WHAT IS LIFE? (Part 1): A Mind-Bending Conversation with Sara Walker

The Next Big Idea

Next Big Idea Club

Self-improvement, Arts, Books, Society & Culture, Education

4.5 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 17 December 2024

⏱️ 61 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

We’ve had many bracing thinkers on this show, but Sara Walker might take the cake. A physicist and astrobiologist at Arizona State University, she's just written "Life as No One Knows It: The Physics of Life's Emergence," a thrilling exploration of life's origins and the search for it across the cosmos. 🕐 The second part of this conversation will be available on Thursday. If you can’t wait until then, you can hear it right now on The Next Big Idea app 🎁 Take 20% off a Next Big Idea Club subscription when you use code PODCAST20 at nextbigideaclub.com

Transcript

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0:00.0	Before we get started, I want to let you know about an amazing holiday promo we're running right now.
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0:40.8	people in your life will really appreciate it. That's next big idea club.com and use the
0:45.8	promo code podcast to zero. All right, here's today's show. LinkedIn presents.
0:56.6	I'm Rufus Griscombe, and this is the next big idea.
1:01.0	Today, the physics of life's emergence. This podcast recently turned five. And in celebrating that milestone, I've been thinking about all the brilliant people we've had on the show.
1:32.2	And in particular, all the brilliant scientists.
1:35.2	Brilliant, I should say, but also outlandish.
1:39.7	I'm thinking about people like Donald Hoffman, a cognitive psychologist who argues that what we perceive as reality isn't actually an objective representation of the world.
1:50.5	Reality is not space and time and its contents. It's something utterly outside of space and time.
1:56.4	Or take acclaimed neuroscientist Lisa Feldman-Barratt, who blew my mind and maybe yours, when she
2:02.4	came on the show and said, the lizard brain we all talk about, the one that governs our survival
2:07.6	instincts, it doesn't exist. You can't look at the brain, you can't look at any brain, but you
2:13.3	certainly can't look at a human brain and say, well, these parts are for motion and they're battling
2:17.1	these parts for rationality. It just makes no sense from an anatomical standpoint when
2:23.9	you look at the structure of the brain. The point is, we've had some unorthodox thinkers on
2:28.0	the show, but I'm not sure any of them are as out there as my guest today, Sarah Walker.
	...

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