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The Stephen Wolfram Podcast

Latest episodes

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Jun 30, 2023 • 2h 18min

Celebrating 35 Years of Mathematica [June 23, 2023] (Part 2)

Stephen Wolfram celebrates 35 years of Mathematica, originally launched on June 23, 1988, starting with a look at V1 of Mathematica on a Mac SE/30. The live demonstration (part 1) is followed by a discussion (part 2) covering the development and timeless nature of Mathematica, as well as answering viewer questions. Watch the original livestream on YouTube: https://youtu.be/HxWg8exJxNY
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Jun 30, 2023 • 31min

Celebrating 35 Years of Mathematica [June 23, 2023] (Part 1)

Stephen Wolfram celebrates 35 years of Mathematica, originally launched on June 23, 1988, starting with a look at V1 of Mathematica on a Mac SE/30. The live demonstration (part 1) is followed by a discussion (part 2) covering the development and timeless nature of Mathematica, as well as answering viewer questions. This podcast episode is an audio recording from a video livestream, and some of the topics discussed may reference visual examples that are not available in this audio format. Watch the original livestream on YouTube: https://youtu.be/HxWg8exJxNY
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Jun 30, 2023 • 1h 27min

Business, Innovation, and Managing Life (September 28, 2022)

Stephen Wolfram answers questions from his viewers about business, innovation, and managing life as part of an unscripted livestream series, also available on YouTube here: https://wolfr.am/youtube-sw-business-qa Questions include: Have you ever owned a pet? Is there any animal you've ever wanted as a pet, even if it wasn't a typical one, like a Komodo dragon? - Fall weather is here! Is there a season or time of year where you are more/less productive as an effect of the weather? - I went swimming today-about 100x better than walking. - I've only come across one joke in the Wolfram Language documentation, but I did find it quite funny and in good taste. Based on context, I think Jonathan Gorard wrote it. What do you make of this? - What is your history with/view on science fiction (books, movies, etc.)? - How important it is to save money vs. to spend it? How do you understand on what things it is worth spending money? - Well, I quit smoking, so I'm using that money on the lottery instead. - When is a technology mature enough to be "trusted" (i.e. autonomous driving)? - What are your views on making very powerful and trained open-source AI models like Stable Diffusion illegal vs. allowing them to exist? "OpenAI" or open-source AI? - How do you feel about making your email address public as a famous person? - How did you originally generate funding to start your company? - How do you choose whether to throw a project in the trash or not? Sometimes you invest so much of yourself in something that it just feels impossible to do so. - What are general tips you have as far as educating people?
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Jun 30, 2023 • 57min

Science & Technology Q&A for Kids (and others) [September 23, 2022]

Stephen Wolfram answers general questions from his viewers about science and technology as part of an unscripted livestream series, also available on YouTube here: https://wolfr.am/youtube-sw-qa Questions include: Is there any scientific approach to simulate society? What are the main laws in sociology? - Property rights are a very basic element of a society. They lead to saving, then specialization, then trade, then currency. - Why are some physical constants dimensionless?
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Jun 23, 2023 • 1h 10min

History of Science & Technology Q&A (September 21, 2022)

Stephen Wolfram answers questions from his viewers about the history of science and technology as part of an unscripted livestream series, also available on YouTube here: https://wolfr.am/youtube-sw-qa Questions include: You recently talked about relearning the history of thermodynamics. Can I ask for resources for learning the history of thermodynamics? - Can you talk about the history of mathematical/computational linguistics (the one that studies the principles and regularities of natural languages)? There are famous Soviet mathematicians (Andreev, Sobolev, Kantorovich, Markov - son of his great father) of Kolmogorov's school who advanced this field in the 1950s through the 1970s. - What do you think about the science of statistics? Is AI just computational Statistics? - What's the most exciting thing about the AI art revolution taking place now? Was there ever a time like it? - What did Henri Poincaré think about the infinities considered by Cantor, Hilbert and Zermelo? Do engineers need the concept of a complete infinity?
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Jun 23, 2023 • 1h 6min

Science & Technology Q&A for Kids (and others) [September 16, 2022]

Stephen Wolfram answers general questions from his viewers about science and technology as part of an unscripted livestream series, also available on YouTube here: https://wolfr.am/youtube-sw-qa Questions include: How do tornadoes form? - Why does a fan create white noise? - Is that how they produced the audio from our galaxy's supermassive black hole? - Fans also generate a different speed of flow radially, as the linear speed is lower closer to the center of the blades than the outside. - I think they were actually to measure distortion in gas. - I thought they were synthetic, but it seems like they managed to actually measure sound waves in distant gas. - Why are roads made of tarmac?-  Is there anything certain modern physics can say about dark matter/energy? What exactly is it? - Does dark matter interact with gravity? - If dark matter particles exist, then why are there no dark matter halos associated with our Sun and with the planet Jupiter? - What's a graviton?
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Jun 16, 2023 • 1h 4min

