Show for April 7, 2013. Leonard Susskind: Plumbing the Universe.
Last time I spoke to the theoretical physicist Leonard Susskind, it was about his long-running debate with Stephen Hawking on the nature of information and black holes, as retold in the book The Black Hole War. You can listen to that conversation here. This time, we talked about Lenny himself: his humble beginnings as a plumber’s son in the Bronx, becoming a physicist, his thought process, his best ideas and some of his duds. Also, why he loves to explain physics to non-experts – a talent he put to good use in this interview, describing some of the initial insights that led to string theory and shedding light on the mind-stretching holographic principle. Overall, a very interesting glimpse into a highly original mind.
You can download the MP3 here (if using a Mac, control-click the link and choose “Save Link As…” If using a PC, right-click and choose Save Target As…”)
Show for March 24, 2013. Neurologist Robert Burton on The Limits of Neuroscience.
I don’t know whether Bob Burton’s car sports this bumper sticker…
… but it ought to. Bob has spent years exploring our shaky reliance on what he calls “involuntary mental sensations”: the internal perceptions by which we come to “know” our own minds. He says these inner representations, offered up by the brain itself, are partial at best, delusory at worst. And that’s a problem not only for ordinary seekers of self-knowledge but also for an ambitious group of neuroscientists attempting to explain consciousness and the human psyche, while beholden to many of the same, suspect intuitions that bamboozle the rest of us. Of course, there’s also that matter of the yawning gulf separating objective explanation and subjective experience, and whether it’s bridgeable at all.
Bob raises these and other problems in his latest book, A Skeptic’s Guide to the Mind: What Neuroscience Can and Cannot Tell us About Ourselves. We had a long and wide-ranging tête-à-tête on the difficulties that loom when science shifts from studying the brain to mapping the mind, and the deep and dubious assumptions built into categories such as conscious and unconscious, self and other, choice and non-choice.
You can download the MP3 here (if using a Mac, control-click the link and choose “Save Link As…” If using a PC, right-click and choose Save Target As…”)
Show for March 10, 2013. Journalist and Ocean Activist David Helvarg
This radio program mostly ignores the large body of water that sits only a short block from our studio. Inexcusable, I know, but it’s not too late to make amends. For a start, I spoke to David Helvarg, marine conservationist and author of The Golden Shore: California’s Love Affair with the Sea. We talked about David’s own love affair with the sea as well as his earlier career as a war correspondent in Central America. Also, a history of beachgoing, the popularization of surfing, the future of the California coastline and a defense of the Poriferan lifestyle.
You can download the MP3 here (if using a Mac, control-click the link and choose “Save Link As…” If using a PC, right-click and choose Save Target As…”)
Show for Feb 17, 2013. Hear, Hear: Auditory Neuroscientist and Sound Savant Seth Horowitz.
Sound as vibration, sound as sensation, sound as means of manipulation. Sound as a state of mind and as a weapon. Seth Horowitz considers sonic phenomena from these and other angles in his new book The Universal Sense. And he’s a good one to do it: as a neuroscientist specializing in auditory phenomena, sound recordist, musician and aural explorer, not to mention the guy who proved that tadpoles can hear, Seth is a well-travelled guide to the sonic world. He and I listened to a sampling of audio curiosities while contemplating questions such as:
- What’s faster, our ears or our eyes?
- What’s it like to be a bat?
- What’s it like to be Evelyn Glennie?
- How do we build a picture of the world from auditory clues?
- Why are low sounds ominous?
- Can sounds kill?
You can download the MP3 here (if using a Mac, control-click the link and choose “Save Link As…” If using a PC, right-click and choose Save Target As…”)
Show for Feb 3, 2013. George Dyson: Turing’s Cathedral and the Dawn of the Digital Universe
Originally broadcast in Feb, 2012, historian George Dyson (and son of physicist Freeman Dyson) tells the story of the project that laid the groundwork for much of modern computing. More here.
