From First Principles

In this anniversary episode, Lester Nare and Krishna Choudhary look back at how two longtime friends turned their regular conversations about science into a show now shared by millions of people around the world, and what they hope to build with FFP Nation in Year Two.

Then we turn to a new Nature paper challenging the idea that the precolonial Amazon was sparsely populated. Airborne LiDAR revealed hundreds of geometric earthworks hidden beneath the rainforest canopy. Combining the new survey with earlier archaeological evidence, the researchers estimate that the region could contain more than 20,000 earthworks and may have supported 1.25–3 million people around AD 100–300.

Lester and Krishna explain how LiDAR sees through dense vegetation, why early European accounts of crowded Amazonian settlements were dismissed, how disease and forest regrowth could erase the visible traces of large societies, and what the findings mean for our understanding of the Amazon’s human and environmental history.

The conversation then becomes a thought experiment: if our civilization disappeared, what would future archaeologists—or extraterrestrial visitors—recognize as our pyramids? Apollo landing sites, CERN, LIGO, and the James Webb Space Telescope become candidates for the enduring signatures of a curiosity-driven civilization.

Finally, we christen the From First Principles library. Krishna shares the mathematics, physics, biology, history, and philosophy books that shaped how he thinks, including Baby Rudin, Landau–Lifshitz, Fermi, Jackson, Sakurai, Einstein, Schrödinger, Gibbs, Newton’s Principia, Plato, the Upanishads, and Adam Becker’s What Is Real?

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Research and show notes:

Over 20,000 precolonial earthworks in the Southwest Amazonia

Nature Research Briefing

FFP episode archive and research library

What happens when electronics can operate at temperatures hot enough to melt aluminum?

In this deep-dive episode, Lester Nare and Krishna Choudhary examine a new high-temperature memory device developed by researchers at USC, the Air Force Research Laboratory, Kumamoto University, and their collaborators.

Published in Science, the experimental memristor combines tungsten, hafnium oxide, and graphene. It operated reliably at 700°C—roughly 1,300°F—retained data for more than 50 hours, and survived more than one billion switching cycles.

We begin by explaining why conventional electronics and flash memory fail when temperatures rise. From deep-earth drilling and hypersonic aircraft to nuclear systems and the surface of Venus, many environments where intelligent electronics would be useful remain inaccessible to today’s hardware.

Krishna then builds the memristor from first principles. We explore the history of the “missing” fourth circuit element, how oxygen vacancies create low- and high-resistance memory states, why conventional platinum electrodes fail under extreme heat, and how graphene prevents tungsten atoms from diffusing through the device.

Finally, we examine the implications for artificial intelligence. Memristors can potentially store neural-network weights and perform matrix multiplication in the same physical location, reducing the energy wasted moving information between processors and memory.

Could that combination of heat tolerance and energy efficiency make AI data centers in space more practical? Lester and Krishna work through thermal radiation, radiator size, power consumption, radiation resilience, and the considerable engineering challenges that remain.

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Research and Show Notes

High-temperature memristors enabled by interfacial engineering

USC: A memory device that operates at 700°C

The development of carbon-neutral data centres in space

NASA Venus facts

Hosted by Lester Nare and Krishna Choudhary, this episode moves from astrobiology to science policy to the rapidly changing frontier of artificial intelligence and mathematics.

First, researchers analyzing pristine samples returned from asteroid Ryugu report all five canonical nucleobases used by DNA and RNA. We explain what that does—and does not—mean for the origin of life, how JAXA’s Hayabusa2 mission collected uncontaminated asteroid material, and why comparisons with NASA’s Bennu samples strengthen the case that prebiotic chemistry may be widespread across the Solar System.

Next, we examine the fight over who controls federal research funding. A proposed overhaul of the rules governing federal grants would give political appointees greater influence over awards, reduce the controlling role of expert peer review, and expand the government’s power to stop grants that no longer align with an administration’s priorities. We break down the roles of Congress, OMB, federal agencies, universities, and the courts—and why this dispute could reshape the American research ecosystem.

