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January 5, 2017

Season 2017

01. Marcus Feldman: In Search of Actions That Alter Evolution

Marcus Feldman explains how he models the effects of a cultural preference — in this case, a preference for sons over daughters in China.

January 5, 2017

02. Francis Su: Math and the Good Life

Francis Su explains how mathematics can help a person to live well.

February 3, 2017

03. Francis Su: Math Is for Everybody

Francis Su discusses how the community of mathematicians tends to exclude certain people.

February 4, 2017

04. Sylvia Serfaty: In Mathematics, ‘You Cannot Be Lied To’

Sylvia Serfaty explains why you don’t have to be a genius to become a mathematician.

February 21, 2017

05. Sharon Glotzer: ‘Digital Alchemist’ Seeks Rules of Emergence

Sharon Glotzer explains how emergence, entropy and order can all fit together.

March 8, 2017

06. John Novembre: A Map of Human History, Hidden in DNA

John Novembre explains how he uses genomic data to map human history.

April 20, 2017

07. Tim Maudlin: A Defense of the Reality of Time

A Defense of the Reality of Time

May 19, 2017

08. Journey to the Birth of the Solar System 360 VR

Join David Kaplan on a virtual-reality tour showing how the sun, the Earth and the other planets came to be.

May 25, 2017

09. Purvesh Khatri: More Data — the Dirtier the Better

Khatri learned that by working with 'messy' clinical data sets, he could find genes that the human body expresses in response to diverse forms of a disease.

June 7, 2017

10. Jessica Flack: How Nature Solves Problems Through Computation

Jessica Flack describes the special challenges of applying collective computation to the understanding of complex biological systems.

July 10, 2017

11. Jay Pasachoff: Eclipse Hunter Reveals the Science That Can Only Be Done in the Dark

Jay Pasachoff explains what scientists can learn during a total solar eclipse.

August 10, 2017

12. How Andrea Ghez Found a Supermassive Black Hole

The UCLA astrophysicist explains how tracking the movement of stars revealed the existence of a supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy.

August 21, 2017

13. Svitlana Mayboroda: Taming Rogue Waves

Svitlana Mayboroda describes how the landscape function helps solve the mystery of wave localization.

August 22, 2017

14. Neil Johnson: A Physicist Who Models ISIS and the Alt-Right

Neil Johnson on the physics of collective human behavior.

August 23, 2017

15. Nigel Goldenfeld: Seeing Emergent Physics Behind Evolution

Nigel Goldenfeld explains how condensed matter physics provides insights into the collective state of early life on Earth.

August 31, 2017

16. Rebecca Goldin: Why Math Is the Best Way to Make Sense of the World

Rebecca Goldin explains why quantitative literacy is so important.

September 11, 2017

17. Michael Assis: Atomic Origami

Michael Assis demonstrates how defects can be used to tune the properties of Miura-ori origami.

October 31, 2017

18. Federico Ardila: A Mathematician Who Dances to the Joys and Sorrows of Discovery

A Mathematician Who Dances to the Joys and Sorrows of Discovery

November 20, 2017

19. Minhyong Kim: Connecting Number Theory to Physics

Minhyong Kim wanted to make sure he had concrete results in number theory before he admitted that his ideas were inspired by physics.

December 1, 2017

20. Corina Tarnita: First Understand Nature’s Rules

Corina Tarnita argues that to fully appreciate nature, you must first understand its rules.

December 20, 2017