The DemystifySci Podcast

Most economic theories are what one would call "bounded," which is to say that they are based on a narrow window of human activity, be that time, or place, or category. This limitation produces ideas with middling real-world efficacy, as they cannot be widely applied to, say, the whole of humankind. But, what if an economic theory of everything, a decoder ring for why the condition of our species is the way it is, was possible? What would it look like? How could one idea help us understand the arc of human development all the way from stagnation, to growth, to inequality? Unified Growth Theory, laid out by Oded Galor in his new book, The Journey of Humanity, attempts to answer all of those questions. By studying the arc of human development from the earliest settlements of the fertile crescent to modern day socioeconomics, Galor purports to have solved the mystery of development. What we do with this knowledge, though, is still up to us. Support the scientific revolution with a monthly donation: https://bit.ly/3lcAasB  AND by picking up Dr. Galor's book, The Journey of Humanity: The Origins of Wealth and Inequality: https://amzn.to/3WU8GK0 #economics #growth                        Check our short-films channel, @DemystifySci:  https://www.youtube.com/c/DemystifyingScience     Join our mailing list https://bit.ly/3v3kz2S      PODCAST INFO:  Anastasia completed her PhD studying bioelectricity at Columbia University. When not talking to brilliant people or making movies, she spends her time painting, reading, and guiding backcountry excursions. Michael Shilo also did his PhD at Columbia studying the elastic properties of molecular water. When he's not in the film studio, he's exploring sound in music. They are both freelance professors at various universities.      - Blog: http://DemystifySci.com/blog    - RSS: https://anchor.fm/s/2be66934/podcast/rss - Donate: https://bit.ly/3wkPqaD - Swag: https://bit.ly/2PXdC2y       SOCIAL:    - Discord: https://discord.gg/MJzKT8CQub - Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/DemystifySci - Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/DemystifySci/ - Twitter: https://twitter.com/DemystifySci   MUSIC:    -Shilo Delay: https://g.co/kgs/oty671

Living at the end of an era, what are the historical lessons can we learn from civilizations in collapse? We speak with David Carballo, Boston University archaeologist and anthropologist about the lost city of Teotihuacan which, at the start of the Common Era, was one of the largest cities in the world, boasting a population of more than 100,000 inhabitants from all corners of Mesoamerica. But all things end, and the capital city of the Teotihuacanos was no exception. Climate change, the collapse of social trust, and rising inequality meant that a few centuries later the builders of the city were buried by history. Studying what remains of the art and artifacts can shed some light on changes we can make in our own time stave off crisis.      Support the scientific revolution with a monthly donation: https://bit.ly/3lcAasB   AND by picking up one of Dr. Carballo's books:  Collision of Worlds: https://amzn.to/3U8BsF3 Obsidian Reflections: https://amzn.to/3Ug08eU Check our short-films channel, @DemystifySci:  https://www.youtube.com/c/DemystifyingScience   Join our mailing list https://bit.ly/3v3kz2S      PODCAST INFO:  Anastasia completed her PhD studying bioelectricity at Columbia University. When not talking to brilliant people or making movies, she spends her time painting, reading, and guiding backcountry excursions. Michael Shilo also did his PhD at Columbia studying the elastic properties of molecular water. When he's not in the film studio, he's exploring sound in music. They are both freelance professors at various universities.    - Blog: http://DemystifySci.com/blog    - RSS: https://anchor.fm/s/2be66934/podcast/rss - Donate: https://bit.ly/3wkPqaD - Swag: https://bit.ly/2PXdC2y     SOCIAL:    - Discord: https://discord.gg/MJzKT8CQub - Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/DemystifySci - Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/DemystifySci/ - Twitter: https://twitter.com/DemystifySci MUSIC:    -Shilo Delay: https://g.co/kgs/oty671

