How cities drive economic progress
What role do cities play in driving economic progress? In today’s episode, we’re joined by Luis Bettencourt, Professor at the University of Chicago and External Faculty at the Santa Fe Institute, who explains how cities allow us to do something magical - they allow us to specialise. Resources: …
Big Ideas: The Origin of Life
How does a group of molecules transition into something that is life? And what do even mean when we say 'life'? To explore the origin of life, we’re joined again by Sara Walker, Deputy Director of the Beyond Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science, Associate Professor in Earth and Space Explora…
In conversation with Rory Sutherland - Part 2
In today’s episode, we continue our conversation with Rory Sutherland, UK Vice Chairman of Ogilvy, where he discusses how our decision making, especially as consumers, while often appearing irrational, is actually the result of us deploying heuristics that have served us well in situations of low t…
In conversation with Rory Sutherland - Part 1
In today’s episode of Simplifying Complexity, we’re joined by Rory Sutherland. Rory is the UK Vice Chairman of the iconic advertising agency (and inspiration for the television series Madmen) Ogilvy, where he has worked for close to 40 years. In today’s conversation, you’ll hear how Rory became in…
The geometry of music
Today we're joined by Dmitri Tymoczko, Professor of Music at Princeton University. Dmitri will talk about the geometry and patterns we hear in music, as well as explore its history, particularly from the 1900s onwards. Resources: Spotify playlist of songs mentioned in this episode Connect: Si…
How can we harness the wisdom of the crowd?
Experts often build models to help predict how systems will behave. But what happens if, instead of asking the experts to build models, we ask laypeople to simply predict outcomes? This is what happens in 'prediction markets'. And it turns out that in some situations, the 'wisdom of the crowd' oft…
Predicting power grid failure
We’ve spoken previously on the show about the complexity of the power grid. Today we’re focusing on how it fails, in the form of blackouts, and we're joined again by Seth Blumsack. He'll discuss why blackouts are so difficult to understand, and whether or not it's possible to model them. Seth is a…
The Mathematics of War: Part 2
In our last episode, Neil Johnson explained how there was an underlying power law with a slope of 1.8 that described the number of casualties that occur in wars. Today’s episode digs deeper into where this power law comes from, the route that Neil's research took to explain it, and how the arrival…
The Mathematics of War: Part 1
When we think of what caused a certain number of people to die in a specific war, we tend to think about a number of factors. for example, the terrain or political drivers. But what if the number of deaths that occur in a war is actually dictated by something far less obvious? Neil Johnson, Profes…
Big Ideas: Time
Throughout the history of science, the concept of time has changed many times - from Newton and thermodynamic definitions to the weirdness of relativity and quantum mechanics. And as our understanding of life and the universe continues to grow, is it again time to reevaluate how we think about time…