The Stephen Wolfram Podcast

Stephen Wolfram answers questions from his viewers about business and innovation as part of an unscripted livestream series, also available on YouTube here: https://wolfr.am/youtube-sw-business-qa Questions include: when did you start to have an entrepreneurial spirit? When you were little, did you work to get money? - If I could start a company today that is likely to make me a ton of money, or one that would let me do something I love, which should I chose? - What made you decide to go through with starting your own business and what did you think of Feynman's advice/letter at the time? - Do you think most academics lack business sense? - Do you think you could have started your companies without having a PhD? It feels as though one needs a PhD to get ahead in tech & business in general these days. - How does one learn to talk to people? - What would be better for a startup to get funds currently--venture capital, debt providers, IPOs, IEOs, ICOs, STOs, IDOs? - I am interested in starting a company but I am finding a hard time deciding on a niche market that is on the small scale max of 100 employee likely in the IT sector. Any suggestions? - What are the areas in which machine learning can be applied but in your experience people have never paid attention to? - I am 18 years old that is interested in science and being an academician is, therefore, appealing , but I recognize that a lot of problems that needs to be fixed couldn't be done from inside academia. What is your advice? - How can you possibly talk so long answering a single question? - How has being based in Illinois near UIUC instead of silicon valley, nyc, or boston impacted your company if at all? what convinced you to make this decision?

Stephen Wolfram and team discuss the Wolfram Physics Project one year later by providing an update on the journey to finding the fundamental theory of physics. See the full Wolfram Physics Project video playlist on YouTube: https://wolfr.am/youtube-wpp

Stephen Wolfram and team discuss the Wolfram Physics Project one year later by providing an update on the journey to finding the fundamental theory of physics. See the full Wolfram Physics Project video playlist on YouTube: https://wolfr.am/youtube-wpp

Stephen Wolfram answers general questions from his viewers about science and technology as part of an unscripted livestream series. Questions include: Have you discussed the Wolfram Physics Project with any string theorists? - ​What is the possibility of building an unmanned space craft to 'hitch a ride' on a comet, to reach (and perhaps launch) the space craft out of the solar system? - recently watched a video on YouTube by Anton Petrov where he discussed a leak from the radio telescope laboratory about an unusual radio signal from our nearest stellar neighbor, Alpha Centauri, and in the video he said that the reason the signal was so unusual was that it was stuck to a specific frequency of 982.002mhz and I was wondering your thoughts on the unusual nature of it's specificity? - ​Can you explain how APIs work and some difficulties in matching property addresses (variability in how an address is written) to relational databases? - If the average human brain was represented as a PC, what would its technical specifications be? - ​Why is difficult for our brains to perform many simple calculations in a row? - ​Is the eightfoldway of Murray Gell-man easier or more difficult than just learning Quantum chromodynamics? See the full Q&A video playlist: https://wolfr.am/youtube-sw-qa

Stephen Wolfram answers general questions from his viewers about science and technology as part of an unscripted livestream series. Questions include: Any tips on how to make nice presentations? - Why are there so many concepts in math that are not realized in the physical world? - What cryptocurrencies are you a fan of? Do you think any of them will "win big" in 2021? Any new players to watch? - Are big banks and governments trying to undermine the legitimacy of cryptocurrencies? - What do you think about China's new digital currency DCEP (e-yuan)? - The concept of a Democracy AI makes for a great sci-fi novel, but horrifying when applied to real life. - ​Is finding the shortest proof of a theorem computationally irreducible? - If you were sent into the past with one object of your choice with no return, what would you do to speed up human progress? (pick your favourite period before 20th century) - Do you think you will live forever now that genetic reprogramming has successfully reversed aging in lab grown human cells and organoids? David Sinclair and his Harvard associates have done this successfully in mice using Yamanaka's Nobel Prize winning gene factors. Also, are you currently doing anything to extend your life? - Stephen, do you have a Wolfram Spikey on the top of your Christmas tree? - Did you know any of the people involved with designing Ada Language? - ​Is there a formal proof that computational irreducibility exists? Is it possible that we will be able to predict any cellular automaton? - Is it possible to make a wire from space to earth and pull things up to space? - What will math look like in 1000 years? See the full Q&A video playlist: https://wolfr.am/youtube-sw-qa