Finally, we go deep on an AI-assisted counterexample to the Jacobian conjecture, a major open problem in mathematics. Krishna explains coordinate transformations, Jacobian determinants, invertibility, special relativity, and why this result appears fundamentally different from simple brute force. We close with the growing debate over AI-generated mathematics, human verification, open science, attribution, and the future role of mathematicians.

Summary

• All five canonical nucleobases found in pristine asteroid Ryugu samples
• Hayabusa2, Bennu, and the possibility of widespread prebiotic chemistry
• The fight over political control of federal research grants
• Congress, OMB, peer review, and the American science-funding system
• The Jacobian conjecture and an AI-assisted counterexample
• Special relativity, coordinate transformations, and invertibility
• AI-generated mathematics, open science, attribution, and verification

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Show Notes

A complete set of canonical nucleobases in asteroid Ryugu

OMB proposed federal-grant rule

Association of American Universities response

Levent Alpöge’s Jacobian counterexample announcement

Leiden Declaration on Artificial Intelligence and Mathematics

Human-verified remarks on the OpenAI-generated Erdős result

In this special interview episode, Lester Nare speaks with Juan Busso, Senior Football Data Scientist at FIFA, and Arron Ackerman, FIFA’s Team Lead for Football Performance Analysis, about the data science behind the Match Momentum visualization featured throughout the 2026 World Cup.

What does “momentum” actually mean in football—and how can it be measured without reducing the game to possession or shots? Juan and Arron explain how FIFA translates football principles into mathematical models, validates those models with coaches and technical experts, and turns complex tracking data into a graphic that fans can understand at a glance.

We break down the underlying “threat” model, including kinetic pitch control, player speed and acceleration, ball trajectories, defensive spacing, distance to goal, sight lines, and the creation of space. Match Momentum is calculated from player-tracking data captured 50 times per second, allowing the model to recognize when a team is becoming dangerous even without dominating possession.

The conversation also covers FIFA’s wider data ecosystem—including event data, skeletal tracking, and the connected match ball—why offside positioning can still create threat, whether hydration breaks alter momentum, and the next generation of football analytics focused on player energy and physical effort.

Guests
Juan Busso — Senior Football Data Scientist, FIFA
Arron Ackerman — Team Lead, Football Performance Analysis, FIFA

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Hosted by Lester Nare and Krishna Choudhary, this episode returns to the FFP science rundown with stories spanning astrophysics, precision medicine, medical imaging, artificial intelligence, and World Cup technology.

We begin with the Event Horizon Telescope and its evolving view of M87*, the supermassive black hole 55 million light-years away. How do you image something that appears about as small as a donut on the Moon? Krishna explains angular resolution, the Rayleigh limit, radio interferometry, and how telescopes across Earth can function like one planet-sized instrument. We then look at new observations showing the magnetic field around M87* changing over time—and why that may help explain black-hole jets and the mysterious shutdown of star formation in giant elliptical galaxies.

Next, we turn to medicine. Researchers at Johns Hopkins have built personalized digital twins of patients’ hearts, allowing doctors to simulate ventricular-tachycardia treatments before entering the operating room. We break down how MRI data, electrical modeling, and virtual ablation could reduce procedures from hours to roughly 30 minutes. We also examine Midjourney Medical’s proposed whole-body ultrasound scanner: what the prototype appears to do, what its creators are claiming, and why it should be viewed as a potential addition to the medical-imaging toolbox rather than a replacement for MRI.

Finally, we return to the World Cup. Krishna takes on “Are You Smarter Than a Scientist?” by guessing the most common injuries in professional football. Then we investigate the Norway–England Skycam controversy: did the ball strike a cable, and why did its internal sensor appear not to detect it? We close with the data behind home-field advantage, referee bias, and the natural experiment created by crowdless matches during the COVID-19 pandemic.

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Hosted by Lester Nare and Krishna Choudhary, this episode is part two of our July 4th America 250 special: a celebration of the scientific, technological, institutional, and cultural breakthroughs that helped shape the United States into one of the most important scientific nations in human history.

