Searching for Order in the Universe
Wonder Cabinet
Wonder Cabinet Productions
4.8 • 1K Ratings
🗓️ 24 April 2021
⏱️ 53 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
When things don't go the way they're supposed to — viruses, star systems, presidents, even fish — we're often desperate to explain the chaos. In this episode, we search for order in the universe.
Original Air Date: August 08, 2020
Guests:
Patrik Svensson — Lulu Miller — Alexander Boxer — Margaret Wertheim — S. James Gates Jr.
Interviews In This Hour:
The Weird World Of Eels — We Call Them Fish. Evolution Says They're Something Else. — The Original Algorithm Was Written In The Stars — Seeing The World With A Mathematician's Eyes
Further Reading:
Nautilus: Eels Don’t Have Sex Until the Last Year of Their Life—NYAS: The Mystery of Our Mathematical Universe
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | It's to the best of our knowledge. |
| 0:02.0 | I'm in Strain Champs. |
| 0:04.0 | This week we're thinking about one of those gigantic conundrums that we all struggle with, maybe especially right now. |
| 0:13.0 | How to find order in chaos. |
| 0:17.0 | What to do when things don't behave the way they're supposed to? |
| 0:21.6 | Viruses, star systems, presidents, even fish. |
| 0:26.6 | No human being has ever seen eels breed. |
| 0:31.6 | Wait, to this day? |
| 0:34.6 | Exactly. |
| 0:35.6 | The search for order in the universe has led scientists to study some very odd things, |
| 0:40.7 | and for a very long time. |
| 0:43.1 | The Babylonians were taking nightly records of the positions of the planets, |
| 0:47.5 | going back to about the year 700 BC, and it lasted for many hundreds of years. |
| 0:53.4 | This hour, looking for order in a chaotic universe. |
| 1:00.3 | It's to the best of our knowledge. I'm And Strange Champs. |
| 1:08.1 | Sometimes, the most profound questions come out of the simplest experiences. |
| 1:13.6 | I have very strong memories from my childhood fishing for eels with my father. |
| 1:24.6 | This is Patrick Swenson. |
| 1:30.2 | I think I started when I was six or seven years old. |
| 1:35.6 | It was always just me and my father, down by a small stream close to where my father grew up on the farm. |
| 1:49.0 | We went fishing for eels on the summer night. |
| 1:53.0 | It was a very special place. |
... |
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