Image by: Seth Shostak

Swarm in Here

Swarm in here... Or Is It Just Me?

From: Big Picture Science
Series: Big Picture Science
Length: 54:00

Collective intelligence is what makes bees and ants so successful – find out how researchers are helping humans to get their collective act together. Read the full description.

Piece Audio

Podcast Version

Promos

Playing: Swarm in here... Or Is It Just Me?
From: Big Picture Science

Swarminheremed_small

An ant … can’t … move a rubber tree plant… but the colony can. As a group, ants are an efficient, organized, can-do bunch. And a model for humans trying to manage complex systems.

Find out about the eerie collective intelligence of animals, and how an MIT researcher is hoping to put humans to work collaboratively to solve problems like climate change.

Also … hear how research into flocking behavior helps Hollywood film a herd of stampeding dinosaurs.

Guests:

Steve Strogatz – Applied mathematician at Cornell University and author of Sync: How Order Emerges From Chaos In the Universe, Nature, and Daily Life
Craig Reynolds – Senior researcher for Sony Computer Entertainment
Thomas Malone – Director of the Center for Collective Intelligence at MIT
Iain Couzin – Biologist at Princeton University

Playing: Swarm in here... Or Is It Just Me?
From: Big Picture Science

Swarminheremed_small

An ant … can’t … move a rubber tree plant… but the colony can. As a group, ants are an efficient, organized, can-do bunch. And a model for humans trying to manage complex systems.

Find out about the eerie collective intelligence of animals, and how an MIT researcher is hoping to put humans to work collaboratively to solve problems like climate change.

Also … hear how research into flocking behavior helps Hollywood film a herd of stampeding dinosaurs.

Guests:

Steve Strogatz – Applied mathematician at Cornell University and author of Sync: How Order Emerges From Chaos In the Universe, Nature, and Daily Life
Craig Reynolds – Senior researcher for Sony Computer Entertainment
Thomas Malone – Director of the Center for Collective Intelligence at MIT
Iain Couzin – Biologist at Princeton University

Playing: Swarm in here... Or Is It Just Me?
From: Big Picture Science

Swarminheremed_small

An ant … can’t … move a rubber tree plant… but the colony can. As a group, ants are an efficient, organized, can-do bunch. And a model for humans trying to manage complex systems.

Find out about the eerie collective intelligence of animals, and how an MIT researcher is hoping to put humans to work collaboratively to solve problems like climate change.

Also … hear how research into flocking behavior helps Hollywood film a herd of stampeding dinosaurs.

Guests:

Steve Strogatz – Applied mathematician at Cornell University and author of Sync: How Order Emerges From Chaos In the Universe, Nature, and Daily Life
Craig Reynolds – Senior researcher for Sony Computer Entertainment
Thomas Malone – Director of the Center for Collective Intelligence at MIT
Iain Couzin – Biologist at Princeton University

Also in the Big Picture Science series

Caption: Exoplanets, Credit: Seth Shostak

Exoplanets (54:00)
From: Big Picture Science

You may be unique, but is your home planet? Why the astronomer who’s discovered hundreds of exoplanets is hopeful about the hunt for alien life. Also, the next generation ...

Caption: This Land is Island, Credit: Seth Shostak

This Land is Island (54:00)
From: Big Picture Science

There are many kinds of islands. There’s your iconic sandy speck of land topped with a palm tree, but there’s also our home planet – an island in the vast seas of space. ...

Caption: Cosmos: It's Big, It's Weird, Credit: Seth Shostak

Cosmos: It's Big, It's Weird (54:00)
From: Big Picture Science

It’s all about you. And you, and you, and you and you … that is, if we live in parallel universes. Physicist Brian Greene’s case for multiverses.

Caption: ZZZZZs Please, Credit: Seth Shostak

ZZZZZs Please (53:58)
From: Big Picture Science

The science of why we sleep and technology that may allow us to record dreams.

Caption: Skeptic Check: Hostile Climate, Credit: Seth Shostak

Skeptic Check: Hostile Climate (54:00)
From: Big Picture Science

It’s a record we didn’t want to break. Carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere is at an all-time high. Meanwhile an op-ed in a leading newspaper says not to worry, ...

Caption: Going Viral, Credit: Seth Shostak

Going Viral (54:00)
From: Big Picture Science

Discover how viruses go from birds to pigs to you, how fossil viruses got into your genome, whether E.T. might be a virus, and what it takes for ideas to “go viral.”

Caption: Stomach This, Credit: Seth Shostak

Stomach This (54:00)
From: Big Picture Science

Not all conversation is appropriate for the dinner table – and that includes, strangely enough, the subject of eating. Yet, what happens during the time that food enters our ...

Caption: De-Extinction Show, Credit: Seth Shostak

De-Extinction Show (54:00)
From: Big Picture Science

Maybe goodbye isn’t forever. Get ready to mingle with mammoths and gaze upon a ground sloth. Scientists want to give some animals a round-trip ticket back from extinction. ...

Caption: Deep Time, Credit: Seth Shostak

Deep Time (54:00)
From: Big Picture Science

Think back, way back. Beyond last week to what was happening on Earth 100 million years ago or earlier. It’s hard to fathom such enormous stretches of time, yet to ...

Caption: Skeptic Check: Forget with the Program, Credit: Seth Shostak

Skeptic Check: Forget with the Program (54:00)
From: Big Picture Science

Just remember this: Even our memories of dramatic events that seem to burn themselves directly into our brain are riddled with errors.

Piece Description

An ant … can’t … move a rubber tree plant… but the colony can. As a group, ants are an efficient, organized, can-do bunch. And a model for humans trying to manage complex systems.

Find out about the eerie collective intelligence of animals, and how an MIT researcher is hoping to put humans to work collaboratively to solve problems like climate change.

Also … hear how research into flocking behavior helps Hollywood film a herd of stampeding dinosaurs.

Guests:

Steve Strogatz – Applied mathematician at Cornell University and author of Sync: How Order Emerges From Chaos In the Universe, Nature, and Daily Life
Craig Reynolds – Senior researcher for Sony Computer Entertainment
Thomas Malone – Director of the Center for Collective Intelligence at MIT
Iain Couzin – Biologist at Princeton University

Broadcast History

first released June 21, 2010

Additional Files

Listing - Swarm in Here (Swarm_in_Here.doc)

Additional Credits

Seth Shostak - Host and Producer
Molly Bentley - Co-Host and Executive Producer
Gary Niederhoff - Assistant Producer
Barbara Vance - Production Assistant
Jay Weiler - Assistant