Growth

341 snips

Mar 14, 2025

Steve Strogatz, a mathematician and Cornell professor renowned for his work on the Fibonacci sequence, joins the conversation to delve into the fascinating dynamics of growth. The discussion journey spans from giant pumpkins at the Alaska State Fair to the regenerative wonders of sea slugs. Strogatz reveals the profound connections between math, creativity, and nature's growth patterns. It also addresses the paradox of global population growth, highlighting the challenges of declining birth rates and the implications of an aging demographic. A captivating exploration of growth's many layers!

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ANECDOTE

Giant Pumpkin

Matt Kielty visits the Alaska State Fair's giant pumpkin weigh-off.
Dale Marshall's 2,035-pound pumpkin wins, astonishing onlookers.

INSIGHT

Awe-Inspiring Growth

Growing giant pumpkins pushes the limits of what's possible.
Witnessing such growth inspires awe and makes one contemplate the blueprints of growth.

ANECDOTE

Fingertip Loss

Raimondo accidentally cut off her fingertip while chopping carrots.
She decided against going to the ER due to high costs.

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It’s easy to take growth for granted, for it to seem expected, inevitable even. Every person starts out as a baby and grows up. Plants grow from seeds into food. The economy grows. That stack of mail on your table grows. But why does anything grow the way that it does? In this hour, we go from the Alaska State Fair, to a kitchen in Berkeley, to the deep sea, to ancient India, to South Korea, and lots of places in between, to investigate this question, and uncover the many forces that drive growth, sometimes wondrous, sometimes terrifying, and sometimes surprisingly, unnervingly fragile.

Special thanks to Elie Tanaka, Keith Devlin, Deven Patel, Chris Gole, James Raymo and Jessica Savage

EPISODE CREDITS:
Reported by - Matt Kielty, Becca Bressler, Pat Walters, Sindhu Gnanasambandun, Annie McEwen, Simon Adler
with help from - Rae Mondo
Produced by - Matt Kielty, Becca Bressler, Pat Walters, Sindhu Gnanasambandun, Annie McEwen, Simon Adler
Sound design contributed by - Jeremy Bloom
with mixing help from - Jeremy Bloom
Fact-checking by - Emily Krieger and Natalie Middleton
and Edited by - Pat Walters

EPISODE CITATIONS:
Audio:
“The Joy of Why,” (https://www.quantamagazine.org/tag/the-joy-of-why/) Steve Strogatz’s podcast.

Articles:
“The End of Children,”(https://zpr.io/WBdg6bi8xwnr) The New Yorker, by Gideon Lewis-Kraus

Books:
Finding Fibonacci (https://zpr.io/3EjviAttUFke) by Keith Devlin
Do Plants Know Math (https://zpr.io/bfbTZDJ8ehx5) by Chris Gole

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