Physicist Richard Feynman's involvement in the Manhattan Project and investigation of the Challenger Space Shuttle explosion discussed. Feynman's curious nature, appreciation of beauty, and Nobel Prize-winning work highlighted. His patriotism during the Manhattan Project and struggles with the destructive power of the atom bomb explored. Feynman's decision to move to California and his experiences in South America examined.

Stephen Wolfram is a computer scientist, mathematician, and theoretical physicist who is the founder and CEO of Wolfram Research, a company behind Mathematica, Wolfram Alpha, Wolfram Language, and the new Wolfram Physics project. He is the author of several books including A New Kind of Science, which on a personal note was one of the most influential books in my journey in computer science and artificial intelligence. Support this podcast by signing up with these sponsors: – ExpressVPN at https://www.expressvpn.com/lexpod – Cash App – use code “LexPodcast” and download: – Cash App (App Store): https://apple.co/2sPrUHe – Cash App (Google Play): https://bit.ly/2MlvP5w EPISODE LINKS: Stephen’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/stephen_wolfram Stephen’s Website: https://www.stephenwolfram.com/ Wolfram Research Twitter: https://twitter.com/WolframResearch Wolfram Research YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/WolframResearch Wolfram Research Website: https://www.wolfram.com/ Wolfram Alpha: https://www.wolframalpha.com/ A New Kind of Science (book): https://amzn.to/34JruB2 This conversation is part of the Artificial Intelligence podcast. If you would like to get more information about this podcast go to https://lexfridman.com/ai or connect with @lexfridman on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Medium, or YouTube where you can watch the video versions of these conversations. If you enjoy the podcast, please rate it 5 stars on Apple Podcasts, follow on Spotify, or support it on Patreon. Here’s the outline of the episode. On some podcast players you should be able to click the timestamp to jump to that time. OUTLINE: 00:00 – Introduction 04:16 – Communicating with an alien intelligence 12:11 – Monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey 29:06 – What is computation? 44:54 – Physics emerging from computation 1:14:10 – Simulation 1:19:23 – Fundamental theory of physics 1:28:01 – Richard Feynman 1:39:57 – Role of ego in science 1:47:21 – Cellular automata 2:15:08 – Wolfram language 2:55:14 – What is intelligence? 2:57:47 – Consciousness 3:02:36 – Mortality 3:05:47 – Meaning of life

In a captivating conversation, Richard Feynman, a brilliant physicist and Nobel Prize winner, shares insights from his extraordinary life. He reflects on how childhood curiosity and his father’s influence shaped his understanding of science. Feynman navigates the ethical dilemmas faced by scientists during wartime, balancing ambition and morality. He emphasizes finding joy in the chaos of discovery and the importance of teaching through storytelling. Ultimately, he advocates for embracing uncertainty, fostering a deeper connection to knowledge and the universe.

Physicist Richard Feynman's second act in California is explored, including his lectures at Caltech and his interest in bright students. The podcast also delves into his family dynamics and his exploration of different states of consciousness in his final years.

