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.
Sign up for Economist Podcasts+ now and get 50% off your subscription with our limited time offer here www.economist.com/podcastsplus-babbage. You will not be charged until Economist Podcasts+ launches.
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 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

4.8

377 ratings

Download our free app to listen on your phone

LAST EPISODE

Babbage: Fei-Fei Li on how ...

11.22.2023

A year ago, the public launch of ChatGPT took the world by storm and it was followed by many more generative artificial intelligence tools, all with remarkable, human-like abilities. Fears over the existential risks posed by AI have dominated the ...

Babbage from The Economist episodes:

11.22.2023 Babbage: Fei-Fei Li on how to really think about the future of AI A year ago, the public launch of ChatGPT took the world by storm and it was followed by many more generative artificial intelligence tools, all with remarkable, human-like abilities. Fears over the existential risks posed by AI have dominated the ...
10.25.2023 Babbage: How to avoid a battery shortage In the coming decades, electric vehicles will dominate the roads and renewables will provide energy to homes. But for the green transition to be successful, unprecedented amounts of energy storage is needed. Batteries will be used everywhere—from powering electric vehicles, ...
10.18.2023 Babbage: The mystery of chronic pain Chronic pain is thought to affect around a third of people. For one in ten of these, the pain is severe enough to be disabling—making it the leading cause of disability worldwide. Some forms of chronic pain are particularly mysterious—with ...
10.11.2023 Babbage: Deb Chachra on the value of great infrastructure From roads to telecommunications, networks of infrastructure define people’s lives, but are often hidden from view. Our guest wants people to step back, look at and appreciate the infrastructure around them. As the climate changes and landscapes shift, societies need ...
10.04.2023 Babbage: The 2023 Nobel prizes in science This year’s Nobel prizes in science recognised the former underdogs behind mRNA vaccines, how to watch electrons and a new class of material that could revolutionise both solar panels and cancer treatments. How have these achievements had an impact beyond ...
09.27.2023 Babbage: The scientific quest to conquer ageing How ageing happens and whether it can be slowed has recently become the subject of intense research and investment. Scientists are exploring differing approaches to reducing age-related deterioration, tech billionaires are experimenting with as-yet-unproven interventions. It is entirely possible that ...
09.20.2023 Babbage: How AI promises to revolutionise science Discussions about artificial intelligence tend to focus on its risks, but there is also excitement on the horizon. AI tools, like the models beneath ChatGPT, are being increasingly used by scientists for everything from finding new drugs and materials to ...
09.13.2023 Babbage: Mustafa Suleyman on how to prepare for the age of AI Artificial intelligence and biotechnology are at the vanguard of a new era of humanity, according to Mustafa Suleyman. The entrepreneur has been at the forefront of AI development for over a decade and predicts that in the near future, everyone ...
09.06.2023 Babbage: Sex differences and sport Some sports use different rules and equipment in the women’s game; some do not. We consider the distinction through the lenses of professional football and rugby. Scientific questions of relative performance lead to those of player safety, and ultimately to ...
08.30.2023 Babbage: El Niño is back, and he looks angry Extreme weather is constantly in the news, but a new factor is just getting warmed up: El Niño. This Pacific Ocean phenomenon can have devastating effects in some parts of the world while benefiting others; it is linked to droughts ...
08.23.2023 Babbage: How to learn to love maths, with Eugenia Cheng While some people enjoy learning maths, the subject haunts many children throughout school and beyond. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Eugenia Cheng, a mathematician and author of “Is Maths Real?”, explains why, to her, maths is a ...
08.16.2023 Babbage: The race to the Moon’s South Pole In the coming days, both Russia and India hope to land robotic probes near the South Pole of the Moon. Conquering the South Pole remains one of the grandest challenges in lunar science, but it’s a potentially rewarding endeavour. If ...
08.09.2023 Babbage: Advances in healthcare technology Attending a science festival or an exhibition can be an exciting day out, while also being hugely informative. Natasha Loder, The Economist’s health editor visits the Royal Society’s summer exhibition to play with both the simple and cutting-edge technologies that ...
08.02.2023 Babbage: Are auctioned dinosaur fossils lost to science? Natural history auctions are on the rise and are generating millions of dollars for private fossil hunters, but the commercialisation of ancient bones is worrying some palaeontologists. They argue that specimens sold privately are lost to science. Yet others say ...
07.26.2023 Babbage: How good can weather forecasting get? In recent weeks, extreme heat, floods and storms have smashed records and caused devastation around the world. Freak weather events such as these will become more frequent due to climate change—but they are exceptionally hard to predict. How are meteorologists ...
07.19.2023 Babbage: Summer science lessons How much science do you remember from school? Do you know how a simple electric motor works, or what the Doppler effect is? Basic physics is taught early in schools, but is easily forgotten. To learn some basic science, we ...
07.12.2023 Babbage: The debate over deep-sea mining As the effects of climate change are increasingly being felt around the world, the need to transition away from fossil fuels is becoming more urgent. An electrified world requires more batteries, which in turn means the demand for metals, such ...
07.05.2023 Babbage: Vint Cerf on how to wisely regulate AI Almost 50 years ago, Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn designed TCP/IP, a set of rules enabling computers to connect and communicate with each other. It led to the creation of a vast global network: the internet. TCP/IP is how almost ...
06.28.2023 Babbage: Understanding same-sex attraction in people Same-sex attraction is found in many animals—but, like all animal behaviours, it can be complicated and difficult to study. The underlying biological mechanisms, however, are of great interest for understanding human health, genetics and evolution. Researchers know there is no ...
06.21.2023 Babbage: How to uncover the origin of the coronavirus The Biden administration is expected to declassify some information gathered on the origin of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, hoping to end a three-year battle over whether covid-19 came from a seafood market or a laboratory in Wuhan, China. Some scientists say ...
06.14.2023 Babbage: How to farm fish on dry land Fish are a vital source of protein and other nutrients for humans, as well as an important part of the ocean's ecology. But overfishing has become a crisis. It is estimated that 90 percent of the world’s fisheries are being ...
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 ...

Older episodes