The Stephen Wolfram Podcast - podcast cover

The Stephen Wolfram Podcast

Wolfram Research
Stephen Wolfram is the creator of Mathematica, Wolfram|Alpha and the Wolfram Language; the author of A New Kind of Science; and the founder and CEO of Wolfram Research. Over the course of nearly four decades, he has been a pioneer in the development and application of computational thinking—and has been responsible for many discoveries, inventions and innovations in science, technology and business. On his podcast, Stephen discusses topics ranging from the history of science to the future of civilization and ethics of AI.

Episodes

History of Science & Technology Q&A (June 4, 2025)

Stephen Wolfram answers questions from his viewers about the history of science and technology as part of an unscripted livestream series, also available on YouTube here: https://wolfr.am/youtube-sw-qa Topics: AI milestones and conceptual shifts - Encounters with physicists - Attributes and personalities of influential thinkers - Naming conventions in science and technology

Jun 10, 20251 hr 23 min

What If We Had Bigger Brains? Imagining Minds beyond Ours

Stephen reads a recent blog from https://writings.stephenwolfram.com and then answers questions live from his viewers. Read the blog along with Stephen https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2025/05/what-if-we-had-bigger-brains-imagining-minds-beyond-ours/ Watch the original livestream on YouTube: https://youtu.be/qUIj_t-YbIk...

May 28, 20251 hr 55 min

Stephen Wolfram on Observer Theory

Stephen reads a blog from https://writings.stephenwolfram.com and then answers questions live from his viewers. Read the blog along with Stephen: https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2023/12/observer-theory/ Watch the original livestream on YouTube: https://youtu.be/qm3Y6qxdOwM

May 28, 20251 hr 49 min

Future of Science and Technology Q&A (May 16, 2025)

Stephen Wolfram answers questions from his viewers about the future of science and technology as part of an unscripted livestream series, also available on YouTube here: https://wolfr.am/youtube-sw-qa Topics discussed: Copyright and creative ownership in an AI world - AI built into personal systems - Data scraping, consent and privacy tradeoffs - AI roles in the real world - AI and the future of teaching and learning - First encounters with computers

May 21, 20251 hr 12 min

Science & Technology Q&A for Kids (and others) [May 9, 2025]

Stephen Wolfram answers general questions from his viewers about science and technology as part of an unscripted livestream series, also available on YouTube here: https://wolfr.am/youtube-sw-qa Topics: Conscious experience and perception - Brain structure and sensory extension - Brain manipulation and individuality - Consciousness and artificial systems - Computational theory and the brain

May 20, 20251 hr 9 min

Business, Innovation and Managing Life (May 14, 2025)

Stephen Wolfram answers questions from his viewers about business, innovation, and managing life as part of an unscripted livestream series, also available on YouTube here: https://wolfr.am/youtube-sw-business-qa Topics discussed: Building companies that do real science - New frontiers in science, complex systems and generative art - Risks of algorithmic trading and LLMs in finance - Balancing science and profits - Blockchain ideas that aren't just buzzwords

May 20, 20251 hr 29 min

History of Science & Technology Q&A (May 7, 2025)

Stephen Wolfram answers questions from his viewers about the history of science and technology as part of an unscripted livestream series, also available on YouTube here: https://wolfr.am/youtube-sw-qa Topics: Studying the history of science - Contradictions and accuracy in historical research - History of memory research - Planck's constant

May 09, 20251 hr 21 min

Future of Science and Technology Q&A (May 2, 2025)

Stephen Wolfram answers questions from his viewers about the future of science and technology as part of an unscripted livestream series, also available on YouTube here: https://wolfr.am/youtube-sw-qa Topics discussed: Fusion energy and nuclear fuel design - AI reasoning, learning and scientific roles - Mathematics, computation and physical reality - Jobs and fields at risk from AI - Philosophy of knowledge and future roles

May 09, 20251 hr 10 min

Business, Innovation and Managing Life (April 30, 2025)

Stephen Wolfram answers questions from his viewers about business, innovation, and managing life as part of an unscripted livestream series, also available on YouTube here: https://wolfr.am/youtube-sw-business-qa Topics discussed: Starting and funding a biotech company - Thinking clearly and building ideas from scratch - Getting better at asking questions - Is college still worth it? - The future of remote workspaces - Words, language and how we talk.

May 09, 20251 hr 13 min

History of Science & Technology Q&A (April 23, 2025)

Stephen Wolfram answers questions from his viewers about the history of science and technology as part of an unscripted livestream series, also available on YouTube here: https://wolfr.am/youtube-sw-qa Questions include: Do you know anything about the history of vaccines? When was the first vaccine developed and for what? - Isn't some important part of how vaccines were discovered completely lost to history? - When was the crucial importance of epigenetics discovered or realized? - What have bee...