Sad news for all of us: producer Rachael Cusick— who brought us soul-stirring stories rethinking grief (https://zpr.io/GZ6xEvpzsbHU) and solitude (https://zpr.io/eT5tAX6JtYra), as well as colorful musings on airplane farts (https://zpr.io/CNpgUijZiuZ4) and belly flops (https://zpr.io/uZrEz27z63CB) and Blueberry Earths (https://zpr.io/EzxgtdTRGVzz)— is leaving the show. So we thought it perfect timing to sit down with her and revisit another brainchild of hers, The Cataclysm Sentence, a collection of advice for The End. To explain: one day in 1961, the famous physicist Richard Feynman stepped in front of a Caltech lecture hall and posed this question to a group of undergraduate students: “If, in some cataclysm, all of scientific knowledge were to be destroyed, and only one sentence was passed on to the next generation of creatures, what statement would contain the most information in the fewest words?” Now, Feynman had an answer to his own question—a good one. But his question got the entire team at Radiolab wondering, what did his sentence leave out? So we posed Feynman’s cataclysm question to some of our favorite writers, artists, historians, futurists—all kinds of great thinkers. We asked them “What’s the one sentence you would want to pass on to the next generation that would contain the most information in the fewest words?” What came back was an explosive collage of what it means to be alive right here and now, and what we want to say before we go. Featuring: Richard Feynman, physicist - The Pleasure of Finding Things Out (https://zpr.io/5KngTGibPVDw) Caitlin Doughty, mortician - Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs (https://zpr.io/Wn4bQgHzDRDB) Esperanza Spalding, musician - 12 Little Spells (https://zpr.io/KMjYrkwrz9dy)  Cord Jefferson, writer - Watchmen (https://zpr.io/ruqKDQGy5Rv8)  Merrill Garbus, musician - I Can Feel You Creep Into My Private Life (https://zpr.io/HmrqFX8RKuFq) Jenny Odell, writer - How to do Nothing (https://zpr.io/JrUHu8dviFqc) Maria Popova, writer - Brainpickings (https://zpr.io/vsHXphrqbHiN) Alison Gopnik, developmental psychologist - The Gardener and the Carpenter (https://zpr.io/ewtJpUYxpYqh) Rebecca Sugar, animator - Steven Universe (https://zpr.io/KTtSrdsBtXB7) Nicholson Baker, writer - Substitute (https://zpr.io/QAh2d7J9QJf2) James Gleick, writer - Time Travel (https://zpr.io/9CWX9q3KmZj8) Lady Pink, artist - too many amazing works to pick just one (https://zpr.io/FkJh6edDBgRL) Jenny Hollwell, writer - Everything Lovely, Effortless, Safe (https://zpr.io/MjP5UJb3mMYP) Jaron Lanier, futurist - Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now (https://zpr.io/bxWiHLhPyuEK) Missy Mazzoli, composer - Proving Up (https://zpr.io/hTwGcHGk93Ty)   Special Thanks to: Ella Frances Sanders, and her book, "Eating the Sun" (https://zpr.io/KSX6DruwRaYL), for inspiring this whole episode. Caltech for letting us use original audio of The Feynman Lectures on Physics. The entirety of the lectures are available to read for free online at www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu.All the musicians who helped make the Primordial Chord, including: Siavash Kamkar (https://zpr.io/2ZT46XsMRdhg), from Iran  Koosha Pashangpour (https://zpr.io/etWDXuCctrzE), from Iran Curtis MacDonald (https://zpr.io/HQ8uskA44BUh), from Canada Meade Bernard (https://zpr.io/gbxDPPzHFvme), from US Barnaby Rea (https://zpr.io/9ULsQh5iGUPa), from UK Liav Kerbel (https://zpr.io/BA4DBwMhwZDU), from Belgium Sam Crittenden (https://zpr.io/EtQZmAk2XrCQ), from US Saskia Lankhoorn (https://zpr.io/YiH6QWJreR7p), from Netherlands Bryan Harris (https://zpr.io/HMiyy2TGcuwE), from US Amelia Watkins (https://zpr.io/6pWEw3y754me), from Canada Claire James (https://zpr.io/HFpHTUwkQ2ss), from US Ilario Morciano (https://zpr.io/zXvM7cvnLHW6), from Italy Matthias Kowalczyk, from Germany (https://zpr.io/ANkRQMp6NtHR) Solmaz Badri (https://zpr.io/MQ5VAaKieuyN), from IranAll the wonderful people we interviewed for sentences but weren’t able to fit in this episode, including: Daniel Abrahm, Julia Alvarez, Aimee Bender, Sandra Cisneros, Stanley Chen, Lewis Dartnell, Ann Druyan, Rose Eveleth, Ty Frank, Julia Galef, Ross Gay, Gary Green, Cesar Harada, Dolores Huerta, Robin Hunicke, Brittany Kamai, Priya Krishna, Ken Liu, Carmen Maria Machado, James Martin, Judith Matloff, Ryan McMahon, Hasan Minhaj, Lorrie Moore, Priya Natarajan, Larry Owens, Sunni Patterson, Amy Pearl, Alison Roman, Domee Shi, Will Shortz, Sam Stein, Sohaib Sultan, Kara Swisher, Jill Tarter, Olive Watkins, Reggie Watts, Deborah Waxman, Alex Wellerstein, Caveh Zahedi.EPISODE CREDITS Reported by - Rachael Cusick (https://www.rachaelcusick.com/)Our newsletter comes out every Wednesday. It includes short essays, recommendations, and details about other ways to interact with the show. Sign up (https://radiolab.org/newsletter)! Radiolab is supported by listeners like you. Support Radiolab by becoming a member of The Lab (https://members.radiolab.org/) today. Follow our show on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @radiolab, and share your thoughts with us by emailing radiolab@wnyc.org Leadership support for Radiolab’s science programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, a Simons Foundation Initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

