Babbage from The Economist

By The Economist

News & Politics Tech News

What's Babbage from The Economist 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. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Babbage: How to save cities...

06.07.2023

Many of the world’s most important urban areas are on coastlines or rivers, putting them at risk of rising sea levels. Rapid urbanisation and climate change are conspiring to make this threat more urgent. How can cities adapt to avoid ...

Babbage from The Economist episodes:

06.07.2023 Babbage: How to save cities from sinking Many of the world’s most important urban areas are on coastlines or rivers, putting them at risk of rising sea levels. Rapid urbanisation and climate change are conspiring to make this threat more urgent. How can cities adapt to avoid ...
05.31.2023 Babbage: What if generative AI destroys biometric security? Recent years have seen a boom in biometric security systems—identification measures based on a person’s individual biology—from unlocking smartphones, to automating border controls. As this technology becomes more prevalent, some cybersecurity researchers are worried about how secure biometric data is—and ...
05.24.2023 Babbage: Change clinical trials and save lives Clinical trials are the gold standard for testing the safety and efficacy of a treatment or drug, and a keystone in modern medicine. But their grinding timelines and skyrocketing price tags are hindering development and, ultimately, costing lives. Natasha Loder, ...
05.17.2023 Babbage: How to battle superbugs with viruses Antimicrobial resistance killed over a million people in 2019. That figure is expected to rise to ten million by 2050. Antibiotics remain vital to modern medicine, but this hidden pandemic of drug-resistant superbugs is driving scientists to explore possible alternatives. ...
05.10.2023 Babbage: How drones are transforming warfare in Ukraine The use of drones in the war in Ukraine has been increasing. Unmanned vehicles capture battlefield images, relay co-ordinates, and strike targets in Ukraine and even Russia. Whether purpose-built military devices or off-the-shelf civilian technology, the drones are having an ...
05.03.2023 Babbage: The urgency to green the electric grid The vast majority of the energy used on Earth comes from fossil fuels. But as governments enact climate-friendly policies, electric grids need to be decarbonised, by using renewable-energy sources. And much more electricity needs to be generated too—to power transport, ...
04.26.2023 Babbage: How worrying is generative AI? Since the launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT almost six months ago, little else has occupied the minds of technologists. Generative artificial intelligence—capable of producing media like text, images and audio in response to prompts—seems to be improving every day, with many ...
04.19.2023 Babbage: The unfinished genomics revolution Twenty years ago, the Human Genome Project was completed. It unveiled a mostly complete sequence of the 3 billion pairs of building blocks that make up the code within every set of human chromosomes. These are the instructions that create ...
04.12.2023 Babbage: Hunting for life elsewhere—part two, JUICE This week, the European Space Agency is expected to launch a spacecraft towards Jupiter and three of its icy moons—Ganymede, Europa and Callisto. The JUICE mission will carry ten instruments to the outer solar system and will hunt for water, ...
04.05.2023 Babbage: Hunting for life elsewhere—part one, Didier Queloz As they stare up into the night sky, astronomers have long wondered whether life exists elsewhere in the universe. For decades, the hunt for extraterrestrial life has focused on Mars, Venus and even on the various moons of our solar ...
03.29.2023 Babbage: The race for nuclear fusion goes private Imagine a power source that produces hardly any waste and is carbon-free. That’s the tantalising promise of controlled nuclear fusion, which physicists have been trying to achieve for 70 years. It is a simulacrum of the process that powers the ...
03.22.2023 Babbage: Is GPT-4 the dawn of true artificial intelligence? OpenAI's ChatGPT, an advanced chatbot, has taken the world by storm, amassing over 100 million monthly active users and exhibiting unprecedented capabilities. From crafting essays and fiction to designing websites and writing code, you’d be forgiven for thinking there’s little ...
03.15.2023 Babbage: How to tackle the obesity epidemic A new class of drugs for weight loss have become available and are showing promising results. That’s welcome news, as a recent report estimates that half of the world’s population is expected to be overweight or obese by 2035. Obesity ...
03.08.2023 Babbage: The hopes and fears of human genome editing The Third International Summit on Human Genome Editing was held this week in London. It was the first such meeting since 2018, when a Chinese researcher announced that he had created the world’s first genetically edited babies—a move that was ...
03.01.2023 Babbage: The scandal of scientific fraud There is a worrying amount of fraud in medical research. As many as one in 50 research papers may be unreliable because of fabrication, plagiarism or serious errors. Fabricated data can influence the guidelines which doctors use to treat patients. ...