Why are you the way that you are? Why do you hurry, or focus on the technical details, or let your mind drive up anxiety and worry? Do you know? Or, do you, like most people, simply take for granted that your internal state is inevitable and largely unchangeable? That you're just a happenstance combination of genetics, upbringing, scarring social moments, and the civilizational frame you've been brought up in? Neuroscientist, philosopher, psychiatrist, and author Iain McGilchrist (The Matter with Things, The Master and His Emissary) proposes that the essence of your *you*-ness isn't an external phenomenon, and isn't even encoded in your genetics. It's a byproduct of the way your brain is organized, where the left hemisphere - that cataloguing and exacting nag - has effectively taken over not just your cognition, and our cognition, but that of the entire species. Left hemisphere dominance is the reason that capitalism is so corrosive, why our jobs suck and our lives lack meaning, why the singing of birds and the sighing of the wind have lost their luster. It is the key to understanding ourselves, our society, our civilization... and maybe, even, our future. PS A small note: we had some gnarly issues with lag in this recording, and so the conversation is a little stilted in parts. However, we thought it still warranted sharing, and hope you'll forgive us for the issues and will let us know what you thought of the ideas anyhow.  Support the scientific revolution with a monthly donation: https://bit.ly/3lcAasB AND by picking up Dr. McGilchrist's books: https://amzn.to/3UnDIrv https://amzn.to/3h9GNxh   #psychology #polarization #neuroscience                      Check our short-films channel, @DemystifySci:  https://www.youtube.com/c/DemystifyingScience   Join our mailing list https://bit.ly/3v3kz2S     PODCAST INFO:  Anastasia completed her PhD studying bioelectricity at Columbia University. When not talking to brilliant people or making movies, she spends her time painting, reading, and guiding backcountry excursions. Michael Shilo also did his PhD at Columbia studying the elastic properties of molecular water. When he's not in the film studio, he's exploring sound in music. They are both freelance professors at various universities.    - Blog: http://DemystifySci.com/blog    - RSS: https://anchor.fm/s/2be66934/podcast/rss - Donate: https://bit.ly/3wkPqaD- Swag: https://bit.ly/2PXdC2y     SOCIAL:   - Discord: https://discord.gg/MJzKT8CQub - Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/DemystifySci - Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/DemystifySci/ - Twitter: https://twitter.com/DemystifySci MUSIC:    -Shilo Delay: https://g.co/kgs/oty671

What if we're wrong about entanglement? This is the question that's been driving Carver Mead, Caltech Physicist and veteran of the semiconductor industry, and at this point, he's pretty sure that Bell's Theorem is wrong. This is a bold claim! After all, Clauser, Aspect and Zeilinger just won Nobel, the biggest prize in the world, for their work on painstaking experiments that seem to prove the spooky paradox - some information can travel faster than light! Not so fast, says Carver Mead. There's no problem with the experimental design, or the observation that the photons are "entangled." The problem lies upstream of the experiment, at the threshhold of understanding. What is a photon? What are the atoms doing when they're generating the signal that's being measured, and how does a physical understanding of the wave function change the spookiness of quantum mechanics?     Support the scientific revolution with a monthly donation: https://bit.ly/3lcAasB AND by picking up Dr. Mead's book: https://amzn.to/3sJPoJi As always, let us know what you think in the comments!   #physics #quantum #atomic                      Check our short-films channel, @DemystifySci:  https://www.youtube.com/c/DemystifyingScience   Join our mailing list https://bit.ly/3v3kz2S      PODCAST INFO:  Anastasia completed her PhD studying bioelectricity at Columbia University. When not talking to brilliant people or making movies, she spends her time painting, reading, and guiding backcountry excursions. Michael Shilo also did his PhD at Columbia studying the elastic properties of molecular water. When he's not in the film studio, he's exploring sound in music. They are both freelance professors at various universities.    - Blog: http://DemystifySci.com/blog    - RSS: https://anchor.fm/s/2be66934/podcast/rss - Donate: https://bit.ly/3wkPqaD- Swag: https://bit.ly/2PXdC2y     SOCIAL:    - Discord: https://discord.gg/MJzKT8CQub - Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/DemystifySci - Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/DemystifySci/ - Twitter: https://twitter.com/DemystifySci MUSIC:    -Shilo Delay: https://g.co/kgs/oty671

Professor Lee Cronin is an organic chemist, but he isn't just interested in the usual research path of describing new chemicals, though he does do that - he's interested in understanding the fundamental principles of chemistry, and how they can be used for the search for life on other planets... and for the creation of life, de novo, on our own.    And that's tricky, because the origin of life is one of those contentious theories where the truth of what happened here on Earth will never be fully known. Instead, people like Lee Cronin are going to have to build devices in the laboratory that allow them to create organisms capable of undergoing generational selection... but even then, will we have truly answered the question of what happened way back when?   Likely not, but as the conversation with Professor Cronin shows, we'll at least have a stellar definition of life from the process that can be used consistently to search the cosmos.     Support the scientific revolution with a monthly donation: https://bit.ly/3lcAasB L #origins #aliens #chemistry                      Check our short-films channel, @DemystifySci:  https://www.youtube.com/c/DemystifyingScience   Join our mailing list https://bit.ly/3v3kz2S      PODCAST INFO:  Anastasia completed her PhD studying microbial communication at Columbia University. When not talking to brilliant people or making movies, she spends her time painting and exploring the woods. Michael Shilo also did his PhD at Columbia studying the elastic properties of molecular water. When he's not in the film studio, he's exploring sound in music. They are both freelance professors at various universities.        - Blog: http://DemystifySci.com/blog    - RSS: https://anchor.fm/s/2be66934/podcast/rss - Donate: https://bit.ly/3wkPqaD- Swag: https://bit.ly/2PXdC2y     SOCIAL:    - Discord: https://discord.gg/MJzKT8CQub - Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/DemystifySci - Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/DemystifySci/ - Twitter: https://twitter.com/DemystifySci MUSIC:    -Shilo Delay: https://g.co/kgs/oty671