2012: The Home Stretch
Though it sometimes pains me to repeat material, I’ve been preoccupied with work and other non-radio commitments, so I’ve had to raid the archives in the final weeks of aught-twelve. Rest assured, I’m filling the hopper with new material for ‘13. Here’s what we’ve heard in the last couple of shows:
Dec 30, 2012: Getting seriously soulful with singer Gregory Porter
Dec 23, 2012: Mapping the brain with neuroscientist Sebastian Seung
Dec 16, 2012: Bringing music to life (and vice-versa) with composer Elena Kats-Chernin
Dec 9, 2012: Searching for happiness with filmmaker Roko Belic
Show for Nov. 11, 2012: How to Predict an Election—Polling Aggregators Sam Wang and Drew Linzer
Nate Silver isn’t the only forecaster to project the results of last Tuesday’s presidential election with preternatural accuracy. Sam Wang of the Princeton Election Consortium and Drew Linzer of Votamatic both hit the bullseye, too, and they explained to me why it’s not really so preternatural after all (hint: statistics works). We talked about their methods, why so many pundits and political partisans missed the boat, and whether it’s bedtime for bloviators.
Fearless forecasters: Neuroscientist Sam Wang and Political Scientist Drew Linzer
You can download the MP3 here (if using a Mac, control-click the link and choose “Save Link As…” If using a PC, right-click and choose Save Target As…”)
Show for Oct. 7, 2012. Steven Pinker on the Decline of Violence (rebroadcast).
I was on hiatus last week, so I replayed this interview from last year: cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker discussing his latest book, The Better Angels of Our Nature. Pinker argues that, modern mayhem notwithstanding, human violence has been trending downward for centuries. We discussed whether, how and why people have been getting more peacable.
You can download the MP3 here (if using a Mac, control-click the link and choose “Save Link As…” If using a PC, right-click and choose Save Target As…”)
Show for Aug 26, 2012. The New Cosmology.
Originally broadcast in Feb 2011, my conversation with theoretical physicist Anthony Aguirre on the new, more complex picture of the universe that cosmologists have been sketching out in recent years. Anthony gave some of the clearest explanations I’ve heard of eternal inflation, the multiverse and why the Big Bang might not have been the beginning of everything.
Not so simple: The universe may be a lot more complicated than this standard view suggests.
Click the “play” arrow above to listen to the interview, or download the MP3 here.
Show for July 15, 2012. Science Writer Margaret Wertheim On Fringe Physicists.
When it comes to science, we at the 7th Avenue Project usually stick to the professional, institutionally sanctioned variety, even when discussing unorthodox notions and minority opinions. In this episode, though, we ventured further afield, into the alternate reality that Margaret Wertheim calls “outsider physics” and that some people less generously dub “crackpot science.” Margaret says the sheer number of folks who reject much or all of modern physics and persist in spinning out their own DIY theories raises some important questions about our relationship to science these days. We discussed her book, Physics on the Fringe: Smoke Rings, Circlons and Alternative Theories of Everything, and also the organization she founded, The Institute For Figuring, “dedicated to the poetic and aesthetic dimensions of science, mathematics and engineering.”
Click the Play arrow above to listen to the show, or you can download the MP3 here (if using a Mac, control-click the link and choose “Save Link As…” If using a PC, right-click and choose Save Target As…”)
Show for July 8, 2012: Does Culture Drive Language?
It’s been about 50 years since Noam Chomsky conclusively established that the basic structures of human language are stamped in our brains, not gleaned from experience. Or… maybe he didn’t. Chomsky’s notion of an innate “universal grammar” fashioned by evolution has been hugely influential and has helped fuel the “cognitive revolution,” but there have always been doubters. While several generations of theoretical linguists have been diligently expanding the Chomskian program, another faction says there’s little or no evidence for UG and it’s time to scale back or even scrap the theory. Former innatist Daniel Everett is now part of the opposition. On last week’s show, I aired a 2007 interview with Dan talking about his adventures as a missionary-turned-Amazonian-linguist, and how he lost faith, first in Christianity and then in Chomskianism. This time, a new interview with Dan discussing his latest book, Language: The Cultural Tool. In it, he advances the idea that grammars and other aspects of particular languages are shaped by culture.
