FFP website tour and favorite episodes

21:04to uh for those listening for [clears throat] the first time. This is not like our normal episodes. We're talking about some of our great episodes that go into deep dives. But one of the things we did want to do is take an opportunity to look at uh one of our uh recent upgrades that many of you may not know. I always talk about the website and the fact that it's a great resource. And I think many may not have noticed that we did a huge look at that. [laughter] >> We did a huge revamp on the website. You

21:45can see our platonic solids on the homepage now doing our animation around from first principles. But I wanted to take this opportunity to uh identify because we have so many new listeners. >> Yeah. that have joined us uh just in the last couple of weeks and our archive is absolute gold. >> Yeah. >> And so I wanted to go through and ask you our resident PhD Krishna, you know, what are some of your favorite episodes or ones that you think that the viewers should take a look at uh if they want to kind of go back into the archives uh to see something they might be interested in. >> Sure. Yeah. I mean, one one of the big ones that I'm proud of is the Remon Hypothesis episode, episode 53. Um, but

22:28I think a lot of the new a lot of the new um viewers may have actually come from that. So, let's go let's go to some of the other ones that are that are that are a bit older. Um, the one before that would have to be, I think, if you go down episode 46 and 47. Yep. >> Our America 250 celebration. Um, this is where I compiled a giant list of some 400 plus American achievements in science and technology and patents. >> And um, it was something that we had planned for just one episode. And it it became so much. And we we had these these [laughter] we had these uh >> outrageous outfits.

23:08>> Outrageous outfits because it was our 250th birthday as a nation as a nation that has contributed so much to humanity in terms of science and technology. Um so I I would definitely suggest checking those out if you want a fast-paced kind of what did we do? Um it just goes through timeline one after the other of all the things that we have done. And for those who would like to go through the interactive timeline that we actually go through on the episode, you can go through uh innovation and discovery by discovery at our America 250 page. It's a great way to just do a retrospective on it. That is a great

23:50episode to reference. That is fantastic. So I like that one. That's a good call out. >> Yeah, that one's a good one. Um after that I would say the harder than diamond 38 episode 38 when we did um our second >> yes >> um new hexagonal diamond >> that one was a really good one because there was such a nice human story behind it. There were two Chinese groups that >> I think basically hate each other >> that were like trying to claim that they had gotten the new hexagonal diamond first. And we went into some of the intricacies of the reviewer comments about how the reviewers didn't believe them. >> Mhm. [clears throat]

24:30>> And how this group had to really convince them. And once they convinced them, the reviewers went to bat for them. And then they basically had like a a duel in the press where the old the old hexagonal diamonds guy were like, "They didn't do anything new." And then the reviewers like, "No, kind of." I mean, it's it's it's a really fun cool human story about just how competitive yes science is and specifically how competitive Chinese science is in the modern day. I also think another good interesting part about that episode specifically was unpacking the word peer review >> gets thrown around a lot. >> Yeah. >> What does it actually mean in practice?

25:12Uh how rigorous is it really? >> Yeah. Um, and I think because we again went into the actual peerreview files and talked about the back and forth and I think it was a great uh expose and in how >> in how robust that process is um and what it actually looks like. That's a great one. I do >> Yeah, that's that's a really good one. [snorts] Episode 35 is really great. It's um about our good friend Daniel Toker's science of consciousness. Um he is the brain scientist on Instagram. He has a bunch of followers, a great scientific communicator. Um definitely check out that episode because he had developed a new AI model to not only

25:53detect consciousness but also figure out ways to um you know wake them up >> which is hopefully >> big deal >> like people in comas. It was it was a huge deal and it was a really eye openener for me because I didn't know a lot about this subject. So when I was researching it um I had a bunch of calls with him. I mean, he's a good friend of ours, former classmate at Princeton University. So, it was really nice to be able to just call up the first author on the phone and be like, "Hey, what what what was this figure exactly?" And then he'd be like, "Well, okay, this is how I did it." It it it was really cool to see that happen. >> And if you want to see me with extra short hair, this is a great episode to check out. Uh, and when you say AI

