special mini-series covering the COVID19 pandemic, we will bring you into conversation with the scientists studying the bigger picture of this crisis, so you can learn their cutting-edge
COVID-19 & Complex Time in Biology & Economics with David Krakauer (Transmission Series Ep. 2)
13 Apr 2020
In several key respects, COVID-19 reveals how crucial timing is for human life. The lens of complex systems science helps us understand the central role of time in coordinating across scales, and how
Rigorous Uncertainty: Science During COVID-19 with David Krakauer (Transmission Series Ep. 1)
6 Apr 2020
The coronavirus pandemic is in one sense a kind of prism: it reveals the many interlocking systems that, until disrupted, formed the mostly invisible backdrop of modern life, challenging the economy
Sam Scarpino on Modeling Disease Transmission & Interventions
1 Apr 2020
“We should not have a strategy that involves killing a sizable percentage of the population. But, even if you were going to get over that ethical hurdle, [herd immunity for Covid-19] still isn't
Laurent Hébert-Dufresne on Halting the Spread of COVID-19
26 Mar 2020
Chances are, if you are listening to this around the time it was released, you’re listening alone. Right now the human species is conducting one of the most sweeping synchronized experiments of all
Andy Dobson on Epidemic Modeling for COVID-19
19 Mar 2020
Pandemics like the current novel coronavirus disease outbreak provide a powerful incentive to study the dynamics of complex adaptive systems. They also make it obvious, as new information streams in
Nicole Creanza on Cultural Evolution in Humans & Songbirds
12 Mar 2020
One feature common to nonlinear phenomena is how they challenge intuitions. Maybe nowhere is this more apparent than in studying the evolutionary process, and organisms in which not just genes but
Melanie Mitchell on Artificial Intelligence: What We Still Don't Know
5 Mar 2020
Since the term was coined in 1956, artificial intelligence has been a kind of mirror that tells us more about our theories of intelligence, and our hopes and fears about technology, than about
Albert Kao on Animal Sociality & Collective Computation
27 Feb 2020
Over one hundred years ago, Sir Francis Galton asked 787 villagers to guess an ox’s weight. None of them got it right, but averaging the answers led to a near-perfect estimate. This is a textbook
David B. Kinney on the Philosophy of Science
20 Feb 2020
Science is often seen as a pure, objective discipline — as if it all rests neatly on cause and effect. As if the universe acknowledges a difference between ideal categories like “biology” and
Kirell Benzi on Data Art & The Future of Science Communication
13 Feb 2020
Science has always been about improving human understanding of our universe…but scientists have not always prioritized accessibility of their hard-won results. The deeper research digs into
Chris Kempes on The Physical Constraints on Life & Evolution
6 Feb 2020
Why is the internal structure of Bacteria so different from the architecture of a nucleated cell? Why do some kinds of organisms stay small, whereas others grow to enormous size? What evolutionary
Andy Dobson on Disease Ecology & Conservation Strategy
30 Jan 2020
Physics usually gets the credit for grand unifying theories and the search for universal laws…but looking past the arbitrary boundaries between the sciences, it’s just as true that ecological
R. Maria del-Rio Chanona on Modeling Labor Markets & Tech Unemployment
23 Jan 2020
Since the first Industrial Revolution, most people have responded in one of two ways to the threat of technological unemployment: either a general blanket fear that the machines are coming for us
W. Brian Arthur (Part 2) on The Future of The Economy
15 Jan 2020
If the economy is better understood as an evolving system, an out-of-equilibrium ecology composed of agents that adapt to one another’s strategies, how does this change the way we think about our
W. Brian Arthur (Part 1) on The History of Complexity Economics
8 Jan 2020
From its beginnings as a discipline nearly 150 years ago, economics rested on assumptions that don’t hold up when studied in the present day. The notion that our economic systems are in
Matthew Jackson on Social & Economic Networks
18 Dec 2019
It may be a cliché, but it’s a timeless truth regardless: who you know matters. The connectedness of actors in a network tells us not just who wields the power in societies and markets, but also
Ray Monk on The Lives of Extraordinary Individuals: Wittgenstein, Russell, Oppenheimer
11 Dec 2019
In this show’s first episode, David Krakauer explained how art and science live along an axis of explanatory depth: science strives to find the simplest adequate abstractions to explain the world
Melanie Moses on Metabolic Scaling in Biology & Computation
4 Dec 2019
What is the difference between 100 kilograms of human being and 100 kilograms of algae? One answer to this question is the veins and arteries that carry nutrients throughout the human body, allowing
Mirta Galesic on Social Learning & Decision-making
27 Nov 2019
We live in a world so complicated and immense it challenges our comparably simple minds to even know which information we should use to make decisions. The human brain seems tuned to follow simple
Olivia Judson on Major Energy Transitions in Evolutionary History
20 Nov 2019
It’s easy to take modern Earth for granted — our breathable atmosphere, the delicately balanced ecosystems we depend on — but this world is nothing like the planet on which life first found its
Rajiv Sethi on Stereotypes, Crime, and The Pursuit of Justice
13 Nov 2019
Whether or not you think you hold them, stereotypes shape the lives of everyone on Earth. As human beings, we lack the ability to judge each situation as unique and different…and how we group novel
Jennifer Dunne on Reconstructing Ancient Food Webs
6 Nov 2019
Looking back through time, the fossil record shows a remarkable diversity of forms, creatures unfamiliar to today’s Earth, suggesting ecosystems alien enough to challenge any sense of continuity.
Jennifer Dunne on Food Webs & ArchaeoEcology
30 Oct 2019
For as long as humans have erected walls around our cities, we’ve considered culture separate from the encircling wilderness. This difference came to be expressed in our “man vs. nature”
Luis Bettencourt on The Science of Cities
23 Oct 2019
If you’re a human in this century, the odds are overwhelming that you are a city-dweller. These hubs of human cultural activity exert a powerful allure – and most people understand that this
Sabine Hauert on Swarming Across Scales
16 Oct 2019
If complex systems science had a mascot, it might be the murmuration. These enormous flocks of starlings darken skies across the northern hemisphere, performing intricate airborne maneuvers with no
The Origins of Life: David Krakauer, Sarah Maurer, and Chris Kempes at InterPlanetary Festival 2019
9 Oct 2019
A few years after Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species, upsetting centuries of certainty about the history of life, he wrote a now-famous letter to Joseph Dalton Hooker, British botanist
David Krakauer on The Landscape of 21st Century Science
9 Oct 2019
For 300 years, the dream of science was to understand the world by chopping it up into pieces. But boiling everything down to basic parts does not tell us about the way those parts behave together.
