The global economy needs true randomness to encrypt messages and make sure elections are honest. But not all randomness is random enough, and humans and computers alike are really bad at generating it. So we turn to natural sources like seismic waves, radioactive decay, and lava lamps (yes, lava lamps) to generate it for us.

Photo by Eric Helgas; styling by Alex Citrin-Safadi

Transcript: https://qz.com/2062955