science

Welcome to the March 2023 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are funded by Patreon supporters (who are also the ones asking the questions). We take questions asked by Patreons, whittle them down to a more manageable number — based primarily on whether I have anything interesting to say about them, not whether the questions themselves are good — and sometimes group them together if they are about a similar topic. Enjoy!

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God is dead, as Nietzsche’s madman memorably reminded us. So what are we going to do about it? If there is no powerful force out there to guide us and give meaning to our lives, how are we supposed to live? Do we have to come up with meaning and purpose ourselves? Apparently so, and how to pull it off was a major question addressed by the existentialist movement. Skye Cleary turns to Simone de Beauvoir, in particular, for thoughts on how to construct an authentic life. Her recent book is How to Be Authentic: Simone de Beauvoir and the Quest for Fulfillment.

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Skye Cleary received a Ph.D. and an MBA from Macquarie University. She is an author and philosopher and also teaches at Columbia University and the City College of New York. Her writing has appeared in The Paris Review, Aeon, The Times Literary Supplement, TED-Ed, and The Los Angeles Review of Books, among other outlets. She won the 2017 New Philosopher Writers’ Award and was a 2021 MacDowell Fellow. 

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It’s easy enough to proclaim that we are curious creatures, but what does that really mean? What kinds of curiosity are there? And how does curiosity arise in our brains? Perry Zurn and Dani Bassett are a philosopher and neuroscientist, respectively (as well as twins), whose new book Curious Minds: The Power of Connection explores these questions through an interdisciplinary lens. We break down the different ways that curiosity can manifest — collecting and creating loose knowledge networks, digging deeply to create a tight knowledge network, and creatively leaping to make unexpected connections. 

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Perry Zurn received a Ph.D. in philosophy from DePaul University. He is currently an Associate Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies in Philosophy in the Department of Philosophy and Religion at American University. He is the co-founder of the Trans Philosophy Project and the associated Thinking Trans // Trans Thinking Conference. Among his previous works is Curiosity and Power: The Politics of Inquiry.

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Dani Bassett received a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Cambridge. They are currently the J. Peter Skirkanich Professor at the University of Pennsylvania, with appointments in the Departments of Bioengineering, Electrical & Systems Engineering, Physics & Astronomy, Neurology, and Psychiatry, as well as an external professor of the Santa Fe Institute. Among their awards are the Macarthur Fellowship, the Lagrange Prize in Complex Systems Science (2017), and the Erdos-Renyi Prize in Network Science.

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Stephen Hawking’s discoveries of black hole radiation, entropy, and the information-loss problem have both taught us an enormous amount about the relationship between quantum mechanics and gravity, and also left us with some knotty puzzles. One major insight is the holographic principle: the information describing a black hole can be thought of as living on the event horizon (the two-dimensional boundary of the hole), rather than distributed throughout its volume, as normal physics would lead us to expect. Raphael Bousso has made important contributions to our understanding of holography and its implications. We talk about the modern point of view of how gravity relates to quantum mechanics.

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Raphael Bousso received his Ph.D. in physics from Cambridge University, where his advisor was Stephen Hawking. He is currently a professor of physics at UC Berkeley. He has made pioneering contributions to our understanding of black hole information, the holographic principle, the string theory landscape, and multiverse cosmology.

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Why do some countries produce far more science Nobel laureates than others? Why did Silicon Valley happen in California rather than Japan or Boston? Why did the Industrial Revolution happen when it did and where it did?

These are just some of the questions that have inspired the formation of a new intellectual movement called “progress studies.” The basic idea is this: For hundreds of thousands of years, human history played out without any rapid, marked advance in material living standards. And then, suddenly, in just the past few hundred years, everything changed: Humanity achieved a truly mind-boggling amount of progress in the evolutionary blink of an eye. In the early 21st century, we are all living in the world that progress bequeathed. And yet we understand shockingly little about what drives that progress in the first place.

That’s important because, at least according to some metrics, progress seems to be slowing down. We spend far more on scientific research but that research results in fewer breakthrough discoveries. Key economic indicators such as productivity growth have slowed. Many have argued that the technologies we’ve invented in recent decades, while highly impressive, aren’t as transformative as the technologies from the last century. All of which means that the questions animating progress studies aren’t mere academic exercises; they are central to understanding how we can bring about a better future for all.

Patrick Collison is the co-founder and chief executive of the multibillion-dollar payments company Stripe. But for years now, Collison has also been developing and advocating a worldview that has become the intellectual backbone of this new discipline. In 2019, Collison, alongside the economist Tyler Cowen,  called for “a new science of progress.” And since then, an intellectual ecosystem has sprung up around it, full of its own magazines and thinkers and syllabuses and podcasts. And Collison himself is putting its theories into practice through organizations  (like Fast Grants and Arc Institute) that he’s founded and funded.

