Physics of Life, Ep 1: What can physics tell us about ourselves?

Guests: 

• Vijay Balasubramanian, External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute, Cathy and Marc Lasry Professor of Physics at the University of Pennsylvania
• Geoffrey West, Shannan Distinguished Professor and Past President, Santa Fe Institute

Hosts: Abha Eli Phoboo & Chris Kempes

Producer: Katherine Moncure

Podcast theme music: Mitch Mignano

Other Music: Blue Dot Sessions, Pink House Music, Eardeer, and Craig Smith.

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SFI programs: 

• Complexity Global School 
• Complexity Explorer: Fractals & Scaling
• Education

Books & Stories: 

• Tell Me Why by Arkady Leokum
• Scale by Geoffrey West
• “Funes, the Memorious” by Jorge Luis Borges

Talks: 

• How the Brain Makes You: Collective Intelligence and Computation by Neural Circuits by Vijay Balasubramanian
• The Future of the Planet: Life, Growth and Death in Organisms, Cities and Companies by Geoffrey West
• Energy, Scaling & The Future of Life on Earth by Geoffrey West
• Complex Time Working Group: “What is Sleep?” with Geoffrey West, Van Savage, Alex Herman

Papers: 

• “Brain Power” in PNAS (August 2, 2021) doi.org/10.1073/pnas.210702211
• “The Physical Effects of Learning” preprint published in biorxiv
• “Unraveling why we sleep: Quantitative analysis reveals abrupt transition from neural reorganization to repair in early development” in Science Advances (September 18, 2020) DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aba0398
• “The Scales That Limit: The Physical Boundaries of Evolution” in Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution (August 7, 2019) doi.org/10.3389/fevo.2019.00242