26:33models, I want to be clear, there's a difference between >> what people think of just generative AI and the way in which >> Sure. The AI is a very broad term that addresses a wide variety of the technology and there are amazing ways in which it's being used in scientific contexts. >> Exactly. >> That was a very good one. >> Yeah, that was a good one. Um, episode 33. This is where can human neurons really play Doom? >> Ah, Doom. Can it play Doom? Classic >> question. We we really went into the nitty-g gritties of what does that mean for a human petri dish a petri dish of neurons to play Doom? How does how do you actually train a petri dish of human

27:13neurons to play Doom? How do you keep it alive long enough for it to learn how to play Doom? Because that was the claim. >> Yeah. >> And it turns out there's there's a little bit of hype. There's also some really cool science. But if you want to understand what is hype and what is science, that's a great way of figuring that out. >> Uh what has been deemed wetw wear engineering. >> Yes. Um in the intelligence community, wetw wear or wet works I should say has a very different connotation, but that is not the scope of this show. Yeah. Moving on. Next one. I'll actually go back to episode 23. 23. Okay. Um time

27:55vaults. Yeah. Oh, classic. This was This is a classic. >> This one was crazy. I mean, it starts with um James Webb Telescope's Little Red Dots, which is already that's a great astrophysics story if you guys are interested. But I think the real gem in this one is the time vault story. Um I think it's a future Nobel Prize. They basically I mean you you made the analogy of it's a Mac time machine. >> Yeah. back but for your cells which is has incredible implications. >> Yeah. Uh for cancer research for just understanding how cells work in general. I thought that was a that was a really really cool one. >> This was one of my favorite episodes

28:35we've ever done. Again some you know we've iterated on the show a couple of times doing multiple stories in a single episode versus doing a deep dive. It's it's been an eb and flow. Uh but the time vaults segment in this episode is top tier. Yeah, >> it's been one of our most popular clips, like set of clips on social media, >> 100% >> because [clears throat] it is such an incredible It's so incredible. >> It's so good. It's so good. Next one, episode 20. Okay. >> Um, this was >> the fusion story that got us on Joe Rogan. >> Yes. This is our Christmas special in end of 2025. >> Yes. And so it was it was an unfortunate

29:15sort of Yeah. situation because MIT plasma physicist Professor Nuno Lorero had been recently just murdered in Cambridge in his apartment in what seems like a crazy crazy situation. But we we wanted to just >> give him and his science >> the due spotlight that it deserves. And we talked about some of the science that he was responsible for. We went pretty deep and we talked about some of the fusion problems that he had solved and some of the problems that his science is still solving to this day. this idea of fast magnetic reconnection

29:57>> uh which is is really fascinating and obviously um >> this area uh particularly within uh circles in this new uh nuclear age in America is it's really important because we've seen a lot of these like micro nuclear reactor startups and there's this reinvigoration of of looking at this as a means of energy production. >> Exactly. >> And there's some fundamentals in here that are interesting as it relates to kind of understanding that that boom. Um it did get us shout out to to young Jamie. Yeah. >> Who pulled us up out of the blue.

30:37>> Uh while they were talking about uh UFOs. >> Yeah. >> Where the connection was, I don't really remember, but uh we did get a a huge shout out there, which again, >> yeah. I mean, I look, regardless of what you think about the Joe Rogan podcast, it's the it's the biggest podcast out there. And for for two unknowns like us who just started a podcast like 6 months ago, at that point, it was five five months in. >> Yeah. Like 5 months in to get like a shout out on the Joe Rogan podcast. We we thought it was a pretty cool deal. And I will say if we can bring that audience in and talk to them and help them understand the idea of what we try to do it from first principles, we can

31:19start to kind of again combat this anti-science movement, this conspiracy laden movement and just like we have the tools to understand information. >> Yeah, we got to do it. Next one. Episode 19, the one right before the double helix episode. >> We were on a heater. >> That one was a good episode. I got to say that one was [laughter] a good episode. the Watson and Crick. Watson is not the guy. Uh uh uh Krishna in his Chamath fit. [laughter] That's and I literally do the thing. I think you literally called it out, right? >> Yeah. Yeah. >> But this was about the human story behind the um discovery of the structure of DNA. It was commemorating James

32:01Watson who had recently died. His legacy, both the good and a lot of the bad. We don't shy away from the bad on this podcast. So, we talked about Watson, Crick, and Rosalyn Franklin. And that human story, which is full of drama, it's like something that you could make a movie out of. >> 100%. >> Yeah. And I believe actually Natalie Portman is going to be starring in a movie very soon >> where she is playing Rosalyn Franklin. >> Oh, so for the >> Yeah, I heard on the grapevine. So for the producers who are working on that uh scientific advisors even for creator marketing promotion uh we're the best in the business. >> Yeah. >> You know where to find us.