In part one, we traced American science from Benjamin Franklin and the founding documents through Sputnik, NASA, DARPA, Bell Labs, the transistor, information theory, nuclear physics, molecular biology, and the birth of the modern American science state. In part two, we pick up after Sputnik and follow the explosion of American science from 1958 to today.

This episode covers the visual system, solar wind, perceptrons, impact cratering, pacemakers, neurotransmitter reuptake, cochlear implants, the genetic code, quarks, Bell’s theorem, density functional theory, the fast Fourier transform, immigration policy, electroweak unification, ARPANET, Apollo 11, dark matter, MRI, GPS, Unix, gravitational waves, ozone depletion, lithium batteries, Voyager, RNA splicing, recombinant insulin, quantum computing, the Space Shuttle, prions, PCR, cellular networks, telomeres, laser cooling, backpropagation, the Hubble Deep Field, Deep Blue, Sagittarius A*, cosmic acceleration, the Human Genome Project, CRISPR, mRNA vaccines, reusable rockets, LIGO, transformer models, black hole imaging, quantum supremacy, and the James Webb Space Telescope.

The larger story is not just that America produced extraordinary discoveries. It is that those discoveries came from an ecosystem: universities, national labs, government agencies, industrial research labs, immigrant scientists, public investment, basic research, private enterprise, and a culture that repeatedly turned curiosity-driven science into civilization-changing technology.

The episode closes by connecting that 250-year legacy to the current debate over federal science funding and the future of American scientific leadership.

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ffppod.com/America250

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Hosted by Lester Nare and Krishna Choudhary, this episode is part one of our July 4th America 250 special: a celebration of the scientific, technological, institutional, and cultural innovations that helped shape the United States into one of the most important scientific nations in human history.

For America’s 250th anniversary, we built an interactive timeline of the discoveries, inventions, institutions, and funding systems that enabled American science to grow from Benjamin Franklin’s experiments with electricity into the age of NASA, DARPA, Bell Labs, nuclear physics, molecular biology, modern computing, and big science.

In part one, we go from Franklin’s discovery of the conservation of charge in 1747 through the Sputnik crisis in 1958. Along the way, we cover the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution’s science and patent clause, the first federal scientific agency, the rise of medical journals, the American system of manufacturing, the telegraph, anesthesia, land-grant universities, the telephone, Edison’s industrial R&D lab, the Michelson-Morley experiment, alternating current, the Wright brothers, the discovery of galaxies, the Manhattan Project, the transistor, information theory, the polio vaccine, the integrated circuit, and the mobilization of American science after Sputnik.

This is not just a list of inventions. It is a story about compounding infrastructure: universities, journals, patents, philanthropy, federal agencies, industrial laboratories, war mobilization, immigrant scientists, basic research funding, and the feedback loop between science, technology, government, and culture.

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ffppod.com/America250

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Hosted by Lester Nare and Krishna Choudhary, this episode is our World Cup special — a deep dive into the science, physics, engineering, and data behind the beautiful game.

We start with the offside rule and the controversy around semi-automated VAR. How can a system decide whether a player is onside or offside by only a few inches? Krishna breaks the problem down like an experimental physicist: player speed, ball-contact time, camera frame rate, significant digits, and the error budget behind the line on screen. From there, we get into the actual technology: player tracking, digital twins, high-resolution cameras, and the connected match ball sensor that helps determine when the pass was played.

Then we move from refereeing technology to the ball itself. Why does the 2026 World Cup ball look the way it does? How do Platonic solids, panel geometry, and surface seams affect the way a soccer ball flies? And why was the 2010 Jabulani ball so controversial? We go through drag, drag coefficients, wind tunnels, the drag crisis, golf ball dimples, and why the roughness of a ball can completely change its trajectory.

Finally, we look at the hidden engineering of the World Cup pitch — real grass in NFL stadiums, LED grow lights, drainage systems, turfgrass science, and even 3D-printed cleat-foot testing devices — before ending with match momentum, possession value, hydration breaks, and the data science behind modern football analytics.

