Prof. Jason Potts is a Distinguished Professor of Economics at RMIT University and Co-director of the Blockchain Innovation Hub at RMIT in Melbourne Australia.In our conversation we cover:The economy as a complex adaptive systemWhy capitalism is a misnomer, and instead, the economic system in which we live might be better characterised as an institutional market society for the growth of knowledge.We explore why innovation actually begins before the creative entrepreneur in what's called an innovation commons.and, of course, what will likely become a defining technology in this decade and those to come: blockchain. Jason explains why this will be the base layer for the emerging digital economy and why NFTs, non-fungible tokens, are the start of a new age of experimentation in property rights.If you've had any hesitancy or misgiving about blockchain technology in the past, Jason will likely change your mind.Support & ShownotesPodcast shownotesRate it on Apple Podcasts Subscribe on YouTubeBy me a coffee Follow Sam on TwitterLinks to things discussedJason's TwitterRMIT Blockchain HubThe Origin of WealthThe Entrepreneurial StateThe General Theory of Economic EvolutionThe Culture of GrowthMint and Burn PodcastSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/talk-of-today/donations

My guest today is the philosophy professor Jonathan Wolff. Jonathan is the Alfred Landecker professor of values and public policy at the University of Oxford's Blavatnik School of Government.We cover:The Capability ApproachGlobal justice and the nation-stateThe difficulties of translating philosophy into policyBalancing Life & Liberty in the context of the corona virus, and;Universities in a post-covid worldShownotesLinksJonathan on TwitterJonathan's WebsiteJonathan's Faculty PageAn ethical framework for global vaccine allocationThe Divide by Jason HickelAmartya SenEthics and Public Policy bookDisadvantage BookIntroduction to Political PhilosophyIntroduction to Moral PhilosophyRawls' Theory of JusticeCreating CapabilitiesDevelopment as FreedomJonathan in the GuardianSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/talk-of-today/donations

Michael Garfield, a writer, musician, artist, and paleontologist-futurist, discusses topics such as the coronavirus, evolution, psychedelics, and regenerative communities. They explore the challenges of understanding different perspectives, the importance of aligning local actions with global needs, cognitive biases, UFO sightings, method acting, and the power of ideas.

Nora Bateson is an award-winning filmmaker, writer and educator, and as President of the International Bateson Institute, an organisation that integrates the sciences, arts and professional knowledge to create a qualitative inquiry of the integration of life. Her work is focused on the innumerable relationships that define our world and who we are, understanding the role that perception and context plays in our interactions. Her work brings the fields of biology, cognition, art, anthropology, psychology, and information technology together into a study of the patterns in ecology of living systems.In our conversation, we cover:Ineffability, perception, and the baggage of languageWhy the changes we need begin with the changing our relationships with ourselves and each otherHow COVID has shown us the perils of the incessant seeking of efficiencyThe need to engage with the world with humility.‍LinksNora on twitter @norabatesonThe Bateson InstituteNora's Book: Small Arcs of Larger CirclesSam on TwitterSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/talk-of-today/donations

Mike is the founder of IdeaMarkets, a stock market for credibility that's currently under development. His team hopes to align financial incentives with the credibility of publishers to help combat misinformation and to really make the truth pay for those who seek it. In our conversation we cover:The promise of distributed ledger technologies, aka cryptoDecentralised financeIdea markets and aligning financial incentives with truth seekingTruth as an ordering force in the worldChina's panopticonThe logic of non-violenceUFOs and undervalued ideasFind Mike Online:TwitterWebsiteIdeaMarketsShownotes available here.Subscribe on YouTubeSign up to newsletterSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/talk-of-today/donations

Topics covered:What is information?What's the difference between computation and information processing?What is order?Emergence and reductionismCancer through the lens of informationTop-down causalityI think this episode is on one of the most fascinating topics we've explored so far. Today we're talking about information, a concept that we've only had for less than a century, but one that is proving to be absolutely foundational to our understanding of the universe and the ongoing process of life.My interest in information started about 5 years ago when I was thinking about what a foundation for morality might be.Whenever we think about what might be a preferable state of affairs, we're fundamentally picturing realities with different configurations of matter. When making decisions of right and wrong, we're imagining worlds with matter organised in different ways. There's something about certain material configurations that makes us think that they have intrinsic moral worth, whether they're living systems with sentience or entire ecosystems.Configurations of matter, by definition, are information. Information is a quantity that is inextricably tied to entropy, the measure of how disordered a system is.In order to develop a fundamental understanding of right or wrong, one that extends beyond what our anthropocentric lenses may tell us, and encapsulates all of life, we must think about the physical makeup of these systems. There's no other way.As you'll learn in this episode, a deeper understanding of information will completely revolutionise how we see and interact with the world. It's impact is hard to overstate.Joining me to cover this topic is celebrated physicist and science communicator, Prof. Paul Davies. Paul is a British scientist who has focused on theoretical physics, cosmology, and astrobiology.At Arizona State University in Phoenix, he established the BEYOND: Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science, a “cosmic think tank” devoted to brainstorming deep foundational questions across all the sciences. He's got a deep interest SETI, the (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) and chairs the SETI Post-Detection Taskgroup. He's also been involved in developing fascinating new theories of cancer which we cover in this episode.Paul has received numerous awards for his work, including the Templeton Prize, the Faraday Prize, and in 2007 he was named a member of the Order of Australia.Paul is also the author of 28 books. His most recent is The Demon in the machine —an eye-opening exploration of information and our world and was the basis of this conversation.Paul Davies' personal website: cosmos.asu.eduPaul Davies' Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/PhysicistPaulDavies/Beyond Center website: beyond.asu.eduBeyond Center Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/BeyondCenter/Beyond Center Youtube Page: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_cmoMSKLD9rUMe4X7m_BOwPaul's Book: https://www.amazon.com/Demon-Machine-Paul-Davies/dp/024130959XSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/talk-of-today/donations