32:42>> Yep. Exactly. Um next one I would say is episode 14. The Chening episode, the man who unlocked symmetry. This one was a big one. Another one of my favorites. I'm really proud of this one. We explain Yang Mills theory. Chen Yang had recently passed away. one of the greats of 20th century physics on par with Fineman Schroinger like it is it is and and it's been shown to be true. There's so many experiments that show that you know this is the laws of physics. There's no special point in space and time or direction in space and time that like yield different laws of physics right um not in theorem what she

33:24actually showed was if we take if we take the um assumption that physics is the same after these translations that then something must be conserved every single time that we have this symmetry that's something that we can tackle in a later episode and actually prove not theorem. It's a beautiful proof um and it's quite intuitive but at the end of the day what ends up happening is any symmetry is associated with a conservation rate. So for example the fact that I can translate in space meaning I do an experiment here then I do an experiment somewhere else and the physics laws are exactly the same that leads to a conservation of momentum. How

34:04does all of physics in any situation it's >> if I do an experiment today and then I do it tomorrow and and and the week after and the month after and all of the laws of physics are the same that leads to a conservation of energy >> interested in physics. >> If I do an experiment here and I change the rotation where I rotate my entire experimental apparatus and I do it again and the laws of physics are the same that leads to the conservation of angular momentum. >> Right? It's a deep deep notion that we have okay this was in the early 1900s where emmy not came up with this I've never understood it intuitively because we've talked about all three of tal about conservation of angular momentum

34:45quite a bit talked about conservation of energy you guys are stealing all of our scientists right now which you can check out on our trans >> and the conservation of momentum and I've never understood it intuitively in this context took it personally doing your experiment here today and there tomorrow there is no which means >> according to where we [clears throat] talked about the >> this is actually it's the same episode that has the first unbreakable diamonds >> story. So the the the first group that showed hexagonal diamonds and then they're the ones that were on the the more recent episode. Yes.

35:26>> Um but the hacking the human brain one was really cool because it was a mind readading brain computer interface. >> Yes. Yes, >> that at it at its face was something that is very benign because you know a lot of people have debilitating >> paralysis and so they can't actually express what they mean. This is something that was reading inner thoughts. Well, it gets a little hairy and we get we get into some of these some of these questions there. I I will note for those who are watching the show right now, you can see uh the production has evolved quite a bit. >> Yeah, it has actually since since we started. Um it's taken a while. Um but

36:09one of the things that's always been consistent >> is we've been overlay heavy >> since day one. Always citing sources has been a key part of the show. Y >> uh shout out Princeton Tigers. As you can see, this is like this is a very >> trip down memory lane. >> I mean, this is a month in. This is literally I mean, this is our fourth fifth episode. >> Yeah. Like we had just >> five weeks in. >> Look at We were just like, "Yeah, keep going. [laughter] Look at how we look so old now compared to that episode. >> We do. Oh my god. >> We've aged so much [laughter] in that time. >> In like a year. >> Look, the content hamster wheel is tough, y'all. I don't I don't father,

36:50right? I don't know what your excuse is. [laughter] >> Look, look, look, I I agree with you. My hairline is not receding. I was born this way. Uh so that's not where it's coming from. Um >> yeah. And then finally, I think I think the last one I would say is just episode one. If you want to see like >> where we started, >> where we started, >> where we it was it was >> I I still remember this day when we were like, you know what? Yeah, whatever. Let's let's let's post it online. >> Oh my god, look at this. >> We still had the platonic solids. The color scheme is different now. We've we've honed in on it. >> Honed in on it. We didn't have a logo yet. Um >> I'm still wearing Princeton at the time because I felt I needed to wear I thought I needed to wear it for every episode.