Business, Innovation, and Managing Life (September 14, 2022)

Stephen Wolfram answers questions from his viewers about business, innovation, and managing life as part of an unscripted livestream series, also available on YouTube here: https://wolfr.am/youtube-sw-business-qa Questions include: What's your rule of thumb for launching a product (for yourself and for others)? Minimum viable product? Quantum of utility? Other? - How did you deal with the boring aspects of developing a product (e.g. marketing, sales) when you didn't have people to delegate to? - Would the academic environment be a place where a researcher and inventor could pursue their own research, or at least make some profit from developing patents and designs? I am in the US, just about to start a master's, and am considering starting a PhD in materials science. - How do you think Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) will evolve as candidates increasingly try to "trick" them by using keywords in their resumes?
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Jun 16, 2023 • 1h 32min

History of Science & Technology Q&A (September 7, 2022)

Stephen Wolfram answers questions from his viewers about the history of science and technology as part of an unscripted livestream series, also available on YouTube here: https://wolfr.am/youtube-sw-qa Questions include: Did any ancient unit systems use base 10, or did they all use more easily dividable bases like 12, 20, 60, etc.? - What is the history of design patterns in software engineering? How did people come to them? - Did you ever meet Niklaus Wirth, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Alan Kay and/or Paul Allen? - Have Julia sets and Fatou sets played a significant role in the development of computer programming languages? - Agreed. Computer programming languages should be object oriented for the language and structure to make sense instead of coming off as abstract and convoluted, and also so they are easier to work with and learn. - Did eighteenth-century engineers/craftsmen make use of the paradigm of Newtonian mechanics? - Why is it that Isaac Newton spent most of his time trying to prove theological ideas? - When will Moore's law expire? Apple announced four-nanometer chip technology, and there has to be a limit. - I wonder whether the future will be multicomputational, but to be honest, computers nowadays are more than powerful enough for the average user.
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Jun 9, 2023 • 1h 28min

Business, Innovation, and Managing Life (August 31, 2022)

Stephen Wolfram answers questions from his viewers about business, innovation, and managing life as part of an unscripted livestream series, also available on YouTube here: https://wolfr.am/youtube-sw-business-qa Questions include: Stephen knows and remembers so much! Any hints on memory techniques and how to learn in general, and especially in math and physics as an adult? - ​What do you think of shifts in perspective as a source of discoveries in science? Is there any place for discoveries based on questioning the status quo? - Of the smartest people you have had a chance to communicate with, who stands out the most and why? - ​How do you spend money in a wise way? Do you have some heuristics? - What technology would you keep away from your children, and for how long? - What might be the best investment opportunities over the next 20 years? - Someone said if you hear good reviews of your product from other people, then you have succeeded. If you don't hear any feedback from others, that is usually a bad sign. - You mentioned investing in ideas. What is your metric for investing in an individual with an idea? For instance, are the Wolfram Winter and Summer Schools places for you to find those people to invest in? - Is there any technological innovation that you are anticipating or hoping is coming in the next few years? - What was it like handling the business side of things, being a creator? Was it something you liked or just did out of necessity? Was it hard or easy? - Did you do it all yourself, get help or just hire someone else more savvy and in the know to do it entirely? - ​What are techniques for developing intuition, in particular when working with really abstract concepts like those found in math, physics or even business?
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Jun 9, 2023 • 1h 24min

History of Science & Technology Q&A (August 24, 2022)

Stephen Wolfram answers questions from his viewers about the history of science and technology as part of an unscripted livestream series, also available on YouTube here: https://wolfr.am/youtube-sw-qa Questions include: If we had discovered combinatory logic before statistical mechanics, what else might have ensued? - I've been wondering why Stephen didn't explore chess in his paper on games. Maybe he could discuss the history of chess AI. - Can we design a better game somehow? Do you think it's regrettable that the history of science and technology is almost never taught? - Political and social history seem absurdly dominant. The history of science and technology mostly focuses on the results and consequences of discoveries instead of the background of the characters behind them. - In the history of science and technology, have you ever seen something really unexpected? Like someone pulling something out of their hat with no prior experience? - A surprising event is when someone is an expert in field A, but somehow finds an "isomorphism" with field B and makes a discovery in field B. - I feel like Einstein's thought experiments were up there... like how did he think to follow a beam of light? - ​I think intuition is very underrated in science. But why does our intuition even work? - Will we ever get a philosophical programming language? - What do you think about the relationship of philosophical thinking and experimental mathematics? - The limits of reason and the limits of Turing machines? - ​​It seems in the history of science and technology that the "hard research" is usually kept out of the public eye. Mr. Wolfram, has it been beneficial or overwhelming having your work open to the public?  

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