J. Doyne Farmer is Director of the Complexity Economics programme at the Institute for New Economic Thinking at the Oxford Martin School, Baillie Gifford Professor in the Mathematical Institute at the University of Oxford and an External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute. In this episode, Doyne discusses his journey from chaos theory to complexity economics. He shares his experience developing agent-based models for the economy and talks about the importance of multidisciplinary work and apply...
Apr 29, 2024•39 min•Ep. 41
Continuing from our last episode, we’re joined again by Brooke Harrington, Professor of Sociology at Dartmouth College and Herbert Chang, Assistant Professor of Quantitative Social Science at Dartmouth College. In this episode, Brooke and Herbert explore their research findings on the offshore financial system and discuss why policy interventions to date targeting wealth management have largely failed. They then explore how the findings of their research offer a way forward. Connect: Simplifying...
Apr 15, 2024•39 min•Ep. 40
In today’s episode, we’re joined by Brooke Harrington, Professor of Sociology at Dartmouth College and Herbert Chang, Assistant Professor of Quantitative Social Science at Dartmouth College, to discuss the world of offshore finance. You’ll hear about how using offshore finance is akin to eating at a restaurant and skipping out on the bill, and how Brooke trained to be a wealth manager to better understand how the industry works. Brooke and Herbert then discuss how they used the data from the Pan...
Apr 01, 2024•46 min•Ep. 39
What role do cities play in driving economic progress? In today’s episode, we’re joined by Luis Bettencourt, Professor at the University of Chicago and External Faculty at the Santa Fe Institute, who explains how cities allow us to do something magical - they allow us to specialise. Resources: Luis Bettencourt on Simplifying Complexity - Cities as social reactors Geoffrey West on Simplifying Complexity - Scaling 3: Why companies die, but cities don't Connect: Simplifying Complexity on Twitter Se...
Mar 18, 2024•30 min•Ep. 38
How does a group of molecules transition into something that is life? And what do even mean when we say 'life'? To explore the origin of life, we’re joined again by Sara Walker, Deputy Director of the Beyond Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science, Associate Professor in Earth and Space Exploration and Complex Adaptive Systems at Arizona State University, and External Faculty at the Santa Fe Institute. Connect: Simplifying Complexity on Twitter Sean Brady on Twitter Sean Brady on LinkedIn Bra...
Mar 04, 2024•38 min•Ep. 37
In today’s episode, we continue our conversation with Rory Sutherland, UK Vice Chairman of Ogilvy, where he discusses how our decision making, especially as consumers, while often appearing irrational, is actually the result of us deploying heuristics that have served us well in situations of low trust or when we don't have all the information. Connect: Simplifying Complexity on Twitter Sean Brady on Twitter Sean Brady on LinkedIn Brady Heywood website This show is produced in collaboration with...
Feb 19, 2024•35 min•Ep. 36
In today’s episode of Simplifying Complexity, we’re joined by Rory Sutherland. Rory is the UK Vice Chairman of the iconic advertising agency (and inspiration for the television series Madmen) Ogilvy, where he has worked for close to 40 years. In today’s conversation, you’ll hear how Rory became interested in complexity science, how bees build resilience, why short-term rationality can lead to long-term irrationality, and why efficiency is a bad proxy for effectiveness. Connect: Simplifying Compl...
Feb 05, 2024•45 min•Ep. 35
Today we're joined by Dmitri Tymoczko, Professor of Music at Princeton University. Dmitri will talk about the geometry and patterns we hear in music, as well as explore its history, particularly from the 1900s onwards. Resources: Spotify playlist of songs mentioned in this episode Connect: Simplifying Complexity on Twitter Sean Brady on Twitter Sean Brady on LinkedIn Brady Heywood website This show is produced in collaboration with Wavelength Creative. Visit wavelengthcreative.com for more infor...
Jan 22, 2024•48 min•Ep. 34
Experts often build models to help predict how systems will behave. But what happens if, instead of asking the experts to build models, we ask laypeople to simply predict outcomes? This is what happens in 'prediction markets'. And it turns out that in some situations, the 'wisdom of the crowd' often outperforms experts' models. To break down what prediction markets are and how they work, we're joined by Rajiv Sethi, Professor of Economics at Barnard College at Columbia University and External Pr...
Jan 08, 2024•35 min•Ep. 33
We’ve spoken previously on the show about the complexity of the power grid. Today we’re focusing on how it fails, in the form of blackouts, and we're joined again by Seth Blumsack. He'll discuss why blackouts are so difficult to understand, and whether or not it's possible to model them. Seth is a Professor of Energy Policy and Economics and International Affairs in the Department of Energy and Mineral Engineering at Pennsylvania State University, co-director of Penn State Center for Energy Law ...
