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Babbage from The Economist
Babbage: How to battle superbugs with viruses
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Antimicrobial resistance killed over a million people in 2019. That figure is expected to rise to ten million by 2050. Antibiotics remain vital to modern medicine, but this hidden pandemic of drug-resistant superbugs is driving scientists to explore possible alternatives. One type of therapy in particular is attracting serious scientific interest: bacteriophages.
Phages are viruses that can destroy bacteria. In the 1920s, phage therapies were used widely against infections, but much of the world abandoned the idea following the discovery of penicillin. Some parts of the former Soviet Union, though, have continued to use phage therapies. What can governments and international companies learn from this medicine?
Gilead Amit, The Economist’s science correspondent, travels to the Eliava Institute in Tbilisi, Georgia to find out how phage therapies have been used there over the last century. He speaks to the director, Mzia Kutateladze, head of phage production, Vakho Pavlenishvili, and from the therapy centre: Davit Sturia, Lia Nadareishvili and Lana Abesadze. Barry Rud, a Canadian patient attending the clinic, discusses his experience. Steffanie Strathdee, who leads phage research at the University of California, San Diego, explains the renewed international interest in bacteriophages. Alok Jha, The Economist’s science and technology editor, hosts.
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Babbage: How to remove carbon from the atmosphere
43:57As the COP28 climate summit kicks off, countries will be assessing and renewing their efforts to cut carbon emissions. But to meet the goal of keeping warming well below 2°C, as set out at the Paris agreement eight years ago, carbon dioxide will also need to be removed from the atmosphere at an unprecedented scale. How can carbon capture technologies be made attractive and cost-effective, so that people will scale them up in the future? Host: Alok Jha, The Economist’s science and technology editor. Contributors: Oliver Morton, a senior editor at The Economist; Rachel Dobbs, our climate correspondent; Colin Hale, a chemical engineer at Imperial College London; Gavin Jackson, The Economist’s economics and finance correspondent.Sign up for a free trial of Economist Podcasts+. If you’re already a subscriber to The Economist, you’ll have full access to all our shows as part of your subscription. For more information about how to access Economist Podcasts+, please visit our FAQs page or watch our video explaining how to link your account.
Babbage: Fei-Fei Li on how to really think about the future of AI
38:58A year ago, the public launch of ChatGPT took the world by storm and it was followed by many more generative artificial intelligence tools, all with remarkable, human-like abilities. Fears over the existential risks posed by AI have dominated the global conversation around the technology ever since. Fei-Fei Li, a pioneer that helped lay the groundwork that underpins modern generative AI models, takes a more nuanced approach. She’s pushing for a human-centred way of dealing with AI—treating it as a tool to help enhance—and not replace—humanity, while focussing on the pressing challenges of disinformation, bias and job disruption.Fei-Fei Li is the founding co-director of Stanford University’s Institute for Human-Centred Artificial Intelligence. Fei-Fei and her research group created ImageNet, a huge database of images that enabled computers scientists to build algorithms that were able to see and recognise objects in the real world. That endeavour also introduced the world to deep learning, a type of machine learning that is fundamental part of how large-language and image-creation models work.Host: Alok Jha, The Economist’s science and technology editor. Sign up for a free trial of Economist Podcasts+. If you’re already a subscriber to The Economist, you’ll have full access to all our shows as part of your subscription. For more information about how to access Economist Podcasts+, please visit our FAQs page or watch our video explaining how to link your account.
Babbage picks: How to supercharge science with better funding
05:50An article from The Economist read aloud. Scientific innovation has been waning in recent years. To combat this, we argue that it’s time to experiment with how science is funded.
