The Middle of Everything Ever

Radiolab

WNYC Studios

History, Science, Documentary, Natural Sciences, Society & Culture

4.6 • 44.5K Ratings

🗓️ 9 December 2022

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

After graduating from high school, without a clear plan for what to do next, Laura Andrews started asking herself a lot of questions. A spiral of big philosophical thoughts that led her to sit down and write to us with a question that was… oddly mathematical. What is the most average size thing, if you take into account everything in the universe. So, along with mathematician Steven Strogatz, we decided to see if we could sit down and, in a friendly throwdown of guesstimates and quick calculations, rough out an answer. Special thanks to all the listeners who sent in their responses to this question. Episode Credits:Reported by - Soren Wheeler and Alex NeasonProduced by - Annie McEwenwith mixing help from - Arianne WackFact-checking by - Natalie A. Middletonand Edited by - Alex Neason Citations: BooksYou can find links to many books by Steven Strogatz here: https://www.stevenstrogatz.com/all-books MediaAnd the podcast he does for Quanta Magazine, The Joy of Why, here: https://www.quantamagazine.org/tag/the-joy-of-why/ Our newsletter comes out every Wednesday. It includes short essays, recommendations, and details about other ways to interact with the show. Sign up (https://radiolab.org/newsletter)!Radiolab is supported by listeners like you. Support Radiolab by becoming a member of The Lab (https://members.radiolab.org/) today.Follow our show on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @radiolab, and share your thoughts with us by emailing radiolab@wnyc.org. Leadership support for Radiolab’s science programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, a Simons Foundation Initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Wait, you're listening to Radio Lab from WNYC.
0:19.8	This is Radio Lab.
0:20.8	I'm Soren Wheeler, I'm sitting in for Lulu and lots of today.
0:24.0	They will be back next week.
0:25.8	But for today's show, we got a good one and I brought along a friend.
0:30.8	Hello.
0:31.8	Our editor, Alex Niesen.
0:32.8	Yeah.
0:33.8	All right, so tell us what we're, tell everybody what we're up to today.
0:36.3	Yeah, so we're here because a little while back, we got a question from a listener.
0:43.4	It seemed like a pretty simple question, but the more we got into it and tried to figure
0:49.0	out how to answer it, the more it just dragged us into the middle of everything.
0:55.8	Yeah, that's like one big gigantic spiral.
0:58.8	Like, what are we?
0:59.8	Who are we?
1:00.8	I'm sorry.
1:01.8	That's okay.
1:02.8	So the question came from a woman named Laura Andrews.
1:05.8	Yeah, my name is Laura and I'm a student.
1:07.8	Laura is an undergraduate student at the University of Missouri.
1:11.8	Mizzou.
1:12.8	Yeah.
	...

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