What Is the Meaning of Life?

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This is episode 142. There is perhaps an absurdly deep meaning to the number 42 that our culture has elevated. So as I was turning 42, I basically sort of researched why 42 is such a cool number. And it turns out that and I put together this little passage that was explaining to all those guests to my 42nd birthday party, why we're talking about the meaning of life. It takes light 10 to the minus 42 seconds to cross the diameter of a proton connecting the two fundamental dimensions of space and time.

Manolis Kellis is a computational biologist at MIT. Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors:
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OUTLINE:
Here’s the timestamps for the episode. On some podcast players you should be able to click the timestamp to jump to that time.
(00:00) – Introduction
(06:48) – Music and life
(46:21) – The number 42
(52:22) – The question about the meaning of life
(55:02) – Are humans unique in the universe?
(1:00:46) – Human civilization
(1:12:52) – Mars
(1:14:45) – Human mind and the abstraction layers of reality
(1:25:38) – Neural networks and intelligence
(1:32:55) – Ideas as organisms
(1:42:19) – Language
(1:53:34) – Legacy
(2:08:25) – Poems