Babbage: The challenge of tunnel warfare
42:45This week, Israeli soldiers entered the al-Shifa hospital in Gaza, claiming that Hamas runs a command centre in tunnels underneath the building. Hamas has denied this claim. Under the ground in Gaza, though, Hamas does run a sophisticated network of secret tunnels. Israel has vowed to destroy them and their forces will call on every technological trick they can have in their arsenal. But finding and eliminating tunnels is no easy task, and will no doubt make the war more deadly to civilians. How does war work, when it moves underground?Host: Alok Jha, The Economist’s science and technology editor, with Shashank Joshi, The Economist’s defence editor. Contributors: Daphné Richemond-Barak, author of “Underground Warfare” and a researcher at Reichman University, Israel; Eyal Weizman, an architect at Goldsmiths, University of London and boss of Forensic Architecture, which investigates violence committed by states, police forces, militaries, and corporations.Sign up for a free trial of Economist Podcasts+. If you’re already a subscriber to The Economist, you’ll have full access to all our shows as part of your subscription. For more information about how to access Economist Podcasts+, please visit our FAQs page or watch our video explaining how to link your account.
Babbage: Make space for Europe
38:58At a summit in Spain this week, officials from the European Space Agency (ESA) laid out bold ambitions: to become a more autonomous player in a burgeoning new space race, and to develop an American-style private space industry. But could the next SpaceX really be a European firm? It is clear that much work lies ahead. Alok Jha, The Economist’s science and technology editor, travels to ESA’s Paris headquarters to meet its director general, Josef Aschbacher.Essential listening, from our archive:“The race to the Moon's South Pole”, August 16th 2023“Hunting for life elsewhere—part two, JUICE”, April 12th 2023“The private Moon race”, January 25th 2023“NASA's newish rocket”, August 23rd 2022“A Starship is born”, February 15th 2022This is a subscriber-only episode. To listen sign up for a free trial of Economist Podcasts+If you’re already a subscriber to The Economist, you have full access to all our shows as part of your subscription.For more information about how to access Economist Podcasts+, please visit our FAQs page or watch our video explaining how to link your account.
Babbage picks: AI helps the Beatles get back
03:56An article from The Economist read aloud. The Beatles’ new AI-assisted single, “Now and Then”, will satisfy old fans and introduce the band to new ones, too.
Babbage: The promise (and problems) of embryo models
40:20Exactly how humans grow from a single cell in the womb is shrouded in mystery. To uncover the secrets, scientists need to watch human embryos as they develop, but these are hard to come by for research purposes and strict regulation restricts their use. So scientists have come up with an alternative tool: model embryos grown in the lab from stem cells. These “embryoids” have proven invaluable to medical researchers in recent years, but rapid advances in their technology mean that embryoids are becoming increasingly similar to real human embryos. Very soon, some embryoids could become indistinguishable from real embryos. How can scientists navigate this ethical grey area and work out—with public input—how these models should be used?Host: Alok Jha, The Economist’s science and technology editor. Contributors: The Economist’s Emilie Steinmark; Berna Sozen, a reproductive scientist at Yale School of Medicine; Kirstin Matthews, a biologist and science policy researcher at Rice University.This is a subscriber-only episode. To listen sign up for a free trial of Economist Podcasts+If you’re already a subscriber to The Economist, you have full access to all our shows as part of your subscription.For more information about how to access Economist Podcasts+, please visit our FAQs page or watch our video explaining how to link your account.
Babbage: How to avoid a battery shortage
44:44In the coming decades, electric vehicles will dominate the roads and renewables will provide energy to homes. But for the green transition to be successful, unprecedented amounts of energy storage is needed. Batteries will be used everywhere—from powering electric vehicles, to providing electricity when the sun doesn’t shine or the wind doesn’t blow. The current generation of batteries are lacking in capacity and are too reliant on rare metals, though. Many analysts worry about material shortages. How can technology help? Host: Alok Jha, The Economist’s science and technology editor. Contributors: Paul Markillie, our innovation editor; Matthieu Favas, our finance correspondent; Anjani Trivedi, our global business correspondent. Sign up for Economist Podcasts+ now and get 50% off your subscription with our limited time offer. If you’re already a subscriber to The Economist, you’ll have full access to all our shows as part of your subscription. For more information about how to access Economist Podcasts+, please visit our FAQs page or watch our video explaining how to link your account.
Babbage: Welcome to Economist Podcasts+
02:48A special mini episode to welcome you to our subscription service. Sign up for Economist Podcasts+ before October 31st for 50% off. If you’re already a subscriber to The Economist, you have full access to all our shows as part of your subscription.For more information about how to access Economist Podcasts+, please visit our FAQs page or watch our video explaining how to link your account.