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Radiolab / February 18, 2005

Radiolab

Friday, February 18, 2005
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  • emergence

    Emergence

    What happens when there is no leader? Starlings, bees, and ants manage just fine. In fact, they form staggeringly complicated societies, all without a Toscanini to conduct them into harmony. How? That’s our question this hour. We gaze down at the bottom-up logic of cities, Google, even our very own brains. Featured: author Steven Johnson, fire-flyologists John and Elizabeth Buck, biologist E.O. Wilson, Ant expert Debra Gordon, mathematician Steve Strogatz, economist James Surowiecki, and neurologists Oliver Sacks and Christof Koch.

There is No Lord of the (Fire)Flies

click for a slideshow We begin in Thailand, watching fireflies glow in glorious synchrony, lighting up miles of mangrove trees like Christmas trees. Next...it’s off to Stanford University to contemplate the bottomless mystery of ants, a mystery which culminates in New York City’s flower market (ever wondered what ants can teach us about human cities? A lot!). We round out this segment with a beekeeper's tragic tale of insect royalty.

Slideshows:
&raquo Click here to view firefly images
&raquo Click here to view images of ants

» Steven Strogatz’s Book: Sync: The Emerging Science of Spontaneous Order
» More about Fireflies
» Deborah Gordon’s Book: Ants At Work: How An Insect Society Is Organized
» Read more about Deborah's research
» Steven's Johnson's Book: Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software
» Read about Iain Couzin’s Research

The Invisible Hand

In 1776, writer Adam Smith came up with a theory: when lots of buyers and lots of sellers get together, the resulting "market price" that emerges through all that buying and selling is in fact the work of an "invisible hand." He meant god. We think he really meant "emergence." This segment, we go looking for invisible hands in a variety of places: at an ox-guessing contest in Plymoth, England, in the roiling mass of traders in the "pit" of the New York Securities and Exchange, and also in the secret recipe that makes Google such a great search engine. Author Steven Johnson explains the art of Google-bombing. Producer Ben Rubin presents the bottom-up organization of stock trading in sound.

» James Surowiecki's Book The Wisdom of Crowds
» Steven Johnson's Website
» Hear more from producer Ben Rubi

The Unconscious Toscanini of the Brain

How does the brain produce a thought? Or experience a unitary, whole, synchronized perception of a cup of coffee? For neuroscientists, this is the Mount Everest of questions. We have a look at one possible theory (that a thought is like lots of little neurons singing together in harmony) and then visit neurologist Christof Koch to ask: who conducts the brain chorus? Koch thinks he knows, and he tells us of the cutting edge work of one of science’' great thinkers, Francis Crick...an inquiry which lasted until his dying day.

» Learn more about Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts
» Christof Koch's book The Quest for Consciousness: A Neurobiological Approach
» Francis Crick’s book Astonishing Hypothesis: The Scientific Search for the Soul