Dec 25, 2023•28 min•Ep. 32
In our last episode, Neil Johnson explained how there was an underlying power law with a slope of 1.8 that described the number of casualties that occur in wars. Today’s episode digs deeper into where this power law comes from, the route that Neil's research took to explain it, and how the arrival of the internet finally provided the missing datasets required to understand the underlying structure of something seemingly as chaotic as war. Neil is Professor of Physics and Head of the Dynamic Onli...
Dec 11, 2023•45 min•Ep. 31
When we think of what caused a certain number of people to die in a specific war, we tend to think about a number of factors. for example, the terrain or political drivers. But what if the number of deaths that occur in a war is actually dictated by something far less obvious? Neil Johnson, Professor of Physics and Head of the Dynamic Online Networks Lab at George Washington University, has returned to explain how studying the casualties of war can give us a greater understanding of the causes o...
Nov 27, 2023•28 min•Ep. 30
Throughout the history of science, the concept of time has changed many times - from Newton and thermodynamic definitions to the weirdness of relativity and quantum mechanics. And as our understanding of life and the universe continues to grow, is it again time to reevaluate how we think about time? To explore this mind-bending idea, we’re joined again by Sara Walker, Deputy Director of the Beyond Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science, Associate Professor in Earth and Space Exploration and ...
Nov 13, 2023•36 min•Ep. 29
Hidden in plain sight over our heads, under our feet, and in the walls of our homes and workplaces, is the backbone of modern society: the power grid. To explain how something as seemingly straightforward as the power grid has become one of the greatest socio-technical systems on the planet, we’re joined by Seth Blumsack, Professor of Energy Policy and Economics and International Affairs in the Department of Energy and Mineral Engineering at Pennsylvania State University, co-director of Penn Sta...
Oct 30, 2023•39 min•Ep. 28
Economic policies are often gamed by individuals for personal benefit. In this episode, we explore how this gaming takes place and what economics can do about it. To do that, we're joined again by W. Brian Arthur, External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute, and Researcher at the Palo Alto Research Center, formerly Xerox PARC. Connect: Simplifying Complexity on Twitter Sean Brady on Twitter Sean Brady on LinkedIn Brady Heywood website This show is produced in collaboration with Wavelength Creat...
Oct 16, 2023•37 min•Ep. 27
In this series so far, we've applied complexity science to a whole range of systems, particularly those more obvious complex systems like economies or cities. In this episode, we're going to do something a little bit different and apply complexity science to something not so obvious: creativity. To do that, we're joined again by Tyler Marghetis, Assistant Professor of Cognitive and Information Sciences at the University of California, Merced. Tyler has been on the show before to explore tipping ...
Oct 02, 2023•23 min•Ep. 26
Today we're joined by Luis Bettencourt, Professor at the University of Chicago, and External Faculty at the Santa Fe Institute. Luis is going to pull apart how cities work, why they work the way they do, what's good about them, and what's bad about them. He's also going to talk specifically about slums, and the challenges that exist in raising people out of poverty. Resources and links: Simplifying Complexity - Scaling 1: Why do we live longer than mice? Simplifying Complexity - Scaling 2: You a...
Sep 18, 2023•41 min•Ep. 25
Today, we're going to return to the idea of taking concepts from complexity science and applying them to situations in the real world. In this episode, we're joined again by Melanie Moses, Professor of Computer Science at the University of New Mexico, and External Faculty at the Santa Fe Institute. She's going to share with us about her recent trip to Iceland to study active volcanoes. More specifically, Melanie is going to explain how you can program a swarm of drones to fly in formation and ma...
Sep 04, 2023•23 min•Ep. 24
Orit Peleg is an Associate Professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and External Faculty at the Santa Fe Institute. Orit has been on the show before, to discuss how bees work as a complex system. In this episode, we're staying within the animal kingdom, as Orit talks to us about fireflies. In this episode, Orit is going to explain how thousands of fireflies over very significant areas can synchronise their flashing in the night sky. She'll break down the work she has been doing to study...
Aug 21, 2023•26 min•Ep. 23
In our last episode, you heard all about economic mobility. In this episode (which is part 2 of our conversation), you're going to hear again from Matthew Jackson, William D. Eberle Professor of Economics at Stanford University, and External Faculty at the Santa Fe Institute. We finished the last episode by saying that if you want to increase a child's economic mobility, the factor that has the greatest impact is economic connectedness. In this episode, Matthew is going to talk about economic co...
