Babbage from The Economist

The Economist
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Babbage from The Economist

Babbage is our weekly podcast on science and technology, named after Charles Babbage—a 19th-century polymath and grandfather of computing. Host Alok Jha talks to our correspondents about the innovations, discoveries and gadgetry shaping the world. Published every Wednesday. If you’re already a subscriber to The Economist, you’ll have full access to all our shows as part of your subscription. For more information about Economist Podcasts+, including how to get access, please visit our FAQs page here https://myaccount.economist.com/s/article/What-is-Economist-Podcasts

  1. 6D AGO • SUBSCRIBERS ONLY

    Well informed: which foods should you avoid?

    The internet is awash with clever fitness hacks, fad diets and home remedies that claim to help you live a longer, healthier and happier life. But how well do these promises hold up to scientific scrutiny? And what about the vices you’re told to avoid? This week, our correspondents consider the evidence on three types of food that have been linked to health concerns: butter, ultra-processed foods and red meat. How bad for you are they, really? This episode is part of our new “Well informed” series on Babbage. Every few months we’ll scrutinise the evidence behind some of the health or wellness trends making headlines. Host: Alok Jha, The Economist’s science and technology editor. Contributors: The Economist’s Ainslie Johnstone, Shailesh Chitnis and Slavea Chankova. Subscribers to The Economist can find “Well informed” articles on our website or app every Saturday. Transcripts of our podcasts are available via economist.com/podcasts. Listen to what matters most, from global politics and business to science and technology—subscribe to Economist Podcasts+. For more information about how to access Economist Podcasts+, please visit our FAQs page or watch our video explaining how to link your account.

    38 min

  2. APR 8 • SUBSCRIBERS ONLY

    Power play: will AI help or harm the climate?

    The race to build better AI systems is having an ever-bigger impact on the environment. Data centres, which store and process the information required to train and operate AI models, currently account for around 2% of global electricity consumption. That figure will rise, as new facilities are built to accommodate ever more energy-hungry machine learning. But AI could also help reduce emissions, for example, by optimising electricity grids, detecting methane leaks or developing better battery materials. So, will AI be bad for the environment…or will it turn out to be good? Host: Alok Jha, The Economist’s science and technology editor, with AI writer Alex Hern. Contributors: Sasha Luccioni of Hugging Face; Boris Gamazaychikov of Salesforce; and Ronnie Chatterji of OpenAI. Transcripts of our podcasts are available via economist.com/podcasts. Listen to what matters most, from global politics and business to science and technology—subscribe to Economist Podcasts+. For more information about how to access Economist Podcasts+, please visit our FAQs page or watch our video explaining how to link your account.

    39 min

  3. APR 1 • SUBSCRIBERS ONLY

    Rocket man: Elon Musk’s plan to put people on Mars

    President Donald Trump has announced that he wants to send Americans to plant the Stars and Stripes on Mars. The only rocket which currently stands any chance of making that happen is the enormous spacecraft being developed by Elon Musk, one of the president’s new advisors. Mr Musk has pledged to send uncrewed missions to Mars by the end of 2026, ahead of the first astronauts in early 2029—just before President Trump is supposed to leave office. But many challenges remain. Will his company, SpaceX, be able to make its Starship rocket work in time? Host: Alok Jha, The Economist’s science and technology editor, with senior editor Oliver Morton. Contributors: Peter Hague, an astrophysicist who writes the “Planetocracy” blog; Volker Maiwald an engineer at the German Aerospace Centre. For more on this topic, check out an episode from last year which examined Starship’s role in the US-China Moon race. Also, as an Economist subscriber, listen to our recent episode of “Checks and Balance” which asks whether Elon Musk is remaking America’s government or breaking it. Transcripts of our podcasts are available via economist.com/podcasts. Listen to what matters most, from global politics and business to science and technology—subscribe to Economist Podcasts+. For more information about how to access Economist Podcasts+, please visit our FAQs page or watch our video explaining how to link your account.

    40 min

  4. MAR 26 • SUBSCRIBERS ONLY

    Humanity 2.0: the rise of the superhuman

    From drugs to gene editing and brain implants, modern biotechnology has the potential to make humans stronger, more intelligent and perhaps even live longer. These ideas have largely existed at the fringes of scientific research, however, championed by eccentric billionaires whose aims include evading death. But investment and interest in human enhancement is growing—and some of those billionaires have now reached the heart of political power in America. How can human enhancement research be brought into the mainstream, so that it could one day benefit everyone? Host: Alok Jha, The Economist’s science and technology editor, with health editor Natasha Loder. Contributors: Aron D'Souza of the Enhanced Games; Charles Brenner of City of Hope National Medical Center; Arthur Caplan of New York University Grossman School of Medicine; and Bryan Johnson, a tech entrepreneur and self-declared “rejuvenation athlete”. If you enjoyed this, listen to The Weekend Intelligence’s episode on human growth hormone. How far would you go in the pursuit of perfection? Transcripts of our podcasts are available via economist.com/podcasts. Listen to what matters most, from global politics and business to science and technology—subscribe to Economist Podcasts+. For more information about how to access Economist Podcasts+, please visit our FAQs page or watch our video explaining how to link your account.

    45 min

  5. MAR 19 • SUBSCRIBERS ONLY

    Going viral: could infections cause Alzheimer’s?

