Episode description
Highlights - Nicholas Christakis - Author of “Blueprint” - Dir. - Human Nature Lab, Yale
Episode description
“So cities are amazing. Now, why are they amazing? Well, there's one aspect that relates to some of the work that my lab does on human social interactions, which is the main focus of what my lab does. We look at the mathematical, biological, psychological, and social underpinnings and consequences of human social interactions...
As the size of the population grows, the combinatorial complexity, the network complexity rises superlinearly. So a city that's 10 times the size has a hundred times as many social possible social connections.
And it's the social connections between people that lead to the creation of new ideas, people mixing and bumping into each other with different occupations and different business ideas, and different ways of life. So one of the ideas about cities is that they are these creative places and, as they get bigger and bigger, they get more and more creative. That's just one thought that connects networks to cities in the 21st century”
Nicholas Christakis, MD, PhD, MPH, is a social scientist and physician who conducts research in the areas of biosocial science, network science and behavioral genetics. He directs the Human Nature Lab at Yale University and is the co-director of the Yale Institute for Network Science. Dr. Christakis has authored numerous books, including Blueprint: The Evolutionary Origins of a Good Society published in 2019 and Apollo's Arrow: The Profound and Enduring Impact of Coronavirus on the Way We Live published in 2020. In 2009, Christakis was named by TIME magazine to their annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world.
Nicholas Christakis humannaturelab.net/people/nicholas-christakis
Human Nature Lab: humannaturelab.net
Yale Institute for Network Science yins.yale.edu
sociology.yale.edu/people/nicholas-christakis
Blueprint: The Evolutionary Origins of a Good Society
Apollo's Arrow: The Profound and Enduring Impact of Coronavirus on the Way We Live
TRELLIS - Suite of software tools for developing, administering, and collecting survey and social network data: trellis.yale.edu.
The Atlantic: “How AI Will Rewire Us: For better and for worse, robots will alter humans’ capacity for altruism, love, and friendship”
www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/04/robots-human-relationships/583204/