This conversation is an attempt to better understand Collison’s worldview, and more broadly the worldview of progress studies. The ideas that animate progress studies are worth taking seriously on their own terms. But they are also important because they are becoming increasingly influential among a wealthy elite with the power and resources to shape all of our futures.

Mentioned:

“Science Is Getting Less Bang for Its Buck” by Patrick Collison and Michael Nielsen

A Culture of Growth by Joel Mokyr

"Kludgeocracy in America" by Steve Teles 

Book Recommendations:

Empire and Revolution by Richard Bourke

Scene of Change by Warren Weaver

A Widening Sphere by Philip N. Alexander

Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com.

You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.

“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin and Rogé Karma. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Original music by Isaac Jones. Mixing by Sonia Herrero, Isaac Jones and Carole Sabouraud. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin and Kristina Samulewski.

The Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) has developed a situational judgment test called, PREview Professional Readiness Exam, that is being used by eighteen medical schools for the 2022-2023 application cycle. I am joined in this episode by two representatives from the AAMC who are intimately involved in the development and delivery of this new assessment tool. You will hear details about this exam and preparing for it from Dr. Rebecca Fraser, the Director of Content Development within the Admissions and Selection Research and Development Program, and Lisa Peters, the Director of Operations for PREview. 

If you find this podcast to be a helpful resource, RATE, REVIEW, & SUBSCRIBE please!  It helps others find it!

Send me your recommendations for future medical schools that you'd like to hear featured! Send it to: allaccess@case.edu  

Visit our website for more information on this episode and others. 

https://linktr.ee/allaccessmedschool  

RESOURCES:

AAMC PREview Professional Readiness Exam

Essential Guide

Workspace and Computer Requirements

Practice Exam

Core Competencies for Entering Medical Students

2022-2023 Participating Schools

Carle Illinois College of Medicine - Research Only

Chicago Medical School at Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine & Science Recommended - Research Only

Cooper Medical School of Rowan University - Recommended

Des Moines University Medicine & Health Sciences - Recommended

Geisinger Commonwealth School of Medicine - Recommended

George Washington University School of Medicine - Recommended

Michigan State University College of Human Medicine - Required (either PREview exam or CASPer)

Morehouse School of Medicine - Recommended

Oakland University William Beaumont School of Medicine - Recommended

Saint Louis University School of Medicine - Required

Southern Illinois University School of Medicine - Recommended

Universidad Central del Caribe School of Medicine - Required

University of Alabama at Birmingham Marnix E. Heersink School of Medicine - Recommended

University of California at Davis School of Medicine - Required

University of California, Los Angeles David Geffen School of Medicine - Required

University of Hawaii, John A. Burns School of Medicine - Required

University of Oklahoma College of Medicine Recommended - Research Only

University of Virginia School of Medicine - Accepted, Research Only

Welcome to the June 2022 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! We are inaugurating a slightly different publication schedule, in which these monthly AMA will take the place of one of the regular Monday episodes, rather than being in addition to all of them. A slight tweak that will hopefully make my obligations a little more manageable.

These monthly excursions are funded by Patreon supporters (who are also the ones asking the questions). I take the large number of questions asked by Patreons, whittle them down to a more manageable size — based primarily on whether I have anything interesting to say about them, not whether the questions themselves are good — and sometimes group them together if they are about a similar topic. Enjoy!

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

A good story takes you on an emotional journey, with ups and downs along the way. Thanks to science, we can quantify that. Peter Dodds works on understanding the structure of stories and other strings of words (including Twitter) by analyzing the valence of individual words, then studying how they are strung together in different kinds of stories. Understanding these structures offers powerful insight into how people communicate and how to reach them. As Peter says, “Never bring statistics to a story fight.”

Support Mindscape on Patreon.

Peter Dodds received his Ph.D. in mathematics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is currently a professor of computer science at the University of Vermont and Director of the Vermont Complex Systems Center. He has won multiple teaching awards, and was elected a Fellow of the Network Science Society.

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It’s a well-worn cliché that oceans cover seventy percent of the surface of Earth, but we tend to give them secondary consideration when thinking about the environment. But climate change is wreaking havoc on the oceans, not to mention pollution and overfishing — 90% of the world’s marine fish stocks are fully exploited or depleted. Today’s guest, Sylvia Earle, is a well-known ocean scientist, a celebrated underwater explorer, and a tireless advocate for the world’s oceans. We talk about the current state of our oceans, what we know and have yet to learn about them, and what we can do individually and collectively to make things better.