Stephen Wolfram answers general questions from his viewers about science and technology as part of an unscripted livestream series. Questions include: ​Who are your favourite Science fiction authors? What are your favourite stories/movies? - Why do people have emotions and feelings? How do emotions and feelings work? Happiness, anger, etc. - In the space of all possible mental states, what is the ratio of positive vs negative states? Is this a relative quantity? Does it obey certain transformations? - ​If people didn't have emotions then nothing would ever get done. - Do you think the set of emotions is finite? Is it possible evolution to bring a new kind of emotion in that set? Can we artificially create a new emotion? - Given our brains are most likely the source of our thoughts/emotions/etc. If there is a finite set of combinations of matter in the brain, could there then be a set of all possible thoughts? - What about the movie The Matrix? - What are your comments on the recent superconductor breakthrough? Is it a breakthrough? - If the resistance goes to zero, would the electron start accelerating without bound? - Why doesn't every single thought episode last forever? why does thought disappear after it arise? - How do you get your staff to get so much done, especially so much hard stuff?? See the full Q&A video playlist: https://wolfr.am/youtube-sw-qa

Stephen Wolfram answers general questions from his viewers about science and technology as part of an unscripted livestream series. Questions include: ​Why do some people commonly refer the internet to the World Wide Web? Isn't The world wide web a bunch of networks or website on the internet? - ​Is there a philosopher who had developed a system which is close to your perspective right now? - What are your tips about writing essays? - Why does the electron and the proton have the same amount of charge? - Why can't magnetic monopoles exist? - Bearing in mind the current topic, as well as thinking about Sapir-Whorf hypothesis - do you ever think about how humans might be 'thinking' in the future... (thinking paradigms of thought related to the future) - Do I have an opinion about such and such papers? - I don't know if Stephen was asked this question during these, but let me ask: Hello Stephen, how are you? - Would you advise today's gen Z to become independent researchers rather than academics? - Do you like Turtles? See the full Q&A video playlist: https://wolfr.am/youtube-sw-qa

Stephen Wolfram answers general questions from his viewers about science and technology as part of an unscripted livestream series. Questions include: Are instruction sets architectures important for simulating physical systems, and how they could change the way kids understand computers? - How much do you follow your instincts? How do you develop a good instinct, in science and in life? - What is the financial market? - Jack Dorsey is endorsing your idea of an algorithm choice by third parties, would u be an adviser for the implementation?​ - Since we collided particles in accelerators ... Does a proton has a surface and how does it looks like? - Do you believe pursuing both Computer Science and Actuarial Science is a good idea? - How can protons be perfectly spherical while also being composed of three quarks? - Do you have any tips on getting ahead of my class and into research? See the full Q&A video playlist: https://wolfr.am/youtube-sw-qa

Stephen Wolfram answers general questions from his viewers about science and technology as part of an unscripted livestream series. Questions include: Can you explain computational irreducibility like you're telling a 6 year old? - How different is nanotechnology manufacturing different from normal manufacturing? - What is the historical relationship between chemistry and physics? Is chemistry a sub-branch of physics? - ​Can aging really be cured? - ​Isn't death a fundamental factor of evolution to more sophisticated beings? - What about the "immortal jellyfish"? - ​Is there anything more terrifying than living forever? - If there is ethical problems with eternal life what kind of issues would it be is it about resources and if so are our resources finite? - Will there be nanomachine that reprogram cells to prolong life or even make life go on forever? - ​Is infinity a semi-theological concept? Is infinity beyond counting and measuring – and therefore not fundamentally an empirical concept? See the full Q&A video playlist: https://wolfr.am/youtube-sw-qa

Stephen Wolfram answers general questions from his viewers about science and technology as part of an unscripted livestream series. Is there a physical principle that governs Moore's law? Why is there so much available computation? - If F=ma, and photons have a mass of 0, how can light sails work? Do photons have some properties of having mass? - As of right now, what do you anticipate will be the outcome of the Wolfram Physics Project? What practical applications will it have? - What is more difficult for you to create things or to explain how they work to others? - Has your physics project shed any light on the protein folding problem? If you squint right, there seems to be a connection. - How does black hole merging work? - Is there any theory about what type of particles a potential black hole would be made off? - What's your experience and opinion about Alchemy and is it possible to incorporate a modernized version of it into Mathematica? - What do we know about the nature of time travel? Will time machines as depicted in science fiction stories remain fiction for the foreseeable future? - Can there be architectures that do not seem to make sense that simply have higher order of complexity not dependent on binary arithmetic circuits? That will be used in future? - I am currently in high school, what advice would you give to an aspiring mathematician? See the full Q&A video playlist: https://wolfr.am/youtube-sw-qa