Season 2015

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Episodes

Each episode has its own detail page.

Episode 12015-06-10

What Happens if You Fall Into a Black Hole?

David Kaplan explores one of the biggest mysteries in physics: the apparent contradiction between general relativity and quantum mechanics.

Episode 22015-06-11

Freeman Dyson: A ‘Rebel’ Without a Ph.D.

A wide-ranging interview with the legendary mathematical physicist Freeman Dyson in which he discusses his work with Richard Feynman, his attempts to build a spaceship propelled by nuclear bombs and his controversial views on climate change.

Episode 32015-06-12

Artur Avila: A Brazilian Wunderkind Who Calms Chaos

A video profile of the mathematician Artur Avila, whose solutions to ubiquitous problems in chaos theory have earned him Brazil’s first Fields Medal in 2014.

Episode 42015-06-15

Manjul Bhargava: The Musical, Magical Number Theorist

A video profile of the 2014 Fields medalist Manjul Bhargava, whose search for artistic truth and beauty has led to some of the most profound recent discoveries in number theory.

Episode 52015-06-16

Where Did the Universe Come From?

Where did the universe come from? David Kaplan explores the leading cosmological explanation with the help of a baking metaphor.

Episode 62015-06-17

Yitang Zhang: An Unlikely Math Star Rises

The opening scene from George Csicsery’s film "Counting From Infinity," about Yitang Zhang, a previously unknown mathematician who two years ago solved a major problem in number theory that catapulted him to mathematical stardom.

Episode 72015-06-19

Martin Hairer: In Noisy Equations, One Who Heard Music

A video profile of the 2014 Fields medalist Martin Hairer, whose epic masterpiece in stochastic analysis, experts say, “created a whole world.”

Episode 82015-06-23

Maryam Mirzakhani: A Tenacious Explorer of Abstract Surfaces

A video profile of the 2014 Fields medalist Maryam Mirzakhani, whose monumental work draws deep connections between topology, geometry and dynamical systems.

Episode 92015-06-24

Subhash Khot: A Grand Vision for the Impossible

A video profile of the 2014 Nevanlinna Prize winner Subhash Khot, whose bold conjecture is helping mathematicians explore the precise limits of computation.

Episode 102015-07-02

Alan Guth: How Many Two-Headed Cows in a Multiverse?

In an infinitely branching multiverse, says MIT cosmologist Alan Guth, “there are an infinite number of one-headed cows and an infinite number of two-headed cows. What happens to the ratio?”

Episode 112015-07-09

Hiranya Peiris: How to Test If We Live in a Multiverse

University College London physicist Hiranya Peiris explains the seemingly impossible -- how the multiverse can be experimentally tested.

Episode 122022-07-20

How Did Life Begin on Earth?

In this 2-minute video, David Kaplan explores the leading theories for the origin of life on our planet.

Episode 132015-07-21

Fly-Vac: Groundhog Day for Fruit Flies

Benjamin de Bivort’s lab at Harvard University developed a device called the fly-vac to study individual behavior. Upon entering a chamber, the fly must choose to walk toward the light or dark end. A vacuum then sucks it back to the starting point, and it makes the choice again.

Episode 142015-07-22

Why Do Flies Walk This Way?

In a device in Benjamin de Bivort’s lab at Harvard University, a fly wanders through a tiny Y-shaped maze, choosing at the Y’s vertex whether to walk left or right. This array of Y-mazes allows researchers to track individual behavior in many flies simultaneously.

Episode 152015-08-17

How Symmetry Shapes Nature’s Laws

In this 2-minute video, David Kaplan explains how the search for hidden symmetries leads to discoveries like the Higgs boson.

Episode 162015-08-25

James Bullock: The Case for Complex Dark Matter

James Bullock, a physicist at the University of California, Irvine, explains why dark matter might be more complicated than astronomers have assumed.

Episode 172015-09-18

Nancy Moran: An Explorer of Life’s Deepest Partnerships

Nancy Moran, a biologist at the University of Texas at Austin, explains how colony collapse disorder led her to study the bacteria that live in the guts of bees.

Episode 182015-09-23