Information Theory

Dr. Trisha Pasricha is a gastroenterologist at Harvard Medical School, director of the Institute for Gut Brain Research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and the Ask a Doctor columnist at the Washington Post. Her new book is "You've Been Pooping All Wrong: How to Make Your Bowel Movements a Joy."
We talk about why 95% of Americans aren't getting enough fiber, how your smartphone is giving you hemorrhoids, the surprising circadian rhythm of your colon, what the Bristol stool scale says about your health, how your gut microbiome shapes your mood and motivation, the enteric nervous system (the original brain), how early childhood trauma can rewire pain pathways for life, the gut origins of Parkinson's disease, and why you should just use the gas station bathroom.

Steven Pinker sits down for an interview about his seminal 2002 book, The Blank Slate. In this interview, we talk about grade inflation at Harvard, the role of tenure in promoting free speech and controversial ideas, the three laws of behavioral genetics and what they mean for parents, the surprising age at which language learning ability declines, and what ChatGPT tells us about how the human mind actually works.

Luca Lampariello grew up monolingual in Rome. At 10, his teacher told him he simply wasn't cut out for language learning. Today, he speaks 15 languages – 10 of them fluently – and runs one of the largest polyglot YouTube channels in the world.In this conversation, we cover: why he was bad at Italian before he was good at anything else, the role his 90-year-old grandmother played in shaping his curiosity, how watching American movies transformed his English in months, what he thinks about the "critical period" hypothesis, his 70/20/10 rule for language acquisition, and why he believes the biggest barrier to accent mastery is psychological, not biological.0:46 Luca's Monolingual Childhood and Grandmother's Influence2:43 "I Was Actually Pretty Poor at My Native Language"5:52 "I Wanted to Be Like an American" – How Luca Learned English11:55 Can Anyone Learn a Foreign Language to Fluency?16:35 A Concrete Learning Plan: The American in Italy20:16 The 70/20/10 Rule for Input, Output, and Grammar21:41 The Critical Period Hypothesis – Can Adults Sound Like Natives?25:36 Why Some Immigrants Never Lose Their Accent29:51 Luca's Journey Through German, Spanish, Dutch, and Russian34:42 "Japanese Rejected Me – But I'm Going Back With a Vengeance"37:32 What Are The Most Beautiful Languages? Greek, German, Russian

David Bessis is a mathematician and the author of Mathematica: A Secret World of Intuition and Curiosity.
In this conversation, we explore David's provocative claim that mathematical ability is not genetically determined — and what that means for how we teach, learn, and think about intelligence itself.
David explains why math books aren't meant to be read, why conference talks often aren't meant to be understood, and how fear is the number one inhibitor of mathematical progress at every level — from primary school to research departments. He introduces the concept of "secret math": the oral tradition of metacognitive tricks and intuitions passed between mathematicians but rarely written down or taught explicitly.
We discuss Bill Thurston's extraordinary visualization abilities (developed through childhood exercises to compensate for a vision impairment), Terence Tao's superhuman mathematical speed, and David's own trajectory — from failing his first PhD to experiencing weeks of what he calls "hyperlucidity," where decades of mathematical progress compressed into days.
David shares practical insights on how he's teaching his own children, what schools get wrong about math education, and the three specific changes he'd make to how mathematics is taught. Throughout, he challenges the assumption that extreme talent gaps must have genetic explanations, arguing instead that idiosyncratic cognitive development and self-reinforcing feedback loops create the massive inequalities we observe.

Outline
00:00 Introduction
01:32 Why Math Books Are Not Meant to Be Read
05:10 The Secret Math That's Never Written Down
11:31 The Metacognitive Skill of Asking Stupid Questions
17:57 Fear is the Number One Inhibitor of Mathematics
25:44 How Idiosyncratic Development Shapes Math Talent
39:06 Why Terry Tao Can't Be Explained by Genetics
54:43 Raising Children to Be 1000x Better at Math
1:04:08 Hyperlucidity: How I Proved a 30-Year-Old Conjecture
1:18:18 Three Small Changes That Could Transform Math Education
1:24:39 Advice for Aspiring Math Students

David Moser is a scholar of linguistics at Capital Normal University in Beijing and the author of A Billion Voices: China’s Search for a Common Language.
0:00 Introduction
5:28 The Challenge of Translating Gödel, Escher, Bach
21:14 Cultural and Economic Changes in China in the 1980s
31:37 Why Chinese is So Damn Hard
38:56 The Core of Language is not the Writing System
44:04 The Political Fiction of a Unified Chinese Language
54:20 Can We Just Get Rid of the Chinese Characters?
1:02:27 "Character Amnesia" and the Future of Language Input
1:07:25 Comparing the Educational Systems of China vs. America
1:16:07 How David Learned Mandarin
1:28:32 Reflections