Welcome to the 808 new members of the curiosity tribe who have joined us since Friday. Join the 63,073 others who are receiving high-signal, curiosity-inducing content every single week.Today’s newsletter is brought to you by Revelo!If you’re a growing technology company, chances are you’re struggling to find talented developers right now.Revelo helps companies like GitHub, Intuit, and Carta hire faster, so they can grow faster! It’s a talent platform that matches you with vetted remote developers in Latin America who work in US time zones. It offers a full-suite platform that covers payroll, benefits, compliance, and more, allowing you to hire full-time remote developers without the headaches.Get matched with vetted candidates within 3 days—guaranteed. They even offer a 100% risk-free 14-day trial. If you’re not satisfied, you pay nothing.SPECIAL OFFER: Revelo is offering Curiosity Chronicle subscribers 20% off the first 3 months of any hire! Use the link below to take advantage of this crazy deal!Today at a Glance:Curiosity and inspiration are perishable—they must be acted upon when they strike. But unfortunately, despite its importance to your career and life, learning is not a skill we’re ever explicitly taught how to approach.The Feynman Technique is a beautiful, intuitive framework for learning literally anything.The process in a nutshell: identify a topic, research it deeply, attempt to explain it to a child, and then study to fill in the gaps.The Feynman TechniqueCuriosity is unpredictable.It strikes at random—and often inopportune—moments. But it is also notoriously perishable, so it must be acted upon.Let’s assume for a moment that you've been bit by the curiosity bug and are ready to act on it—ready to learn something new and (hopefully) exciting.Now what? Where do you start? What approach do you take?You’re inspired and motivated to learn, but you don’t even know where to begin.Unfortunately, despite its importance to your career and life, learning is not a skill we’re ever explicitly taught how to approach.Let’s fix that…In today’s piece, I’d like to talk about a beautiful, intuitive framework for learning literally anything: The Feynman Technique.IntroductionRichard Feynman was an American theoretical physicist born in 1918 in New York City.Feynman was a very late talker—he didn’t utter a word until he was three—but it was clear from a young age that he was extremely observant and intelligent. His parents valued non-consensus thinking—they constantly encouraged young Richard to ask questions and think independently.Feynman taught himself advanced mathematics in his teens and would go on to earn a B.S. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a PhD from Princeton University. He would then become famous for his work in quantum electrodynamics and receive the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1965 for his contributions to the field.So yes, you could say that Richard Feynman was intelligent...But there are a lot of intelligent people in the world. Feynman's true genius was in his ability to convey extremely complex ideas in simple, elegant, digestible ways—to abstract complexity and deliver simplicity.He had observed at a young age that complex language is often used to mask a lack of deep understanding. As a rule of thumb, if someone uses a lot of acronyms and jargon to explain something to you, they probably don’t understand it very well themselves.We've all encountered this type of “expert” at one time or another…What was Richard Feynman’s secret? He had developed a learning framework—accidentally or intentionally—that forced a deep, elegant understanding of a topic that most people never achieve.The Feynman Technique: How It WorksThe Feynman Technique can be broken down into five key steps:Set the StageRead & ResearchELI5 (Explain It To Me Like I'm 5)Assess & StudyOrganize, Convey & ReviewLet's walk through each step, including notes on how I personally implement each one in my own learning processes…Step 1: Set the StageWhat’s the topic you want to learn?Starting with a blank page, write the topic at the top and jot down everything you know about it. For some topics, that might be precisely nothing; for others, it might be a lot.The starting point is irrelevant, you’re just setting the stage.Sahil Notes: I like to use Notion for tracking and managing my various research and learning efforts. It’s just a personal preference, so you can identify what works for you. I keep a “Knowledge Neural Net” board and for each new topic, I create a new page. I can then go back and connect ideas and topics as I see fit.Step 2: Read & ResearchNow that you have a baseline of your starting knowledge, you can begin your reading and research.The most effective strategy for research: start horizontal, then go vertical.Horizontal = BreadthVertical = DepthHere’s a simple visualization of how I think about this process:Horizontal Research (“HR”): Lays the foundation for your learning. When you start horizontal, you gather information across the full breadth of the topic area. This gives you the capacity to "see the entire field”—it draws a surface-level map of the topic. With horizontal research, it’s perfectly acceptable to keep it simple: Google and Wikipedia (sorry to all of my high school teachers!) are both great tools.Vertical Research (“VR”): Historically much more challenging—it typically required hours of finding and reading long, dense books on a topic. But in the Information Age, we have a diverse array of tools that provide much higher time leverage. These tools include (but are not limited to): Reddit, Twitter, Newsletters, Podcasts, Expert Networks, Books. With these tools, you’ll be able to go vertical—quickly and effectively—on any topic.Take notes, cite sources, and track gaps as you go. This step is where you start to build out your knowledge base on a topic.Sahil Notes: I really try to take my time in this phase. True depth of understanding requires significant time. I find it helpful to conduct this research in sprints—short bursts of high intensity research—rather than in jogs. Try to create mental maps that connect together pieces of information as you go—it will help cement new learnings.Step 3: ELI5Ok, so up to this point, it all feels like a standard process—no Feynman touch. But here's where it gets fun (and challenging)…Attempt to explain the topic to a child—figuratively (or literally if you're ambitious!).On a new blank page, distill everything you know about your topic—but now pretend you are explaining it to a child. Use exclusively simple language.Sahil Notes: In this step, rather than a blank page, I simply create a new header in my same Notion tab. Below this header, I attempt to distill the highlights of the topic into 1-2 paragraphs. I think of this as the “elevator pitch” or “cocktail party fodder” on the topic—i.e. the 60-second bit that I would use to explain the topic to any new acquaintance. The key is that you have to distill and write in a way that assumes the individual is “uninitiated” on the topic.Step 4: Assess & StudyTest it out. Try your “elevator pitch” on another person. How’d you do? Reflect on your performance—form a balanc...