37:31>> Studios very different. >> Uh the same same >> same same. Yeah. >> But different. And at the time we just basically had two static videos of both of us >> awkwardly looking at each other across the video in the middle. So clearly we've we've come a long way. But that's as a as a small kind of uh for those who may be new to the show and haven't gone through the archive. Uh there's a lot of great great stuff that's evergreen. It's it's stuff that's still relevant unlike news and sports where like this week it's relevant, next week it's not. U a lot of what we talk about is timeless. Yeah. >> Um and there's >> it's not by accident. Um so again, the

38:14website is great. Actually, you know what? Hold on. We're having fun today. Let me let me do a couple let me do a couple things. >> Yeah. No, you should show them, dude. Sick >> because there's a couple things on the website that folks might not be aware of that are there. And so when you come to the homepage, what one of the things you'll be able to see is we talked about the science funding piece earlier. Our science funding explorer is very robust. And so if you don't really understand who pays for American science and the history of that, we have a great sort of story view that'll take you through the history of how this has happened. And you can just see from this view here, the red line we're looking at is the federal government and how it used to spend for research and development in the US going back to the late 50s, 60s,

38:56and 70s where the federal government was the biggest driver here. This is where we're getting things like Manhattan Project etc. etc. >> No, that was the cold war, >> right? So it need it made sense. There was a military incentive blah blah blah. But you know basically after you know 1980 industry is orders of magnitude more in spending on research and development. So this is why when we talk about this argument about the federal government shouldn't be spending on basic science research. You need to understand the scope of the volume of how much money is being spent by the federal government versus it's literally 5x. >> Yeah. >> So you know it it's just very different. There's great charts. It's super interactive. But we also have the

39:36ability for you to dig in by agency. So if you want to know, right? So we have this ranked here in terms of like what agencies get the most money. Um and this is sort of looking at uh the the current year's budget. DoD is number one. Department of Health of Human Health and Human Services is number two. Department of Energy Nukes uh is number three. NASA unsurprisingly number four. Only then Yeah. Do we get to the National Science Foundation which get takes so much oxygen in the room? Uh NSF is $7 billion. DoD is 95 billion. Yeah. So like we're we're not even the same. But people would be surprised to know that Department of Commerce and Agriculture and the VA and DOT and Department of

40:19these agencies also have very interesting research programs. And again, you can click into any of these to see a breakdown of like how that budget has changed over time. what are they spending their money on? So there's the office of science in the DOE versus energy efficiency and renewable energy and you can see how those budget ranges have changed over time. Nuclear energy as you can see in the DOE has seen a huge boost. Uh it's always been big but especially recently has seen a a huge boost. So it's very detailed. It's well worth a look to really get a grounding about what's happening in that space. Another cool thing is all of our

40:59research papers that we cover, uh, you can get to here. So, if you're like, "Oh, where's the DOI link?" Like, "Where's the research paper link?" Go to the website, the quantum computing episode we just did. We have the research paper right here. You can get to it, what the paper is, what episodes we cover in those papers. We've really spent a lot of time trying to build an ecosystem that's interesting. And as a fan of the Prem, we've now implemented our science transfers, our transfer market, something that's making people very upset because the idea that the US is losing its edge is a math amathema, whatever the word is, uh, is just is so counter to their worldview. We're still building it out piece by piece, but you can start to see with our first 37

41:41scientists we've put in here who are big names, global laureates, people who have won big prizes, leaders of labs. Uh it's not looking good right now. >> Yeah, >> it's not a complete data set, but you'll be able to look at each of the transfers individually, their effective date. You can see where they're coming from, where they're going, what the sources are for it. This is really cool stuff, y'all. And we already talked about the America 250. I'll just mention if you want to support the show, the shop's got a couple things in it. It's got some good stuff. We just added the platonic tea. I think we're going to order some of these uh these bone >> Yeah. We're going to get some of these soon. So, in any event, >> we'll stop shilling. We had to take a

42:22little bit of time to talk about it. >> Yeah.