The constructal law is a law of physics that predicts natural design and its evolution in biology, geophysics, climate change, technology, social organization, evolutionary design and development, wealth and sustainability. The law states that for a finite-size flow system to persist in time (to live) it must evolve such that it provides greater and greater access to the currents that flow through it. If the second law of thermodynamics is seen as the irreversibility of energy flow, the constructal law describes just how these flows organise across time. The constructal says that as a flow system continues to evolve, its design will change to increase the rate of whatever is flowing through it. The applications of the law are vast, as I'm sure you can imagine. It explains why rivers form the way that they do, why the vasculature of our bodies and cities manifest in the branching ways that they do, why hierarchies manifest spontaneously, why birds fly in formation, even why wealth inequality arises. It's the physics principle that underpins economies of scale and the Pareto distribution (also known as the Matthew principle), the observation the majority of wealth is normally found within the hands of a few. If you're like me, you're might be wondering why you've never heard of it before. It might be because it's a relatively new development, but who knows. Regardless, I'm thrilled to have come across it and to share it with you all. My interest in it, apart from it being something foundational to the world we live in, is what it may mean for how we structure our societies and our moral and ethical viewpoints. Harnessing the flows of energy are foundational to life, from the smallest of organisms all the way to our technologically enhanced species. We do this better than any of the rest. It's our unique capacity to extract energy from the world and put it to use that's responsible for why we've progressed so far, from apes playing with fire to people who can split atoms and channel the awesome power locked within. As our interconnected global society continues to emerge, we must understand the natural laws that shape our world so that we're better equipped to build societies that work not just for those that live within them, but for the planet as a whole. Joining me to explore this topic is distinguished Professor Adrian Bejan from Duke University, the man who formulated the constructal law in 1995. To call Adrian prolific would be an understatement. He's authored more than 650 peer-reviewed articles as well as 30 books, one of which being the most widely-used engineering textbook in the English language. His books The Physics of Life, Design in Nature, and his most recent book*, Freedom and Evolution,* were the resources I used to base our conversation on. He's ranked among the top 0.01% of leading world scientists in the new citations impact database created by Stanford University’s John Ioannidis. He's the recipient of 18 honorary doctorates from universities in 11 countries, In 2018 he was awarded the Benjamin Franklin Medal in Mechanical Engineering for his pioneering interdisciplinary contributions in thermodynamics and convection heat transfer, and in 2019 he was awarded the Humboldt Research Award for lifetime achievement for his pioneering contributions to his field and the constructal law. Earlier this year, the French government awarded Adrian with the title of Knight of the French Order of Academic Palms, an award reserved for distinguished academics for their valuable services to universities, education and science. I feel deeply privileged to have had a chance to speak to someone who has contributed so much to our understanding of the structure of reality. In our conversation, we cover: Adrian's background and history what is constructal law and how shapes our world why inequality is an unavoidable fact of nature the physics of economies of scale and... Support this podcastSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/talk-of-today/donations

In this episode of Talk of Today we're joined by Richard Bartlett. Richard is an expert in bringing people together and catalysing decentralised forms of organising. He's co founder of Enspiral (Enspiral.com) - a network of people supporting each other to grow up and to get paid for doing meaningful work. He's currently working on a project called Microsolidarity (microsolidarity.cc) that's focused on building and sharing a collection of methodologies for community building, answering the questions of How can we build small scale, high trust, mutually developmental groups. I'm a huge fan of Richards work and the joy he seems to exhibit in living and interacting with people. I first came across his work on twitter — I highly recommend following him. For show notes and links to Richard's work and other things discussed in our conversation, head to my website website (samhbarton.com) . I'm excited to share this conversation with you all. Our ability to tackle the grand global challenges we face ahead is dependent upon us, all of us, coming together in the places we call home, and taking action. Links The Hum (https://www.thehum.org) Enspiral (https://enspiral.com/) Microsolidarity (microsolidarity.cc) Richard's Website (http://richdecibels.com/) Richard's Twitter (https://twitter.com/RichDecibels) Richards newsletter (https://richdecibels.substack.com/) Rich's Book: Patterns for Decentralised Organising (https://leanpub.com/patterns-for-decentralised-organising/) Support this podcastSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/talk-of-today/donations

The Free Energy Principle is a formal description of how life resist entropy across scales by minimising surprise. Surprise here being an information-theoretic view of how unlikely a particular sensory state of an organism is, not the psychological phenomenon of surprise — though they are definitely linked. The free energy principle describes how organisms attempt to reduce the difference between their model of the world and their perception of it. Joining me to shed light on this topic is Maxwell Ramstead. Maxwell is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Jewish General Hospital in Montreal and at the Division of Social and Transcultural Psychiatry at McGill University. He has coauthored several papers in leading journals, which exploring the applications of the free energy principle to the dynamics of cognition and the mind, phenomenology, ecology, and socio-cultural systems. In our conversation, we cover: - What is the Free Energy Principle - What is active inference - The 4 E A approach to cognition (embedded, embodied, enactive, extended and affective) - Entropy - Potential societal implications of the Free Energy Principle Support this podcastSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/talk-of-today/donations

Matthew Pirkowski (@MattPirkoswki) is one of Twitter's most incisive thinkers, offering penetrating insights in things ranging from representations of value, the many problems of social media platforms and how we interact with them, the evolution of society, and designing emergent systems. In our conversation we cover: - The substance underlying Jordan Peterson's main body of work and its implications for ethics. - The role money plays in scaling social groups - Specialisation as epistemic speciation - Social media and our incoherent information environments - Emergent system design ‍ Support this podcastSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/talk-of-today/donations