May 09, 20251 hr 24 min

Science & Technology Q&A for Kids (and others) [April 18, 2025]

Stephen Wolfram answers general questions from his viewers about science and technology as part of an unscripted livestream series, also available on YouTube here: https://wolfr.am/youtube-sw-qa Questions include: Books have been relatively unchanged—would you say that's a "technology" that has been mastered? - My son asks: Given there's a max amount of information you can store in a given region of space, how can we simulate complex systems (like brains or universes) without exceeding physical ...

May 09, 20251 hr 22 min

Future of Science and Technology Q&A (April 11, 2025)

Stephen Wolfram answers questions from his viewers about the future of science and technology as part of an unscripted livestream series, also available on YouTube here: https://wolfr.am/youtube-sw-qa Questions include: What is your view on photonic computing? - The Platonic solids have fascinated humans like us for years. Do you think the exploration of the four-dimensional hyper-Platonic solids may be useful? - Do you think there'll be, in the short-to-mid-term future, an AI architecture that ...

May 09, 20251 hr 13 min

Business, Innovation and Managing Life (April 9, 2025)

Stephen Wolfram answers questions from his viewers about business, innovation, and managing life as part of an unscripted livestream series, also available on YouTube here: https://wolfr.am/youtube-sw-business-qa Questions include: Did you see the recent news about the dire wolves coming back from extinction? Is there a genuine business for bringing back extinct animals? - There are also scientists making hybrids by injecting extinct animal DNA into modern animals. Recently they made woolly mice...

Apr 29, 20251 hr 23 min

Science & Technology Q&A for Kids (and others) [April 4, 2025]

Stephen Wolfram answers general questions from his viewers about science and technology as part of an unscripted livestream series, also available on YouTube here: https://wolfr.am/youtube-sw-qa Questions include: How would you, Stephen Wolfram, think about replacing textbooks in education? What are some better tools for the classroom? - Can you teach us how to be scientists? What's the first step? - Intellectual curiosity is required to be a good scientist. And moral character, to stand by what...

Apr 29, 20251 hr 20 min

History of Science & Technology Q&A (April 2, 2025)

Stephen Wolfram answers questions from his viewers about the history of science and technology as part of an unscripted livestream series, also available on YouTube here: https://wolfr.am/youtube-sw-qa Questions include: Is there much history on scientists (well known or not) starting companies? - If Leibniz was around today, where do you think he would be working, what would he be doing if he was not in academia? - Any interesting suggestions for history to research? - What's the history of wal...

Apr 29, 202539 min

Future of Science and Technology Q&A (March 28, 2025)

Stephen Wolfram answers questions from his viewers about the future of science and technology as part of an unscripted livestream series, also available on YouTube here: https://wolfr.am/youtube-sw-qa Questions include: What roles do category and type theory play in our understanding and the future of mathematics? - ​​What would be an example of a hierarchy of types in theoretical physics? - Would you ever take a trip on Blue Origin or Space X ? Do you see more for the future of space travel hap...

Apr 29, 20251 hr 27 min

Future of Science and Technology Q&A (March 14, 2025)

Stephen Wolfram answers questions from his viewers about the future of science and technology as part of an unscripted livestream series, also available on YouTube here: https://wolfr.am/youtube-sw-qa Questions include: What, exactly, is an "AI agent"? "Agentic"? It seems like nobody knows what those words actually mean today. - Can you tell us about the future of media/information consumption? Will we become a society of "AI summaries" as our main form of information gathering? - Before AI summ...

Mar 19, 20251 hr 24 min

Business, Innovation and Managing Life (March 12, 2025)

Stephen Wolfram answers questions from his viewers about business, innovation, and managing life as part of an unscripted livestream series, also available on YouTube here: https://wolfr.am/youtube-sw-business-qa Questions include: Is academia the only real career path if one just wants to learn and do research? - What are the risks for using AI/LLMs to do my technical writing job so I can focus on prompt engineering for the future of my field? - You've at the very least been told all sorts of i...

Mar 18, 20251 hr 27 min

Science & Technology Q&A for Kids (and others) [March 7, 2025]

Stephen Wolfram answers general questions from his viewers about science and technology as part of an unscripted livestream series, also available on YouTube here: https://wolfr.am/youtube-sw-qa Questions include: ​​Can you talk about lambda calculus? - Any thoughts on numerology? - My current favorite approximation to a constant (e, in this case) is (1 + 9^-4^(7*6))^3^2^85, which uses each of the digits 1–9 only once and is accurate to 18 septillion digits. - Atmospheric noise is about as rando...

Mar 12, 20251 hr 22 min

History of Science & Technology Q&A (March 5, 2025)

Stephen Wolfram answers questions from his viewers about the history of science and technology as part of an unscripted livestream series, also available on YouTube here: https://wolfr.am/youtube-sw-qa Questions include: What is the history of game theory? What are some successful and less successful applications of this theory? Can you speak about John Nash's work? Did that have any influence on your automata work? - ​​I wonder if that code by Nash exists anywhere? It would be interesting to re...