Dan Everett visiting a Pirahã village in the Amazon.
Click the Play arrow above to listen to the show, or you can download the MP3 here (if using a Mac, control-click the link and choose “Save Link As…” If using a PC, right-click and choose Save Target As…”)
Show for July 1, 2012. Iconoclast: linguist Daniel Everett.
Dan Everett is twice a heretic, having strayed from the path of Christian missionary to become a linguist, and then breaking with the dominant branch of theoretical linguistics led by Noam Chomsky. I did a report on Dan for NPR in 2007, but I never broadcast this longer interview, from which that piece was taken. I decided to air it now because Dan will be on the show next week, talking about his new book on the origins of language. The earlier interview provides the fascinating back story: how he went from rock n’ roller to missionary to Amazonian linguist, his years in the rain forest with the isolated Pirahã tribe, their anomalous language, and how he came to doubt Chomsky’s idea of universal grammar.
Click the Play arrow above to listen to the show, or you can download the MP3 here (if using a Mac, control-click the link and choose “Save Link As…” If using a PC, right-click and choose Save Target As…”)
Show for June 17, 2012. Jonathan Gottschall on the Storytelling Instinct.
I’ve been nipping at the edges of this subject for a while, and in a recent show I mentioned that I was seeking someone who could tackle it head-on. Well, I found him: Jonathan Gottschall, author of The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human. Jonathan and I discussed the central place of narrative not only in art and entertainment, but in our deep understanding of the world and ourselves. With us humans, it’s story time all the time, or at least much of the time. Jonathan and I talked about storytelling’s pervasive influence, possible evolutionary explanations, its hazards and if/how we ever escape its constraints.
Bonus points to listeners who caught Jonathan’s passing reference (“ignorant armies clash by night”) to Matthew Arnold’s Dover Beach. Substitute the notion of “story” for “love” in the last stanza, and the poem nicely captures some of the Jonathan’s thoughts on the psychological necessity of storytelling.
Click the Play arrow above to listen to the show, or you can download the MP3 here (if using a Mac, control-click the link and choose “Save Link As…” If using a PC, right-click and choose Save Target As…”)
Encore, Encore.
Over the past three weeks we’ve been airing what some in radio euphemistically call “encore performances” (reruns). Don’t worry, new material’s coming next week and beyond. Here’s what we’ve featured in the meantime:
June 3, 2012: Theoretical physicist Sean Carroll on the nature of time.
May 27, 2012: Media-watcher Brooke Gladstone on journalism’s checkered history.
May 20, 2012: Comedian Kumail Nanjiani on life and laughs in Pakistan and the U.S.
Show for May 6, 2012. George Dyson: The Dawn of the Digital Universe
Historian George Dyson tells the story of the Electronic Computer Project. Led by the brilliant polymath John Von Neumann in the 1940’s and 50’s, the project laid the groundwork for much of modern computing. In doing so, Dyson says, it birthed a new, digital ecosystem, a world of self-reproducing, ever-evolving numbers that may be said to have a life of their own.
We talked about that and about Dyson’s own very personal connection to the story. He’s the son of famed physicist Freeman Dyson and grew up at the Institute for Advanced Study, where Von Neumann and crew did their pioneering work. He’s also an earth-loving outdoorsman, and has a foot in both the natural and technological worlds.
John Von Neumann and the “MANIAC” computer at the Institute for Advanced Study. The cylinders at bottom house cathode ray tubes used as memory devices. Most present-day computers are descendants of this ancestral machine, as Dyson explains in his new book Turing’s Cathedral: The Origins of the Digital Universe.
Click the Play arrow above to listen to the show, or you can download the MP3 here (if using a Mac, control-click the link and choose “Save Link As”; If using a PC, right-click and choose “Save Target As”).
