299 | Michael Wong on Information, Funct...

<p>Welcome to the November 2025 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are funded by&nbsp;<a href="https://www.patreon.com/seanmcarroll" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Patreon supporters</a>&nbsp;(who are also the ones asking the questions). We ... Show More

<p>Science has an incredibly impressive track record of uncovering nonintuitive ideas about the universe that turn out to be surprisingly accurate. It can be tempting to think of scientific discoveries as being carefully constructed atop a rock-solid foundation. In reality, scien ... Show More

<p>The universe as revealed by physics is objective: it's out there, existing and behaving in ways that are completely independent of human thought. But the process by which we learn about the universe, and the language with which we talk about it, is extremely human-dependent. D ... Show More

<p>Sam Harris speaks with Richard Dawkins about his new book <em><a href="https://amzn.to/3X7oYQE">The Genetic Book of the Dead</a></em>, the genome as a palimpsest, what scientists of the future may do with genetic information, genotypes and phenotypes, embryology and epigenetic ... Show More

It was an astounding discovery in the early 1980's that the same genetic sequence, the homeobox, controlled the development of basic body plans across the animal kingdom, whether the result was a flatworm, an octopus, a mouse, or a human. This discovery of the conservation of a k ... Show More

<p>On this episode of Longevity by Design, Dr. Gil Blander speaks with Dr. Michael Ringel, COO of Life Biosciences, about the science of aging and longevity. Michael discusses how evolution influences lifespan and why aging occurs. He explains the trade-off between resource alloc ... Show More

<p>If DNA is just a string of letters, could AI learn to read it … or even write it? Bioengineering researcher Eric Nguyen reveals how AI has upended the rules of biology, potentially creating a future where disease is cured with personalized medicine, extinct species are resurre ... Show More

Dr. Jordan B. Peterson sits down with physicist and author, Dr. Brian Greene. They discuss the strange conceptualization of “before” the Big Bang, how time might be a microscopic phenomenon, how order existed at the point of the universe's creation, what would happen if you fell ... Show More

This week, Patrick welcomes President and CEO of The Jackson Laboratory, Lon Cardon. They discuss the rise of genome-wide association studies (GWAS) and how they changed the face of genetics research and why Lon took the plunge and moved from academia to industry in an era when i ... Show More

We are approaching a significant tipping point for human and planetary health. Despite the breakneck pace of innovation and technology striving to solve these problems, I can’t help but feel the solutions we need continue to elude us. Today’s guest believes there is a better path ... Show More

<p>Languages drift, adapt and evolve much like living species. In this wide-ranging conversation, evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins and linguist John McWhorter trace the parallels between biology and speech, from random mutations to cultural selection. They show how both gen ... Show More

<p>If DNA is just a string of letters, could AI learn to read it … or even write it? Bioengineering researcher Eric Nguyen reveals how AI has upended the rules of biology, potentially creating a future where disease is cured with personalized medicine, extinct species are resurre ... Show More

<p>Languages drift, adapt and evolve much like living species. In this wide-ranging conversation, evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins and linguist John McWhorter trace the parallels between biology and speech, from random mutations to cultural selection. They show how both gen ... Show More