Mar 11, 20251 hr 25 min

Business, Innovation and Managing Life (February 26, 2025)

Stephen Wolfram answers questions from his viewers about business, innovation, and managing life as part of an unscripted livestream series, also available on YouTube here: https://wolfr.am/youtube-sw-business-qa Questions include: Physicists that "could code" used to be the hot commodity; is it helpful now? Seems like CS/ML people are more in demand than physicists now—why? - ​​I find that building simple frameworks in software GREATLY helps understanding of the underlying material. Mathematics...

Mar 04, 202559 min

History of Science & Technology Q&A (February 19, 2025)

Stephen Wolfram answers questions from his viewers about the history of science and technology as part of an unscripted livestream series, also available on YouTube here: https://wolfr.am/youtube-sw-qa Questions include: - Can you talk about the history of pi? - "Pi day of the century." - Is pi still being researched today? Or is it a solidified concept? - Was there always a connection between "pi" and "pie"? - Can pi be used for data compression? - Is the only reason pi shows up more than tau b...

Feb 25, 20251 hr 25 min

Future of Science and Technology Q&A (February 14, 2025)

Stephen Wolfram answers questions from his viewers about the future of science and technology as part of an unscripted livestream series, also available on YouTube here: https://wolfr.am/youtube-sw-qa Questions include: In the spirit of Valentine's Day, what is the future of bionic hearts? Would this be a way to make humans more efficient? - How would you think about a world in which all of the work is done by robots and AI? - Architects using computerized/AI tools will result in less demand for...

Feb 20, 20251 hr 8 min

Business, Innovation and Managing Life (February 12, 2025)

Stephen Wolfram answers questions from his viewers about business, innovation, and managing life as part of an unscripted livestream series, also available on YouTube here: https://wolfr.am/youtube-sw-business-qa Questions include: What are the qualifications to be considered an "expert" in a specific field of science? - What do you think was the hardest problem that you've solved? - Does fractional calculus have any meaningful application? Should I just abandon it after PhD? - What are the impl...

Feb 18, 20251 hr 17 min

History of Science & Technology Q&A (February 5, 2025)

Stephen Wolfram answers questions from his viewers about the history of science and technology as part of an unscripted livestream series, also available on YouTube here: https://wolfr.am/youtube-sw-qa Questions include: When was complexity science invented? Was there a further back history than digital? - They always forget Aristarchus. - What role did category and type theory play for mathematics? - How would you think about approaching alchemical literature, knowing that it mostly employed co...

Feb 11, 20251 hr 30 min

Future of Science and Technology Q&A (January 31, 2025)

Stephen Wolfram answers questions from his viewers about the future of science and technology as part of an unscripted livestream series, also available on YouTube here: https://wolfr.am/youtube-sw-qa Questions include: Do you imagine humanity exploring "inner space" (i.e. virtual worlds ) more than "outer space"? - Could the spin of electrons lead to a communications system? - How would we evolve to live in space? Would we even evolve, without going into space? - Why is it you always wear the s...

Feb 06, 20251 hr 17 min

Business, Innovation and Managing Life (January 29, 2025)

Stephen Wolfram answers general questions from his viewers about science and technology as part of an unscripted livestream series, also available on YouTube here: https://wolfr.am/youtube-sw-qa Questions include: ​​How do we know how far stars, galaxies, etc. are in space? - Can you tell about the science of gem cutting, brilliance, internal refraction, etc.? - ​​Does that mean that objects with higher refractive indexes heat up more? - Are there any materials that slow light down enough so tha...

Feb 05, 20251 hr 24 min

Science & Technology Q&A for Kids (and others) [January 24, 2025]

Stephen Wolfram answers general questions from his viewers about science and technology as part of an unscripted livestream series, also available on YouTube here: https://wolfr.am/youtube-sw-qa Questions include: ​​How do we know how far stars, galaxies, etc. are in space? - Can you tell about the science of gem cutting, brilliance, internal refraction, etc.? - ​​Does that mean that objects with higher refractive indexes heat up more? - Are there any materials that slow light down enough so tha...

Feb 04, 20251 hr 29 min

History of Science & Technology Q&A (January 22, 2025)

Stephen Wolfram answers questions from his viewers about the history of science and technology as part of an unscripted livestream series, also available on YouTube here: https://wolfr.am/youtube-sw-qa Questions include: How would Stephen Wolfram think about "the new world"? Would you have been surprised by the "discovery" of North and South America, or is that something that would have been supported by science? - How would you think about "Are we alone in the universe?" How has this been addre...

Jan 29, 20251 hr 24 min

Future of Science and Technology Q&A (January 17, 2025)

Stephen Wolfram answers questions from his viewers about the future of science and technology as part of an unscripted livestream series, also available on YouTube here: https://wolfr.am/youtube-sw-qa Questions include: How would you think about approaching science in the future? Should we accept AI's role in future science or still pursue science without the help of AI? - What do you think the future of software development will be in the next decade or so? I hear very conflicting POVs from fri...

Jan 23, 20251 hr 18 min
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