Nobel Laureate Finds Key Insights About Complex Systems in Bird Flight | Giorgio Parisi (#359)

Into the Impossible With Brian Keating

Brian Keating

Science, Physics, Natural Sciences

4.7 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 22 October 2023

⏱️ 55 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

How does a Nobel Prize winner create ideas and bring them to life? What can starlings teach us about physics? And what is a spin glass? Here today, to take us on a fascinating journey from bird flocks to condensed matter physics is none other than Nobel Prize laureate Giorgio Parisi. Giorgio is an Italian theoretical physicist and author of many wonderful works, such as In a Flight of Starlings: The Wonders of Complex Systems, which we will discuss in detail in this episode. Giorgio is an incredibly inspiring mind who has contributed so much to our understanding of nature and complex systems, and it was an honor to interview him! Tune in. Key Takeaways: Intro (00:00) Judging a book by its cover: In a Flight of Starlings (00:38) Nicola Cabibbo as an advisor (07:10) Why do starlings form murmurations? (12:12) Giorgio’s work on spin glasses (22:04) How Giorgio lost the Nobel Prize (29:38) Can scientists work in isolation? (35:10) How ideas are born (38:28) Room-temperature superconductivity (43:08) Increasing scientific funding in the European governments (45:18) Science communication (48:59) Outro (54:15) — Additional resources: 🥗 Thanks, HelloFresh! Go to HelloFresh.com/50impossible and use code 50impossible for 50% off plus 15% off the next 2 months. 📝 With a MasterClass annual membership, you can take one-on-one classes from the world’s best for $10 a month with your annual membership, get unlimited access to every class — and even better, right now, as an Into The Impossible listener, you can get 15% off when you go to MASTERCLASS.com/impossible. 🧑‍💻 Visit LinkedIn.com/IMPOSSIBLE to post your job for free! 📚 In a Flight of Starlings by Giorgio Parisi: https://a.co/d/705ROGE ➡️ Follow me on your fav platforms: ✖️ Twitter: https://twitter.com/DrBrianKeating 🔔 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/DrBrianKeating?sub_confirmation=1 📝 Join my mailing list: https://briankeating.com/mailing_list ✍️ Check out my blog: https://briankeating.com/blog.php 🎙️ Follow my podcast: https://briankeating.com/podcast — Into the Impossible with Brian Keating is a podcast dedicated to all those who want to explore the universe within and beyond the known. Make sure to follow so you never miss an episode! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Professor George Perissi, he's a renowned theoretical physicist, currently a professor of quantum theory at the University of Rome.
0:07.4	In 2021, he won the Nobel Prize for his groundbreaking contributions to the theory of complex systems.
0:15.0	What secrets lie in the elegant movement of a flock of starlings?
0:19.7	What can complex systems tell us about the nature of life, our universe, and ourselves. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
0:37.0	Open the pod bay doors now.
0:40.0	Welcome everybody to an exciting episode of the Into the Impossible
0:44.3	podcast. We're joined today by an inspiring physicist, a man who's made many
0:50.3	contributions to our understanding of nature and especially the understanding of what are called complex systems.
0:57.6	We're going to get into that, but the first thing we love to do on this podcast,
1:01.6	Georgio, is to talk about the title of the book that
1:06.2	you have written.
1:07.2	It's called In a Flight of Starlings, The Wonders of complex systems.
1:12.5	Can you explain, Georgio?
1:14.2	What does the title mean?
1:15.6	And what does the cover art?
1:18.1	What does it illustrate on the cover picture?
1:20.5	The point is the fallen.
1:22.4	I've been interested for a long time in the flight of Stavving. I mean, Stavving are very interesting birds and they are doing the flight in a very use group of
1:37.3	a thousand thousand especially in the evening just just as a moment where when they have to go to sleep and the point was
1:49.0	the point was that they made that this person doing are really amazing, fascinating, but no one knew exactly how they
2:00.5	could communicate to do this movement and the thing that was most fundamental
2:07.8	no one really knew which was a form of the flock because when you see a flock of birds, you see the
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