02.22.2023 Babbage: The fight to link contact sports to long-term brain injuries Over the past few years, hundreds of rugby players have launched class-action lawsuits against the sport’s governing bodies, accusing them of failing to do enough to protect players from head injuries. They say that repeated blows to the head, sustained ...
02.15.2023 Babbage: Will bird flu cause the next human pandemic? Over the past 18 months, the largest-ever recorded avian influenza outbreak has decimated bird populations around the world. But recently bird flu has spread to mammals. Last week, Peru reported the deaths of 585 sea lions. If the virus has ...
02.08.2023 Babbage: An interview with a humanoid robot Engineers have spent decades trying to create functional humanoid robots, which look and act like humans. But these machines, which combine complex mechanics with generative artificial intelligence models, like ChatGPT, are finally coming-of-age. Are they good enough to sustain a ...
02.01.2023 Babbage: Alternatives to alcohol Alcohol is the most widely used drug in the world, but it is also the cause of three million deaths each year and has been linked to many other long-term illnesses. In addition, the loss of productivity due to hangovers ...
01.25.2023 Babbage: The private Moon race Three firms are racing to become the first private company to land on the Moon. The potential commercial opportunities range from mining lunar resources to establishing a human base with communications infrastructure. But the commercialisation of the Moon raises tricky ...
01.18.2023 Babbage: How to detect a deepfake Digital fakery, from the latest generation of deepfakes to lower-tech trickery, threatens to erode trust in societies and can prevent justice from being served. But how can technology be used to both detect deepfakes and authenticate real images? Patrick Traynor, ...
01.11.2023 Babbage: How Elon Musk’s satellites could change warfare forever SpaceX’s Starlink was designed to provide off-grid high-bandwidth internet access to civilians. But the mega-constellation of satellites has become more famous for its role in Ukraine. In 2022, it became vital to the country’s war effort, revealing the military potential ...
01.04.2023 Babbage: BioNTech's founder on the future of mRNA technology Since covid-19 emerged three years ago, mRNA vaccines have taken the world by storm. How will they keep up with new variants of the coronavirus, and where does the mRNA revolution go from here? Natasha Loder, The Economist’s health policy ...
12.27.2022 Babbage: The tech behind ChatGPT—an episode from our archive ChatGPT is just one example of a new type of artificial intelligence, which could become the next major general-purpose technology. This week, we revisit one of our favourite episodes of 2022, which explains why "foundational AI" promises to be so ...
12.20.2022 Babbage: Untangling quantum mechanics with Nobel laureate Anton Zeilinger In 2022, the Nobel prize for physics was awarded to a trio of scientists for their work on the fundamentals of quantum mechanics. This week, host Alok Jha asks one of the laureates, Anton Zeilinger, how he proved Einstein wrong ...
12.13.2022 Babbage: What causes long covid? Soon after the pandemic began, another health crisis started to emerge. Long covid now affects millions of people around the world. But finding the causes of the condition—and how to treat it—has been a challenge. Three years after the SARS-CoV-2 ...
12.06.2022 Babbage: The surprising ineffectiveness of Russia’s cyber-war When Russia invaded Ukraine, for the first time ever, two mature cyber-powers began to fight over computer networks in wartime. But while Russia’s cyber-war may have been intense, its impact has been modest. Has the country’s cyber prowess been overrated? ...
11.29.2022 Babbage: How to cure type-1 diabetes A new drug for type-1 diabetes has been licensed in America. Teplizumab is the first treatment for the condition since insulin began being used a century ago. It targets one of the root causes of this type of diabetes and ...
11.22.2022 Babbage at COP27: Part four—“Africa’s COP” concludes COP27 was an arduous summit, with mixed results. A landmark agreement to create a new “loss and damage” fund was a historic achievement. But many delegates were disappointed by the lack of progress on decarbonising energy systems. In the final ...
11.15.2022 Babbage at COP27: Part three—the energy crisis COP27 takes place amid war in Ukraine and an energy crisis. In the third episode of our series covering the summit, we explore how energy-security concerns are affecting efforts to decarbonise. Niklas Höhne of the NewClimate Institute says the energy ...
11.08.2022 Babbage at COP27: Part two—adapting to a changing climate COP27 has kicked off in Egypt, and adaptation is high on the agenda. In the second episode of our series covering the conference, we explore how to step up global efforts to adapt to a changing climate. Edward McBride, The ...
11.01.2022 Babbage at COP27: Part one—the new climate realism This week, the COP27 climate summit will begin in Egypt. In the first of four episodes, we consider the themes set to dominate the conference. After a year lacking in climate action, do lofty targets need a dose of realism? ...
10.25.2022 Babbage: How to use the pandemic to tackle TB The pandemic shattered global efforts to control tuberculosis, which was the most lethal infectious disease in the world until covid-19 took its crown. Now, with deaths rising, TB is set to reclaim that dubious honour. But the covid era also ...
