The Universe Speaks in Numbers: Steven Weinberg

The Universe Speaks in Numbers | 28 November 2019 | 1h 05m | Listen Later | iTunes
Steven Weinberg has died at 88 (NY Times obituary). This 2014 interview reflects on his career in physics, the ‘golden years’ in which he and others put the finishing touches to the Standard Model of particle physics, and his views about the future of theoretical physics.

How Constitutions Changed the World

History Extra | 24 April 2021 | 0h 41m | Listen Later | iTunes
Interview with Linda Colley about her book The Gun, the Ship and the Pen: Warfare, Constitutions and the Making of the Modern World. Explores how written constitutions, together with warfare, forged the modern world. Cites examples from the United States, France, Russia and the Pitcairn Islands.

Simon Baron-Cohen || How Autism Drives Human Invention

The Psychology Podcast | 18 February 2021 | 1h 16m | Listen Later | iTunes
Interview with Simon Baron-Cohen about his book The Pattern Seekers: How Autism Drives Human Invention. Covers the role of affective versus cognitive empathy, navigating autism amidst cancel culture, how autism drives human invention, the biological basis of creativity and autism, how we can nurture the inventors of the future, and more.

This is a fantastic book that deserves to be much better known.

The Beginning of Infinity

Naval | 2 July 2021 | 1h 06m | Listen Later | iTunes
Naval Ravikant and Brett Hall discuss David Deutsch’s book The Beginning of Infinity. Covers the importance of good explanations; that all knowledge is conjectural; the fallibility of mathematical methods; reading the best books over and over again; probability and its relationship to the multiverse; that science is an error-correcting mechanism that should not presume to predict the future from the past; that we tend to pessimism because it’s easy to extrapolate how things will get worse, but it’s rational to be optimistic; and more.

Full Spectrum: How the Science of Colour Made Us Modern

Science for the People | 27 January 2021 | 1h 00m | Listen Later | iTunes
Interview with Adam Rogers about his book Full Spectrum: How the Science of Color Made us Modern. Discusses the evolution of the science of colour and how it has influenced culture and history. Covers the technology of paints and pigments and how they’ve coloured the world and considers the role of the mind, as neuroscientists and linguists have sought to understand our perception of colour and the language we use to describe it.

I Love You Waymo

Revisionist History | 24 June 2021 | 0h 38m | Listen Later | iTunes
Malcolm Gladwell makes the case that the irrationality of humans combined with driverless cars will return the streets to walkers and cyclists.

Rory Sutherland – Behavioural Science, Marketing, and Persuasion

Infinite Loops | 1 July 2021 | 1h 21m | Listen Later | iTunes
Deliciously rambling interview with Rory Sutherland covering in-group versus out-group, the fractal nature of behavioural science, pricing heuristics, woke persuasion, the Barbra Streisand effect, Canada, and more.

Richard Prum on Birds, Beauty, and Finding Your Own Way

Conversations with Tyler | 30 June 2021 | 0h 50m | Listen Later | iTunes
Interview with Richard Prum about his book The Evolution of Beauty. Discusses the infidelity of Australian birds, the origins of avian flight, how the lack of a penis explains why birds are so beautiful, why albatrosses can afford to take so many years to develop before mating, the game theory in ornithology compared with economics, how modern technology is revolutionizing bird watching, how scarcity predicts territoriality in birds, how falcons and cormorants hunt and fish with humans, whether birds exhibit a G factor, why birds have regional accents, why he’s not excited about trying to bring back passenger pigeons, and more.