Episodes
1. Marcus Feldman: In Search of Actions That Alter Evolution
January 5, 2017
Marcus Feldman explains how he models the effects of a cultural preference — in this case, a preference for sons over daughters in China.
2. Francis Su: Math and the Good Life
February 3, 2017
Francis Su explains how mathematics can help a person to live well.
3. Francis Su: Math Is for Everybody
February 4, 2017
Francis Su discusses how the community of mathematicians tends to exclude certain people.
4. Sylvia Serfaty: In Mathematics, ‘You Cannot Be Lied To’
February 21, 2017
Sylvia Serfaty explains why you don’t have to be a genius to become a mathematician.
5. Sharon Glotzer: ‘Digital Alchemist’ Seeks Rules of Emergence
March 8, 2017
Sharon Glotzer explains how emergence, entropy and order can all fit together.
6. John Novembre: A Map of Human History, Hidden in DNA
April 20, 2017
John Novembre explains how he uses genomic data to map human history.
8. Journey to the Birth of the Solar System 360 VR
May 25, 2017
Join David Kaplan on a virtual-reality tour showing how the sun, the Earth and the other planets came to be.
9. Purvesh Khatri: More Data — the Dirtier the Better
June 7, 2017
Khatri learned that by working with 'messy' clinical data sets, he could find genes that the human body expresses in response to diverse forms of a disease.
10. Jessica Flack: How Nature Solves Problems Through Computation
July 10, 2017
Jessica Flack describes the special challenges of applying collective computation to the understanding of complex biological systems.
11. Jay Pasachoff: Eclipse Hunter Reveals the Science That Can Only Be Done in the Dark
August 10, 2017
Jay Pasachoff explains what scientists can learn during a total solar eclipse.
12. How Andrea Ghez Found a Supermassive Black Hole
August 21, 2017
The UCLA astrophysicist explains how tracking the movement of stars revealed the existence of a supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy.
13. Svitlana Mayboroda: Taming Rogue Waves
August 22, 2017
Svitlana Mayboroda describes how the landscape function helps solve the mystery of wave localization.
14. Neil Johnson: A Physicist Who Models ISIS and the Alt-Right
August 23, 2017
Neil Johnson on the physics of collective human behavior.
15. Nigel Goldenfeld: Seeing Emergent Physics Behind Evolution
August 31, 2017
Nigel Goldenfeld explains how condensed matter physics provides insights into the collective state of early life on Earth.
16. Rebecca Goldin: Why Math Is the Best Way to Make Sense of the World
September 11, 2017
Rebecca Goldin explains why quantitative literacy is so important.
17. Michael Assis: Atomic Origami
October 31, 2017
Michael Assis demonstrates how defects can be used to tune the properties of Miura-ori origami.
18. Federico Ardila: A Mathematician Who Dances to the Joys and Sorrows of Discovery
November 20, 2017
A Mathematician Who Dances to the Joys and Sorrows of Discovery
19. Minhyong Kim: Connecting Number Theory to Physics
December 1, 2017
Minhyong Kim wanted to make sure he had concrete results in number theory before he admitted that his ideas were inspired by physics.