10.18.2022 Babbage: What are tactical nuclear weapons? The war in Ukraine has raised the nuclear threat to its highest level since the Cuban missile crisis. What types of nuclear weapons could be used in Ukraine, and how much damage could they do? Cheryl Rofer, a former nuclear ...
10.11.2022 Babbage: The gene-therapy revolution Gene therapies border on the miraculous, transforming lives in a single shot. The treatments offer hope to millions around the world who live with genetic diseases, and could also help the fight against cancer and HIV. This year, four new ...
10.04.2022 Babbage: How snooping on sewage could save lives During the pandemic, wastewater monitoring became a valuable tool in spotting covid-19 infection waves and the arrival of new variants. But sewage surveillance can help track the spread of all kinds of diseases—and measure a population’s consumption of everything from ...
09.27.2022 Babbage: How psychedelics could fix the brain Psychedelic drugs—such as LSD and psilocybin, the psychoactive compound found in magic mushrooms—may be coming to the medicine cabinet. Research into their use to treat mental-health conditions was long blocked by law and stigma. But in recent years, there has ...
09.20.2022 Babbage: How science can save the world During the pandemic, scientists gained greater prominence in the lives of ordinary people than ever before. And while covid-19 highlighted the importance of the field to humanity, it also raised questions about the role of scientists in modern life. Host ...
09.13.2022 Babbage: Will Ethereum’s merge transform crypto? A monumental shift is about to take place in the crypto world. One of the most important blockchain projects, Ethereum, is set to change the way it secures its network—from the energy-intensive “proof-of-work” system to the greener “proof-of-stake” method. Known ...
09.06.2022 Babbage: From our archive—the James Webb Space Telescope In recent months, the world has been astounded by cosmic images taken by the James Webb Space Telescope. By gazing deep into space, it can see billions of years back in time, and promises to transform human understanding of the ...
08.30.2022 Babbage: The open-source intelligence war Six months have passed since Russia invaded Ukraine. It is arguably the most transparent conflict ever, thanks to publicly available satellite data and social media. How has open-source intelligence (OSINT) shaped the war? The Economist’s defence editor Shashank Joshi examines ...
08.23.2022 Babbage: NASA’s newish rocket NASA’s giant new rocket, the Space Launch System (SLS), will soon embark on its maiden journey to lunar orbit. The launcher is designed to send humans back to the Moon, but was built on old technology, and is years late ...
08.16.2022 Babbage: Could artificial intelligence become sentient? A debate has been raging in technology circles, after an engineer at Google claimed in June that the company’s chatbot was sentient. Host Kenneth Cukier explores how to define “sentience” and whether it could be attained by AI. If machines ...
08.09.2022 Babbage: The child hepatitis mystery Since April a mysterious outbreak of hepatitis in children around the world has baffled doctors. Some children have required liver transplants and more than 20 have died. Recent findings may link the spike in cases to covid-19 lockdowns. We examine ...
08.02.2022 Babbage: How AI cracked biology’s biggest problem DeepMind’s artificial-intelligence system AlphaFold has predicted the three-dimensional shape of almost all known proteins. The company’s boss Demis Hassabis tells us how the AI was able to solve what was, for decades, biology’s grand challenge. Plus, Gilead Amit, The Economist’s ...
07.26.2022 Babbage: Can technology personalise your diet? Digital tools and sophisticated wearable devices are being combined with the latest knowledge on metabolic science to build personalised eating plans. Slavea Chankova, The Economist’s health-care correspondent, explores the future of nutrition. Data from new nutrition technology can also be ...
07.19.2022 Babbage: How to keep secrets in the age of quantum computing The age of quantum computing is coming closer, presenting both an opportunity and a risk for individuals, companies and governments. Host Alok Jha explores why quantum computers threaten to crack the codes that keep data and communications secure over the ...
07.12.2022 Babbage: How did humans evolve? The evolutionary journey that created modern humans was once thought to be relatively linear. But new technology is revealing a far more complex picture. The Economist’s Dylan Barry travels to South Africa to trace the story of our evolution, and ...
07.05.2022 Babbage: How to unlock the secrets of the universe—beyond the Standard Model This week, the Large Hadron Collider returned to life after a three-year upgrade. By recreating conditions as close as possible to the Big Bang, it might provide answers to some of physics’s greatest mysteries. Recent findings have shown chinks in ...
06.28.2022 Babbage: How to go green amid an energy crisis The energy shock threatens to derail action on climate change. Which technologies will enable the green transition, while ensuring energy security, too? Vijay Vaitheeswaran, The Economist's global energy & climate innovation editor, describes the pathway to a decarbonised future. How ...

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