Support Mindscape on Patreon.

Sylvia Earle received her Ph.D. in phycology from Duke University. She is currently National Geographic’s Rosemary and Roger Enrico Chair for Ocean Exploration, as well as founder of Mission Blue, SEAlliance and Deep Ocean Exploration and Research. She formerly served as Chief Scientist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Among her awards are the TED Prize, the National Women’s Hall of Fame, and the inaugural Lifetime Achievement Award from the Seattle Aquarium. She is the author of several books, the most recent of which is National Geographic Ocean: A Global Odyssey.

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Physics is extremely good at describing simple systems with relatively few moving parts. Sadly, the world is not like that; many phenomena of interest are complex, with multiple interacting parts and interesting things happening at multiple scales of length and time. One area where the techniques of physics overlap with the multi-scale property of complex systems is in the study of phase transitions, when a composite system transitions from one phase to another. Nigel Goldenfeld has made important contributions to the study of phase transitions in their own right (and mathematical techniques for dealing with them), and has also been successful at leveraging that understanding to study biological systems, from the genetic code to the tree of life.

Support Mindscape on Patreon.

Nigel Goldenfeld received his Ph.D. in physics from the University of Cambridge. He currently holds the Chancellor's Distinguished Professorship in Physics at UC San Diego. Until recently he was a Swanlund Endowed Chair and Center for Advanced Study Professor in Physics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Among his awards are the Xerox Award for research, the A. Nordsieck award for excellence in graduate teaching, and the American Physical Society’s Leo P. Kadanoff Prize. He is the co-founder of NumeriX, a company that specializes in high-performance software for the derivatives marketplace.

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• UC San Diego web page
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• Lectures on Phase Transitions and the Renormalization Group
• Quanta interview

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Welcome to the August 2021 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are funded by Patreon supporters (who are also the ones asking the questions). I take the large number of questions asked by Patreons, whittle them down to a more manageable size — based primarily on whether I have anything interesting to say about them, not whether the questions themselves are good — and sometimes group them together if they are about a similar topic. Enjoy!

Support Mindscape on Patreon.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The arrow of time — all the ways in which the past differs from the future — is a fascinating subject because it connects everyday phenomena (memory, aging, cause and effect) to deep questions in physics and philosophy. At its heart is the fact that entropy increases over time, which in turn can be traced to special conditions in the early universe. David Wallace is one of the world’s leading philosophers working on the foundations of physics, including space and time as well as quantum mechanics. We talk about how increasing entropy gives rise to the arrow of time, and what it is about the early universe that makes this happen. Then we cannot help but connecting this story to features of the Many-Worlds (Everett) interpretation of quantum mechanics.

Support Mindscape on Patreon.

David Wallace received a D.Phil. in Physics and a D.Phil. in Philosophy from Oxford University. He is currently W.A. Mellon Professor of Philosophy of Science, with joint appointments in the Philosophy Department and the Department of History and Philosophy of Science, at the University of Pittsburgh. He is the author of The Emergent Multiverse: Quantum Theory According to the Everett Interpretation. Among his honors are the Lakatos Award for outstanding contribution to the philosophy of science. His most recent book is Philosophy of Physics: A Very Short Introduction.

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Today on the Matt Walsh Show, as mask mandates return and talk of lockdowns picks up, it is clear that no amount of COVID risk is acceptable. With that in mind, I have come up with a three phase plan to eliminate the COVID risk and ensure that all of us can live safely and happily forever. I will share that with you today. Also we have our Five Headlines, including the journalist who had her own proposal: porn for kids. Yes, really. Plus, Facebook gets ready to unveil glasses that will record everything we do. And a restaurant owner calls Chris Cuomo to task live on air. We’ll play the heartwarming clip. In our Daily Cancellation, we’ll deal with Chris Hayes from MSNBC, who made an argument for masking while vaccinated that is truly breathtaking in its stupidity.

Subscribe to Morning Wire, Daily Wire’s new morning news podcast, and get the facts first on the news you need to know: https://utm.io/udyIF

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This week on Illuminated, we’re talking with Melissa Stangl, Founding Partner and COO of The Soltara Healing Centre in Costa Rica. Melissa works with psychedelics and plant medicines, starting her journey back in 2015 when she quit her corporate job to live and work with ayahuasca in the Amazon jungle. This week we share our own personal healing journeys with ayahuasca and how transformative this mode of therapy can be. 

