Guy's Favorites: Solve For X

TED Radio Hour

NPR

Social Sciences, Society & Culture, Science, Technology

4.4 • 21.3K Ratings

🗓️ 10 January 2020

⏱️ 53 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

As we transition to our new host Manoush Zomorodi, Guy Raz looks back on some of his favorite episodes from his seven years hosting the TED Radio Hour. This episode originally aired on March 6, 2015. Math intimidates a lot of us, but it can deliver surprising answers to life's pressing questions. In this episode, TED speakers discuss the elegant simplicity, and giddy complexity, of solving for X.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, it's Guy here. So as you may have heard, there's a brand new host of the Ted Radio Hour.
0:05.3	Her name is Manouche Samarote and she and the team are busy producing a bunch of new episodes,
0:10.5	and you'll start to hear them beginning in March. In the meantime, I want to share some of my
0:15.0	most favorite episodes of Ted Radio Hour from the seven years I host of the show. And this one,
0:20.8	it's all about the world of numbers. And how math can answer some of life's most complicated
0:26.4	questions like, can we ever find love or why is this drumbeat so catchy? And how did tiny little
0:33.4	Yoda lift that enormous X-wing out of the swamp and the Empire Strikes Back? This episode is called
0:40.0	Solve for X. Enjoy. This is the Ted Radio Hour. Each week, groundbreaking Ted Talks.
0:51.4	Ted Talks. Ted. Ted. Technology. Entertainment. Design. Design. Is that really what's
0:56.8	10 for? I've never known the delivered and Ted conferences around the world. It's the gift of
1:00.9	the human imagination. We've had to believe in impossible things. The true nature of reality beckons
1:07.7	from just beyond. Those talks, those ideas adapted for radio. From NPR.
1:15.8	I'm Guy Ross. Back in 2009, this guy named Randall Monroe volunteered to teach a weekend class
1:25.5	at MIT to a bunch of high school students. They have a program where people can come in and teach
1:30.3	classes on whatever subjects they're interested in and a bunch of students come and sign up and
1:34.7	take them. And I had some friends do classes on root beer tasting and other ones do a class on
1:40.0	programming. Randall decided to teach the one subject he knew a little something about.
1:46.3	So I did a class on the physics of energy because he'd studied physics and college.
1:50.8	But on the first day of that class, he was teaching when he was giving his first lecture.
1:55.7	Well, I was I was talking about how you can define this quantity called potential energy. And you
2:00.1	can calculate if you lift an object that weighs, you know, five kilograms through a distance of two
2:06.8	meters, then it will have about 95 or, you know, 100 jewels of potential energy. This approach, of
	...

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