Misha Glenny

speaker

1,430 appearances 22 recordings 1 series first heard May 2026 last heard 4d ago

Misha Glenny’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

Trend

recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 22 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 6.

Appearances

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In Our Time · Cybernetics · 28 May 2026 podcast

Can you define in as pithy a way as possible what cybernetics is? voice-verified

Thank you very much. voice-verified

Jacob Ward, can you give us a better idea of these feedback loops which seem to be so central to cybernetics and also the idea of circular causality? voice-verified

Absolutely, yeah. voice-verified

Norbert Wiener isn't, of course, the only figure in the story of cybernetics. voice-verified

Can you tell us a bit about Claude Shannon and how he comes into all of this? voice-verified

Thank you, Jacob. voice-verified

Arit, there are two other characters in this early stage of cybernetics who I'm interested in. voice-verified

One is Warren Sturgis McCulloch and the other is Walter Pitts. voice-verified

Can you tell us about them and how they influenced the way cybernetics developed? voice-verified

OK, let me take that on with you, Jacob, because as you pointed out, this is really the early history of artificial intelligence that they were beginning to explore. voice-verified

Can you tell us, Jacob, what the difference between brain modeling is and mind modeling? voice-verified

And I really want you to be as simple as possible here because I've been struggling with this. voice-verified

So, John Agar, let me go on to you about how they went about building these machines and putting this into practice. voice-verified

And perhaps you can start by telling us about Elmer and Elsie, the tortoises. voice-verified

What were they? voice-verified

But you mentioned the word self-awareness there. voice-verified

And of course, there's a lot of discussion these days about artificial intelligence and artificial general intelligence, about machines becoming self-aware. voice-verified

But voice-verified

This constant comparison between machines and animals in cybernetics, where they seem to assume that animals and machines function in the same way, isn't there something specific about the human brain which is it's not entirely rational? voice-verified

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