    Alzheimer’s disease affects more than 30 million people around the world and there is no cure. For decades, research on the neurological condition has been focused on proteins known as amyloid and tau, which build up in the brains of people and prevent neurons from functioning properly. But treatments that focus on flushing those proteins out of the brain have so far proved underwhelming. A growing number of scientists, however, have a radical alternative theory. What if a virus is to blame? What if infections are the triggers that cause the build-up of amyloid and tau in the first place? Host: Alok Jha, The Economist’s science and technology editor, with data and science correspondent Ainslie Johnstone. Contributors: Ruth Itzhaki of the University of Oxford; Pascal Geldsetzer of Stanford University; and John Hardy of University College London. Transcripts of our podcasts are available via economist.com/podcasts. Listen to what matters most, from global politics and business to science and technology—subscribe to Economist Podcasts+. For more information about how to access Economist Podcasts+, please visit our FAQs page or watch our video explaining how to link your account.

    41 min

  6. MAR 12 • SUBSCRIBERS ONLY

    Geoffrey Hinton: AI is more human than you think

    Geoffrey Hinton is one of the “godfathers” of artificial intelligence, critical in the development of deep learning, backpropagation and much more. In 2024 he was awarded the Nobel prize in physics in recognition of his immense contributions to the field of computer science. Not bad for someone who started his career with the aim of understanding the human brain. Despite his role in its creation, though, Professor Hinton has been surprised by the rapid development of the technology. He’s now convinced that artificial neural networks can think, reason and understand the world in a way that could eventually be superior to our own brains. Professor Hinton joins Alok Jha, The Economist’s science and technology editor, to discuss why he thinks artificial intelligence is much more human than it seems. For more on this topic, check out our series on the science that built the AI revolution. We’d also recommend the most recent episode of The Weekend Intelligence, which investigated the role of the human data-labellers who made deep learning possible. Transcripts of our podcasts are available via economist.com/podcasts. Listen to what matters most, from global politics and business to science and technology—subscribe to Economist Podcasts+. For more information about how to access Economist Podcasts+, please visit our FAQs page or watch our video explaining how to link your account.

    38 min

  7. MAR 5 • SUBSCRIBERS ONLY

    The Large(r) Hadron Collider: what’s next for the world’s biggest experiment?

    In 2012 scientists at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN in Geneva found the Higgs boson. Things have been quiet since then on the “epic discovery” front—but that doesn’t mean the thousands of physicists working there have been idle. The collider is undergoing a years-long upgrade to make it even more powerful, so that it can probe even deeper into the fabric of our reality. When the LHC is eventually reborn as the “High-Luminosity LHC” by the end of the decade, it will begin a new chapter of discovery. We speak to the incoming boss of CERN to find out if the machine will finally lift the veil on the “new physics” that scientists have been searching for for decades. Alok Jha, The Economist’s science and technology editor, travels to the LHC at CERN in Geneva, where he meets the next director-general Mark Thomson, plus many of the scientists and engineers who are working on the LHC’s big upgrade. Transcripts of our podcasts are available via economist.com/podcasts. Listen to what matters most, from global politics and business to science and technology—subscribe to Economist Podcasts+. For more information about how to access Economist Podcasts+, please visit our FAQs page or watch our video explaining how to link your account.

    36 min

  8. FEB 26 • SUBSCRIBERS ONLY

    Designing babies: is there any future for gene-edited embryos?

    The world was shocked in 2018 when He Jiankui, a Chinese biophysicist, announced that he had helped to produce two girls whose genetic code he had edited when they had been embryos. His aim had been to tweak a gene that sometimes confers protection against HIV infections. No one had ever used the CRISPR gene-editing tool in reproduction before and it was completely untested in embryos. Scientists around the world condemned the work as wildly premature and possibly dangerous—the Chinese authorities agreed and Dr He was imprisoned for three years. Now, more than six years later, Dr He is back. And he still wants to prevent medical conditions by editing human embryos. But will the world ever be ready for this use of gene editing? Or will newer methods of editing human genes prove more promising? Host: Alok Jha, The Economist’s science and technology editor. Contributors: Emilie Steinmark, science correspondent at The Economist; Chinese researcher He Jiankui; Henry (Hank) Greely of the Stanford Centre for Biomedical Ethics; Panicos Shangaris of King's College Hospital. Transcripts of our podcasts are available via economist.com/podcasts. Listen to what matters most, from global politics and business to science and technology—subscribe to Economist Podcasts+. For more information about how to access Economist Podcasts+, please visit our FAQs page or watch our video explaining how to link your account.

    43 min
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About

Babbage is our weekly podcast on science and technology, named after Charles Babbage—a 19th-century polymath and grandfather of computing. Host Alok Jha talks to our correspondents about the innovations, discoveries and gadgetry shaping the world. Published every Wednesday. If you’re already a subscriber to The Economist, you’ll have full access to all our shows as part of your subscription. For more information about Economist Podcasts+, including how to get access, please visit our FAQs page here https://myaccount.economist.com/s/article/What-is-Economist-Podcasts

Information

  • Channel
    The Economist
  • Creator
    The Economist
  • Years Active
    2012 - 2025
  • Episodes
    530
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    Copyright © The Economist Newspaper Limited 2023. All rights reserved.
  • Show Website
    Babbage from The Economist
  • Provider
    The Economist Newspaper Limited

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