Is Earth's crustal formation influenced by its position in the galaxy? And how would we know? It's obvious there are many celestial cycles, from the earthly ones that Milankovitch described to the orbit of the solar system through the galaxy, but how can we tie those to geological planetary cycles, like the 800 m.y. resonance of the core, the 500-300 m.y. supercontinent cycle, and the ~ 30 m.y. impact cycle?  Professor Chris Kirkland and team from Australia's Curtin University have developed a zircon-based approach that they say can tease apart the cyclic secrets of crust formation. We talk radiometric dating, limits and benefits of the technique, asymptotic time horizons, and the difficulties of doing geology on a galactic scale.    Support the scientific revolution with a monthly donation: https://bit.ly/3lcAasB  #geology #astronomy #physics                     Check our short-films channel, @DemystifySci:  https://www.youtube.com/c/DemystifyingScience   Join our mailing list https://bit.ly/3v3kz2S      PODCAST INFO:  Anastasia completed her PhD studying microbial communication at Columbia University. When not talking to brilliant people or making movies, she spends her time painting and exploring the woods. Michael Shilo also did his PhD at Columbia studying the elastic properties of molecular water. When he's not in the film studio, he's exploring sound in music. They are both freelance professors at various universities.        - Blog: http://DemystifySci.com/blog    - RSS: https://anchor.fm/s/2be66934/podcast/rss - Donate: https://bit.ly/3wkPqaD- Swag: https://bit.ly/2PXdC2y     SOCIAL:    - Discord: https://discord.gg/MJzKT8CQub - Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/DemystifySci - Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/DemystifySci/ - Twitter: https://twitter.com/DemystifySci MUSIC:    -Shilo Delay: https://g.co/kgs/oty671

Untold numbers of people across North America have been caught up in the wake of the opioid crisis - loved ones lost, lives interrupted, cities overrun with addicts. This tableau has unfolded in countless cities, against the faraway backdrop of an underworld drug empire that terrorizes the people of Mexico. Author Sam Quinones has spent the last decade of his life on both sides of the border, reporting from the front lines. He's traced the origin of the crisis, detailed the toll it took on the government of Mexico, the people living there, and how unlimited quantities magic pain pills erased an entire generation, with no regard for social or class lines. What makes this conversation unique is that, despite the darkness he's seen, Quinones has finally found a glimmer of hope among the wreckage. We talk destruction, absolution, and rebirth. We talk of the drug wars, of the way that wall street colluded to make the crisis, and how we all played a role. But more than that, we talk about the way that we can pull ourselves out of this mess, by taking a lesson from the cities where the crisis really started.    Support the scientific revolution with a monthly donation: https://bit.ly/3lcAasB Support both Sam and DemystifySci when you buy his books:    The Least of Us: https://amzn.to/3RFQC2s Dreamland: https://amzn.to/3fTLBpC True Tales from Another Mexico: https://amzn.to/3ejVTz1 L  #warondrugs #drugs #homeless                    Check our short-films channel, @DemystifySci:  https://www.youtube.com/c/DemystifyingScience  Join our mailing list https://bit.ly/3v3kz2S      PODCAST INFO:  Anastasia completed her PhD studying microbial communication at Columbia University. When not talking to brilliant people or making movies, she spends her time painting and exploring the woods. Michael Shilo also did his PhD at Columbia studying the elastic properties of molecular water. When he's not in the film studio, he's exploring sound in music. They are both freelance professors at various universities.        - Blog: http://DemystifySci.com/blog    - RSS: https://anchor.fm/s/2be66934/podcast/rss - Donate: https://bit.ly/3wkPqaD - Swag: https://bit.ly/2PXdC2y     SOCIAL:    - Discord: https://discord.gg/MJzKT8CQub - Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/DemystifySci - Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/DemystifySci/ - Twitter: https://twitter.com/DemystifySci MUSIC:    -Shilo Delay: https://g.co/kgs/oty671