This week features Richard Feynman, a renowned physicist celebrated for his groundbreaking work in quantum mechanics. He dives into the concept of confirmation bias and its sneaky role in our decision-making. Feynman recalls the Challenger disaster as a stark illustration of how bias can mislead us. He emphasizes the importance of self-reflection and pursuing contrary evidence. Drawing on Stoic principles, he offers fascinating strategies for overcoming biases and embracing objective truth, encouraging listeners to challenge their own beliefs.

The great physicist Richard Feynman had a father who instilled his brilliant son with an interesting perspective about the world. Sitting down, he would lay the newspaper out on the table and ask his boy questions about what they saw and read. Once, when they came upon a photo of the Pope blessing a group of believers, Richard’s father asked his son if he knew the difference between the Pope and his followers. And then, before Richard could answer, he said, “The difference is the hat. He is wearing a hat.” His dad would repeat the same exercise whether it was a photo of a general with stars on their collar or a wealthy executive with an expensive suit.✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube

Richard Feynman, a renowned physicist famous for his groundbreaking work in quantum mechanics, brings a delightful flair to the world of particles. He discusses the intricacies of quantum electrodynamics (QED) and his significant contributions, particularly the iconic Feynman diagrams that simplify complex interactions. This engaging conversation demystifies how particles can be in multiple states and emphasizes the relevance of QED in modern physics and technology. Feynman's unique perspective makes complex concepts accessible and entertaining for everyone.

Join Nobel Prize-winning Physicist Richard Feynman as he unveils his 4-step technique for mastering any topic by simplifying complexity. Learn how teaching can enhance learning outcomes and why using jargon may signal a lack of understanding. Dive into the psychology of self-improvement and uncover the secrets to true mastery.