Playing God: Editing the Building Blocks of Life • 2022

52:06

A dirty laboratory and a vacation lead to the discovery of our first real weapon against bacteria: penicillin. A scientist's determination to test the ‘wrong' solution gives us Kevlar. Unwashed hands and some unexpectedly sweet bread is to thank for Saccharin. A failed laser becomes the LED light.

S1E3 • Oops, I Changed the World • 2022 • Technology

48:00

Should a machine know right from wrong? Enlai explores how law, ethics, and spirituality shapes artificial intelligence.

S1E3 • Becoming Human • 2020 • Technology

51:59

The buzzword in the space industry now is tourism. Private companies have moved into space research, with the philosophy that the best way to extend man's reach into space is to promote it as a tourist destination.

13/13 • The Amazing World Of Aviation • 2009 • Technology

58:20

Eric Drexler, the "founding father of nanotechnology," and Jim Phillips, the CEO of Nanomech, discuss the potential applications and implications of nanotechnology. How will this atomically precise manufacturing impact the future of technology, global governance, and the environment?

4/10 • Curiosity Retreats: 2014 Lectures • 2014 • Technology

56:09

This is a report of a software project that created the conditions for evolution in an attempt to learn something about how evolution works in nature. This is for the programmer looking for ideas for interdisciplinary programming projects, or for anyone interested in how evolution and natural selection work.

2021 • Technology

58:59

The car has shrunk the world, increased personal freedom and in so many ways expanded our horizons, but there is a flipside. Fumes from car exhausts have helped to destroy our environment, poisoned the air we breathe and killed us in far more straightforward ways. But all that is going to change. Horizon enters a world where cars can drive themselves, a world where we are simply passengers, ferried about by wholesome green compassionate technology which will never ever go wrong. And it is almost here. Horizon explores the artificial intelligence required to replace human drivers for cars themselves, peers into the future driverless world and discovers that, despite the glossy driverless PR (and assuming that they really can be made to work reliably), the reality is that it might not be all good news. From the ethics of driverless car crashes to the impact on jobs, it might be that cars are about to rise up against us in ways that none of us are expecting.

Horizon • 2017 • Technology