Showing results for "Science and Culture" in Science & Engineering

The story of human civilization can be read most deeply in the materials we have found or created, used or abused. They have dictated how we build, eat, communicate, wage war, create art, travel, and worship. Some, such as stone, iron, and bronze, lend their names to the ages. Others, such as gold, silver, and diamond, contributed to the rise and fall of great empires.

Athena Aktipis of Arizona State University is a self-professed apocalypse enthusiast, and as the host of the podcast Zombified, she knows the undead inside and out. With Zombified: Real-World Lessons from Fictional Apocalypses, she’s compiled her research and insights into a fascinating Audible Original that will have you thinking deeper about all those shambling, brain-hungry corpses in pop culture—not to mention our everyday lives. Drawing on years of research on zombies and zombification, these six lessons offer a fun way to explore and understand the many forces that influence us.

Ever wanted to know how music affects your brain, what quantum mechanics really is, or how black holes work? Do you wonder why you get emotional each time you see a certain movie, or how on earth video games are designed? Then you've come to the right place. Each week, Sean Carroll will host conversations with some of the most interesting thinkers in the world. From neuroscientists and engineers to authors and television producers, Sean and his guests talk about the biggest ideas in science, philosophy, culture and much more.

Sadhguru, founder of Isha Foundation is a yogi, mystic and spiritual master with a difference. An arresting blend of profundity and pragmatism, his life and work serve as a reminder that inner sciences are not esoteric philosophies from an outdated past, but a contemporary science vitally relevant to our times.

Heart and Science is a captivating didactic novel by Wilkie Collins that follows the journey of the young doctor Ovid Vere as he battles against the odds for his love. Confronted by his familys disapproval and the complexities of their social circle, Ovids path is fraught with intrigue, including a significant inheritance, a secret engagement, and a wicked stepmother. What sets this novel apart is Collins passionate plea against animal cruelty in the realm of science, reflecting his deep affection for animals. - Summary by Carolin

Amazingly interesting fact podcasts. From most amazing people to future technology creations to facts about amazing mysteries, if it’s amazing, we'll explore it. Oh, and there's a splash of humor thrown in too. You'll be amazed at our mind-blowing array of fun facts and condensed lists.

Life is boring: filled with meetings and traffic, errands and emails. Nothing we'd ever call fun. But what if we've gotten fun wrong? In Play Anything, visionary game designer and philosopher Ian Bogost shows how we can overcome our daily anxiety; transforming the boring, ordinary world around us into one of endless, playful possibilities. The key to this playful mindset lies in discovering the secret truth of fun and games.

The world is never finished catching up with Vaclav Smil. In his latest and perhaps most digestible book, Invention and Innovation, the prolific author—a favorite of Bill Gates—pens an insightful and fact-filled jaunt through the history of human invention. Impatient with the hype that so often accompanies innovation, Smil offers in this book a clear-eyed corrective to the overpromises that accompany everything from new cures for diseases to AI.

The Ape That Understood the Universe is the story of the strangest animal in the world: the human animal. It opens with a question: How would an alien scientist view our species? What would it make of our sex differences, our sexual behavior, our child-rearing patterns, our moral codes, our religions, our languages, and science? The book tackles these issues by drawing on ideas from two major schools of thought: evolutionary psychology and cultural evolutionary theory.

This podcast episode explores the concept of the multiverse, comparing and contrasting its presence in modern science and ancient Hindu mythology. The episode delves into the Hindu understanding of the cosmos, particularly its multilayered structure of "lokas" or realms, and how stories from the Mahabharata and Ramayana depict the interaction between these different realms. It further highlights examples from Hindu scriptures, like the story of Lord Krishna and King Muchukunda, to showcase how the idea of multiple realities is embedded in their narratives. The episode also touches upon the ...

The bestselling author of The Professor and the Madman and The Map That Changed the World examines the enduring and world-changing effects of the catastrophic eruption off the coast of Java of the earth's most dangerous volcano -- Krakatoa. The legendary annihilation in 1883 of the...

Audie Award, History/Biography, 2016. On the night of July 20, 1969, our world changed forever when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon. Based on in-depth interviews with 23 of the 24 moon voyagers, as well as those who struggled to get the program moving, A Man on the Moon conveys every aspect of the Apollo missions with breathtaking immediacy and stunning detail.

Gene Kranz was present at the creation of America's manned space program and was a key player in it for three decades. As a flight director in NASA's Mission Control, Kranz witnessed firsthand the making of history. He participated in the space program from the early days of the Mercury program to the last Apollo mission, and beyond. He endured the disastrous first years when rockets blew up and the United States seemed to fall further behind the Soviet Union in the space race.

The Go-to Podcast for Biotech Scientists Who Want to Master Biopharma CMC Development and Biomanufacturing.**TOP 10 LIFE SCIENCES PODCAST**Are you ready to simplify bioprocess development and scale with confidence to reduce time to market?Are you feeling overwhelmed by the complexity and guesswork of biologics development and biomanufacturing?Do you wish you had more time to enjoy the beauty of science, without worrying about failing your cell culture process development and commercialization?There's a way to simplify and streamline so you can remove complexity, skip trials and errors, deliver...

Volcanoes. Trees. Drunk butterflies. Mars missions. Slug sex. Death. Beauty standards. Anxiety busters. Beer science. Bee drama. Take away a pocket full of science knowledge and charming, bizarre stories about what fuels these professional -ologists' obsessions. Humorist and science correspondent Alie Ward asks smart people stupid questions and the answers might change your life.

Are art and science separated by an unbridgeable divide? Can they find common ground? In this book, neuroscientist Eric R. Kandel, whose remarkable scientific career and deep interest in art give him a unique perspective, demonstrates how science can inform the way we experience a work of art and seek to understand its meaning. Kandel illustrates how reductionism - the distillation of larger scientific or aesthetic concepts into smaller, more tractable components - has been used by scientists and artists alike to pursue their respective truths.

Artificial intelligence powers Google's search engine, enables Facebook to target advertising, and allows Alexa and Siri to do their jobs. AI is also behind self-driving cars, predictive policing, and autonomous weapons that can kill without human intervention. These and other AI applications raise complex ethical issues that are the subject of ongoing debate. This volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series offers an accessible synthesis of these issues.

The groundbreaking science of how and why we talk, and how this ability impacts every area of our lives Humans are the only species that can transform internal ideas into talk, whether through speech, writing, or sign language. But why do we have this almost magical, special talent? It turns out...

The Discovering Your Mind Podcast is dedicated to research and discussion surrounding all aspect of the mind's eye from Aphantasia to Hyperphantasia and everything in between. Using our in-depth questionnaire that we call the "Discovering Your Mind Protocol", we unlock and discover your unique way of visualizing and bask in the beauty of our differences.

With the ongoing advancement of AI and other technologies, our world is becoming increasingly intelligent. From chatbots to innovations in brain-computer interfaces to the possibility of superintelligences leading to the Singularity later this century, our reality is being transformed before our eyes. This is commonly seen as the natural result of progress, but what if there's more to it than that? What if intelligence is an inevitability, an underlying property of the universe?