Babbage from The Economist
Episodes
The bomb (part 1): were nuclear weapons inevitable?
16 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Where did the world’s most devastating weapon come from? In a four-part series, we go behind the scenes at America's nuclear laboratories to underst...
Trailer: Boss Class Season 2
30 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Good bosses are rare. They don’t have to be. The skills of management can be learned.The Economist’s management columnist, Andrew Palmer, is here ...
Trailer: Scam Inc
05 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
A sophisticated, predatory, multi-billion dollar industry is emerging from the shadows. It already rivals the size of the illicit drug trade. And it’...
Trailer: The Modi Raj
29 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Narendra Modi is one of the most popular politicians on the planet. India’s prime minister is eyeing a third term atop the world’s biggest democra...
AI and health part one: DrGPT will see you now
22 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Artificial intelligence is already making its mark in health care—but new, bigger, models promise to improve how patients access services, help doct...
Babbage: Teens and their screens
01 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Ever since there have been smartphones and social media, there have been concerns about how they might be affecting children. Over the past decade, do...
Babbage: The science that built the AI revolution—part one
06 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
What is intelligence? In the middle of the 20th century, the inner workings of the human brain inspired computer scientists to build the first “thin...
Babbage: The hunt for dark matter
21 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Dark matter is thought to make up around a quarter of the universe, but so far it has eluded detection by all scientific instruments. Scientists know ...
Babbage: Sam Altman and Satya Nadella on their vision for AI
24 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
OpenAI and Microsoft are leaders in generative artificial intelligence (AI). OpenAI has built GPT-4, one of the world’s most sophisticated large lan...
Babbage: Science book club
20 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Books are the original medium for communicating science to the masses. In a holiday special, producer Kunal Patel asks Babbage’s family of correspon...
Babbage: Fei-Fei Li on how to really think about the future of AI
22 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
A 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 r...
Babbage: How to avoid a battery shortage
25 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In the coming decades, electric vehicles will dominate the roads and renewables will provide energy to homes. But for the green transition to be succe...
Babbage: Trailer
06 May 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Babbage is our weekly podcast on science and technology, named after Charles Babbage—a 19th-century polymath and grandfather of computing. Host Alok...