Closer To Truth

Can Mathematics Explain Biology?

If life is a vast space of possibilities, then mathematics can engage with biology. Statistics analyze biological data, and mathematical models improve biological theories and reveal hidden commonalties. But could the mathematics of biology touch fundamental realities?
 
Featuring interviews with Leon Glass, Martin Nowak, Geoffrey West, Paul Davies, and Robbert Dijkgraaf.
 
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Roger Penrose: Mathematics & What Exists

Roger Penrose—mathematician, physicist, philosopher—was awarded the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics. We speak with Roger about our favorite, fundamental questions. What things exist? What is math and why does it work? What’s fundamental in the cosmos?
 
All episodes of Season 22 are available now on our website: https://bit.ly/3QwMzIA
 
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Is Mathematics Invented or Discovered?

Mathematics describes the real world of atoms and acorns, stars and stairs, with remarkable precision. So is mathematics invented by humans-like chisels and hammers and pieces of music? Or is mathematics discovered-always out there, somewhere, like mysterious islands waiting to be found?
 
Featuring interviews with Roger Penrose, Mark Balaguer, Gregory Chaitin, Stephen Wolfram, and Frank Wilczek.
 
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What is the Deep Meaning of Probability?

Consider three powers of probability: refining data, assessing theories, probing ultimate reality. Watch how these work in cosmology: confidence in precise measurements; assessing competing models; revealing how quantum fluctuations became galactic structures.
 
Featuring interviews with Ivan Corwin, Licia Verde, Sabine Hossenfelder, David Wallace, and Aaron Clauset.
 
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Martin Rees on Cosmology and Existential Risk

Robert Lawrence Kuhn speaks with Martin Rees—Astronomer Royal and co-founder of Centre for the Study of Existential Risk—about the James Webb Space Telescope, black holes, existential risk, and more.
 
Martin Rees is an astrophysicist and cosmologist, and the UK's Astronomer Royal. He is based at the University of Cambridge where he has been Professor of Astronomy and Director of the Institute of Astronomy. Martin is a Fellow, and was the former Master, of Trinity College, Cambridge.
 
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When Brains Go Bad

What does brain damage do to people? By observing strange behaviors in brain-impaired patients, scientists discern how normal brains work. For example, what happens to “the self”?
 
Featuring interviews with Barry Smith, Donald Hoffman, Susan Greenfield, and Christopher Evans.
 
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Jesus as God: A Philosophical Inquiry

Why the astonishing claim that Jesus is God? Not like God. Not representing God. But literally God? One need not be a Christian, or even a theist, to appreciate the arguments.
 
Featuring interviews with Sarah Coakley, N.T. Wright, Oliver Crisp, Eleonore Stump, C. Stephen Evans, and Ian McFarland.
 
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Freeman Dyson: From Physics to the Far Future

Freeman Dyson, visionary extraordinaire, was one of the most inventive thinkers of our age: discovering new mathematics, challenging fundamental physics, colonizing space, searching for signatures of alien civilizations, imagining the far future of intelligence.
 
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How Does the Subconscious Affect Us?

There is more to our mental lives than the current content of our awareness. Our subconscious affects what we sense, think, feel and do. How does the subconscious work its magic?
 
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What Are Breakthroughs in Mathematics?

Call mathematics the purest form of knowledge, universal messaging anyone, anywhere, can understand. For math to advance, there must be breakthroughs, which may seem like magic. What are mathematical breakthroughs? How do they happen? How do they work?
 
 
Featuring interviews with Karen Uhlenbeck, Edward Witten, Michael Hopkins, Ivan Corwin, Gregory Chaitin, and Paul Davies.
 
 
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