In this episode, I share: 

• Mine and Melissa own personal healing journey with ayahuasca
• How Melissa became involved in ayahuasca therapy 
• The integration of the healing effects from an ayahuasca ceremony
• Changing, rewriting, and passing on your DNA through plant medicines
• The mind-body connection and what happens when we aren’t listening to our bodies
• Purging negative emotions and releasing mind chatter 
• Preparing the body for an ayahuasca retreat and ceremony
• Healing dependencies through ceremony
• The importance of maintaining the native roots of plant medicines and platforming indiginous voices
• How Soltara contributes to the psychedelic movement by bridging science and tradition
• Accessibility of plant medicines and giving back to the Amazon
• Trauma, ACE scores and how they can lead to chronic illness and disease 

Resources From This Episode:

Athletic Greens ~ Exclusive Discount for listeners

ACE’s Resource 

Work with Jennifer

25% Off a Private Coaching Session 

Sign-up for the Newsletter 

Work with Melissa

Soltara Healing Centre

Psychedelics Today Article 

Chacruna Institute 

Amazon Watch

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Get ready ya’ll, joining me this week is motivational speaker and psychic, Stephanie Roman. She is a divine channel that helps you remember how to unlock the magic we were all born with. Her mission of helping empaths learn how to stabilize and strengthen their abilities has led her to create 2 courses. She shows empaths the light and joy and their unique talents and gives them a tribe to encourage their journey.

In this episode, we share:

• Stephanie’s Ted Talk on how Barbie shaped her life
• Unattainable perfection in Stephanie’s family construct
• The pressure from religion to serve and be responsible for the happiness of others
• The abuse and verbal abuse Stephanie had to endure in her marriage and the struggle within herself
• How stress took a toll on her health
• Jennifer and Stephanie discuss the moment they chose ‘themselves’
• Learning how to honor your gifts and yourself
• Finding her psychic powers and giving readings
• Your worthiness does not diminish because your waist size
• Stephanie looks back on her childhood gifts
• Being your most authentic and honest self
• Stephanie’s 6 auto-immune diseases are not part of her identity
• Stephanie discusses her 2 courses (1 on 1 & empath course)
• How Stephanie unlocks her clients abilities
• A psychic that uses quantum physics, empaths are proved by science
• How magnesium plays a huge role in empaths
• General Roman and the Bald Barbie Army - Redefining Beauty

Resources From This Episode:

Athletic Greens ~ Exclusive Discount for listeners

Work with Jennifer

25% Off a Private Coaching Session 

Subscribe to the Newsletter 

Work with Stephanie

Watch Stephanie’s Tedx Talk

Psychic Training System

Get a Psychic Reading from Stephanie

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Youtube

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GoFundMe

Back with us this week, is our co-host Elisabeth Kristof, Founder of Brain-Based Wellness. Join us today as we dive into the complex and healing world of movement. Not only will we be unraveling the science behind movement and applied neurology, but we’ll also be sharing our own personal stories and insights on how to define and find balance in your own movement journeys. 

In this episode, we share:

• How our brains evolved for movement, why it’s so important, and the role it plays
• How movement became an integral part of Jennifer’s daily life
• The science of movement and our personal stories
• Healing and change and where it must occur
• Tools that make you capable of healing
• The importance of reframing movement and wiring the brain for efficiency
• The sea squirt and how it relates to our brains evolving
• A healing methodology to overcome trauma and process stress
• Creating a balanced, healthy relationship with your body that is not punishing
• Intuitive movement and what’s right for you
• Sensory before movement
• Keeping the brain and nervous system maps clear
• Finding minimum effective dose or “sweet spot” in your movement practice 
• Debunking the myth of “no pain, no gain”
• Balancing repetition and novelty stimulus
• Manifestations of repressed emotion and how push past them
• Tools shared through the Brain-Based Wellness movement platform to empower you to become the expert of your movement practice and nervous system

Resources From This Episode:

Athletic Greens ~ Exclusive Discount for listeners

Work with Jennifer

25% Off a Private Coaching Session 

Subscribe to the Newsletter 

Work with Elisabeth 

25% Off Your 1st Membership at Brain Based Wellness

Use Code: (Illuminated25) 

Freedom From Within Self-Study Course

FREE Intro to Applied Neurology Course and Morning Practice

Connect with Jennifer

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Today on the Matt Walsh Show, many people are desperately trying to come up with a rationale to continue wearing a mask, now that the CDC has changed its guidance on the issue. Also Five Headlines including the NYC Pride parade bans cops from participating, a teacher is caught on camera berating a student, and 60 Minutes is the latest mainstream media outlet to report on the impending UFO invasion. 

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