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Show Notes

Semi-automated offside technology and connected-ball systems

Adidas Trionda — official 2026 World Cup match ball

Aerodynamics of World Cup balls and the Jabulani drag-crisis controversy

World Cup 2026 pitch engineering and turfgrass research

Possession value and match momentum in football analytics

Hosted by Lester Nare and Krishna Choudhary, this episode marks Krishna’s return to the studio after paternity leave — and the timing could not be more fitting. Today’s deep dive is about inheritance: not just the classic Mendelian rules most of us learned in biology class, but the stranger, more dynamic world of non-Mendelian epigenetic inheritance.

Starting from Gregor Mendel and his pea plants, Lester and Krishna rebuild the foundations of genetics from first principles: dominant and recessive alleles, Punnett squares, chromosomes, fruit flies, DNA, and the physical mechanism behind inherited traits. Then they move into the “software layer” of biology: epigenetics, DNA methylation, chromatin packaging, RNA interference, and paramutation — cases where the genetic code is present, but the cell’s machinery silences or rewrites how that code is used.

The episode centers on a new Nature Genetics paper, “Non-Mendelian inheritance of DNA methylation patterns in mice,” which suggests that non-Mendelian epigenetic inheritance may be more widespread in mammals than previously understood. The conversation also covers why Oxford Nanopore sequencing made this kind of analysis possible, why methylation patterns can be hard to trace across generations, and what all of this could mean for disease risk, drug response, sex differences, evolution, and the long-running nature-versus-nurture debate.

Summary

• Mendel’s rules — how pea plants, true-breeding lines, dominant and recessive traits, and Punnett squares gave us the first mathematical laws of inheritance.
• The first cracks in Mendel — how chromosomes, fruit flies, sex-linked traits, and linked genes showed that inheritance is more complicated than independent assortment.
• DNA as hardware, epigenetics as software — why having a gene is not the same thing as expressing it, and how methylation and chromatin packaging can silence parts of the genome.
• Paramutation — how one allele can change the expression state of another allele across generations, creating inheritance patterns that do not follow standard Mendelian expectations.
• Oxford Nanopore and the technology shift — why long-read sequencing and direct methylation detection make it possible to trace epigenetic marks back to the parent they came from.
• The mouse methylation paper — how researchers used collaborative cross mice to show that most methylation inheritance looks Mendelian, but a meaningful fraction appears to follow stranger non-Mendelian rules.
• Why it matters — potential implications for clinical genetics, disease risk, drug efficacy, sex-specific biology, and the relationship between nature and nurture.

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Hosted by Lester Nare and Krishna Choudhary, this episode is the second interview in our ongoing collaboration series with Carnegie Observatories. Krishna sits down with Dr. Michael Blanton, the new Director of the Carnegie Observatories, for a wide-ranging conversation on how astronomy became one of the most data-rich sciences, how the Sloan Digital Sky Survey helped change the culture around open data, what the next era of astronomical data science and AI could look like, and one of the galaxy mysteries Blanton still wants to solve: why the most massive galaxies in the universe stop forming stars.The conversation starts with Blanton’s Princeton roots and his work connected to the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, then moves into the culture of public astronomical data, the NYU Value-Added Galaxy Catalog, Vera Rubin Observatory, Carnegie’s role in the future of astronomy, the Magellan telescopes, astronomical archives, MaNGA and eBOSS, galaxy formation, dark matter, and even the science behind the black hole visualizations in Interstellar.Audio note: this was one of our first out-of-studio interviews, and there are a few minor audio issues in parts of the conversation. We appreciate your patience, and we’ll be better prepared for future field interviews.Also, if you’re in Los Angeles, Krishna will be giving a talk at Exploring Physics at UCLA, hosted by UCLA’s physics outreach organization Continuum, on Saturday, June 6 at the Fowler Museum. His talk runs from 9:30–10:30 AM.Register here: https://luma.com/3al1hj5h