Randall Munroe with Marcus du Sautoy on Making the Complicated Simple

Intelligence Squared

Arts, News, Society & Culture, News Commentary

4.2 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 5 October 2017

⏱️ 63 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

On 2nd October, Intelligence Squared brought together two of the world’s best-loved masters of explaining and popularising science, who lifted the lid on the technology we love and on the cutting edge of current scientific research. Randall Munroe is a physicist who once built robots for NASA. His webcomic xkcd uses simple cartoons and diagrams to make science funny, touching and incredibly clear. It gets a billion hits a year. In his latest series, Munroe has simplified the workings behind everything from space rockets to smartphones, while using only the thousand most common words in the English language. On stage with Munroe was Oxford’s professor for the public understanding of science Marcus du Sautoy, who has won a wide following through his bestselling books and TV programmes explaining the elegance and complexity of mathematics. While Munroe unpicked the detailed mechanics behind such technological breakthroughs as the large hadron collider at CERN, du Sautoy will examined some of the broader, philosophical questions about the nature — and limits — of scientific enquiry itself. Join Munroe and du Sautoy for this far-reaching exploration of the technology that drives our world, and have your chance to put your questions to two of the sharpest minds in science. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/intelligencesquared. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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1:10.0	intelligent squared events, I think this is probably the coolest evening in London
1:13.7	tonight. We are exactly. We are very very lucky to be here with these two folks
1:21.9	so I'm going to introduce in a second. Making the complicated
1:24.7	simple is something that I have a great personal interest in. In my medical school final, in the
1:30.7	oral part of it, the most terrifying part because there's a patient sitting next to you and because you might fail and not be a doctor
1:36.0	The final question they asked me is what is a hiccup and I was reminded of this because on Saturday at the Bath Children's Literature Festival,
1:46.5	I agreed to take some questions and a six-year-old girl asked me what is a hiccup.
1:52.4	And I'll tell you what I told her which is that I didn't know then
1:56.3	and I don't know now and that is one of the simplest things we can encounter
	...

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