Astronomer, Dr. Steven Finkelstein, joins us for the third week of astro/cosmo discussions centered around the new James Webb (JWST) data. Dr. Finkelstein captured some of the first images of our most distant known galaxies. In this episode we discuss how the data is compiled and processed and how small changes in these pipelines can alter distance estimates by orders of magnitude. We also discuss tired light and the usual explorations of paradigm shifts in science. Support the scientific revolution with a monthly donation: https://bit.ly/3lcAasB #astronomy #jameswebbspacetelescope #physics                   Check our short-films channel, @DemystifySci:  https://www.youtube.com/c/DemystifyingScience  Join our mailing list https://bit.ly/3v3kz2S      PODCAST INFO:  Anastasia completed her PhD studying microbial communication at Columbia University. When not talking to brilliant people or making movies, she spends her time painting and exploring the woods. Michael Shilo also did his PhD at Columbia studying the elastic properties of molecular water. When he's not in the film studio, he's exploring sound in music. They are both freelance professors at various universities.        - Blog: http://DemystifySci.com/blog    - RSS: https://anchor.fm/s/2be66934/podcast/rss - Donate: https://bit.ly/3wkPqaD- Swag: https://bit.ly/2PXdC2y     SOCIAL:    - Discord: https://discord.gg/MJzKT8CQub - Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/DemystifySci - Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/DemystifySci/ - Twitter: https://twitter.com/DemystifySci MUSIC:    -Shilo Delay: https://g.co/kgs/oty671

This is the second installment of three episodes this month in the astro/cosmo department at DemystifySci. This is John Moffat, Cambridge cosmologist and out-of-the-box mathematical physicist. Dr. Moffat is working on various modified gravity regimes to make sense of the latest James Webb data, which suggests Galaxies were fully formed just a couple hundred million years after the Bang. We discuss the possibility that we are witnessing modern renditions of the classical Ptolemaic epicycles as mathematicians scramble to patch up the standard models.   Support the scientific revolution with a monthly donation: https://bit.ly/3lcAasB #cosmology #jameswebbspacetelescope #physics                   Check our short-films channel, @DemystifySci:  https://www.youtube.com/c/DemystifyingScience   Join our mailing list https://bit.ly/3v3kz2S      PODCAST INFO:  Anastasia completed her PhD studying microbial communication at Columbia University. When not talking to brilliant people or making movies, she spends her time painting and exploring the woods. Michael Shilo also did his PhD at Columbia studying the elastic properties of molecular water. When he's not in the film studio, he's exploring sound in music. They are both freelance professors at various universities.        - Blog: http://DemystifySci.com/blog    - RSS: https://anchor.fm/s/2be66934/podcast/rss - Donate: https://bit.ly/3wkPqaD- Swag: https://bit.ly/2PXdC2y     SOCIAL:    - Discord: https://discord.gg/MJzKT8CQub - Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/DemystifySci - Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/DemystifySci/ - Twitter: https://twitter.com/DemystifySci MUSIC:    -Shilo Delay: https://g.co/kgs/oty671

A rockin' conversation with Professor Batygin about his perspectives on modern cosmology, how paradigms shift, and what the field looks like at the very horizon. We want to know - what are the roads to forming new planets? What about stars? What about heavy elements? This is another piece of the "why is this happening" puzzle, where we attempt to understand how and why certain ideas in science appear unchallengeable, in service of slowly helping the paradigm shift.   A HUGE thanks to all our new patrons this month, and for everyone that's been with us since the very beginning. We love that you help us keep this project growing, and are excited for the future. Support the scientific revolution with a monthly donation: https://bit.ly/3lcAasB    Konstantin's band, Seventh Season: https://theseventhseason.band/ #astrophysics #astronomy #physics                   Check our short-films channel, @DemystifySci:  https://www.youtube.com/c/DemystifyingScience   Join our mailing list https://bit.ly/3v3kz2S      PODCAST INFO:  Anastasia completed her PhD studying microbial communication at Columbia University. When not talking to brilliant people or making movies, she spends her time painting and exploring the woods. Michael Shilo also did his PhD at Columbia studying the elastic properties of molecular water. When he's not in the film studio, he's exploring sound in music. They are both freelance professors at various universities.        - Blog: http://DemystifySci.com/blog    - RSS: https://anchor.fm/s/2be66934/podcast/rss - Donate: https://bit.ly/3wkPqaD- Swag: https://bit.ly/2PXdC2y     SOCIAL:    - Discord: https://discord.gg/MJzKT8CQub - Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/DemystifySci - Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/DemystifySci/ - Twitter: https://twitter.com/DemystifySci MUSIC:   -Shilo Delay: https://g.co/kgs/oty671