Aug 07, 2023•22 min•Ep. 22
If you're a child born into a poor family in the United States, what are the most important factors in your life that will influence whether or not you're able to rise out of poverty? To answer that question, we're joined again by Matthew Jackson, William D. Eberle Professor of Economics at Stanford University, and External Faculty at the Santa Fe Institute. This is part one of a two-part series, and in this episode, Matthew is going to introduce us to a study he was involved in that looked at t...
Jul 24, 2023•18 min•Ep. 21
When a system fails, how do you think about cause and effect? One way to consider this in complex systems is to imagine a pile of sand, and dropping one grain of sand at a time in random positions onto the pile. As time passes, you'll start to form little hills. Eventually, a grain of sand will hit one of these hills, and you get an avalanche. Do you believe that the avalanche was caused by the last grain of sand falling onto it, or do you believe that the avalanche happened due to the shape of ...
Jul 10, 2023•27 min•Ep. 20
When most of us think about information, we think of it as something we can possess or ‘know’. But what if it’s so much more than that? In this episode, we’re joined by Sara Walker, Deputy Director of the Beyond Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science, Associate Professor in Earth and Space Exploration and Complex Adaptive Systems at Arizona State University, and External Faculty at the Santa Fe Institute. Sara is going to examine information and the critical role it plays in complex systems....
Jun 26, 2023•31 min•Ep. 19
Imagine you have a bar that comfortably seats 60 people, but every week, 100 people have to decide whether or not they're going to go to the bar on any given night. If too many people go, then the bar is too crowded, and everyone has a miserable night. But if not enough people go, then that's a missed opportunity to go out. This is the basis of the El Farol problem, which asks us to consider how people make this decision. It's a beautifully simple problem that not only makes you think but also h...
Jun 12, 2023•38 min•Ep. 18
In our last episode, we talked about the four conditions of complex systems: numerosity, disorder and diversity, feedback, and non-equilibrium — and we also talked about the concept of emergence. In this episode, which is part two of our two-part series on the features of complex systems, we're joined again by Karoline Wiesner, Professor of Complexity Science in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Potsdam in Germany. In this episode, Karoline explains the six emergent fe...
May 29, 2023•33 min•Ep. 17
In most of our episodes so far, we've taken a single concept and looked at it through the context of a single example. But in this episode and the next, we're going to pull back the camera to get a bird's-eye view of complexity science, by exploring the features common to all complex systems. We're joined again by Karoline Wiesner, Professor of Complexity Science in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Potsdam in Germany. In this episode, Karoline is going to explain four...
May 15, 2023•27 min•Ep. 16
In our last episode we talked all about intelligence, specifically about what made us intelligent. In this episode we jump into artificial intelligence, and we're joined again by David Krakauer, President and William H. Miller Professor of Complex Systems at the Santa Fe Institute. This episode was recorded before the release of GPT-4, so David doesn't mention it specifically, but he does take us through the history of artificial intelligence, from Alan Turing, all the way to machine learning an...
May 01, 2023•25 min•Ep. 15
With the recent release of GPT-4, now seemed like a good time for our episodes on intelligence. And not just artificial intelligence, but intelligence in general. To help us on this journey, we're joined again by David Krakauer, President and William H. Miller Professor of Complex Systems at the Santa Fe Institute. This episode is part one of our two-part conversation with David about intelligence. In part 2, David is going to cover artificial intelligence. But in this episode, we're going back ...
Apr 17, 2023•30 min•Ep. 14
If there's one type of music that goes particularly well with complexity science, it's free jazz. The sort of jazz that you get when you put a group of musicians together without a conductor or any written music. But despite this, they still produce incredible music. So how does this group of musicians play so tightly together, whilst creating such dramatic changes to their music? In this episode, we're joined again by Tyler Marghetis, Assistant Professor of Cognitive and Information Sciences at...
Apr 03, 2023•27 min•Ep. 13
Imagine you were going to Mars with a swarm of robots, and you needed to send those robots out foraging. How would you program them? A traditional top-down approach to programming would mean programming what every single robot is going to do, and that's going to get complicated fast. So in this episode, we're joined by Melanie Moses, Professor of Computer Science at the University of New Mexico, and External Faculty at the Santa Fe Institute. Melanie is going to explain how you can take lessons ...
Mar 20, 2023•27 min•Ep. 12
