Cool episode, but ..... I thought this was going to be about cicadas!?!?! Listened to the program twice...did we miss it?!

What a great podcast but confusing at times!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I have seen somebody had already mentioned Buda. I think that Chinese has long been thinking of this problem and they have come with many methods to control your perceptions and consciousness (such as Zen). But the problem is that they could not quantumfy or articulate this into a Western style scientific way. They can show you how would you do it but not why....

I have seen somebody had already mentioned Buda. I think that Chinese has long been thinking of this problem and they have come with many methods to control your perceptions and consciousness (such as Zen). But the problem is that they could not quantumfy or articulate this into a Western style scientific way. They can show you how would you do it but not why....

This is the first full episode of radiolab I've ever listened to. Stunning piece of work. OK, I guess I now have to include you guys in my podcast rotation. Looking forward to many more hours of insights and stories.

I'm all for re-broadcast, but what did this have to do with cicadas? They don't have the complexity of groups of ants or bees. The only thing I can think is that they literally EMERGE. Wasn't there a program or a short that talked about the very emergence of cicadas before? I can't remember.

I love this show. Just thinking about how individually the ants are stupid but when you look at the colony they do amazing things. And now this - http://news.yahoo.com/ants-lead-way-earthquake-prediction-132826418.html

Where does earthquake awareness fit in? Are we saying that somehow individual sensors which don't mean anything in and of themselves, somehow result in the earthquake alarm at the society level?

There's a lot of really neat stuff in this show but it's really frustrating how they pitch things to a not so high common denominator. Robert asking where the rule is could have gone somewhere but then they just went into mystical territory. Our predisposition to see patterns and need to analogize everything to "simple" and familiar objects of everyday experience, like an author, is half the story. Instead they squander so much potential and, much like the media that uncritically give equal time to two sides to create an illusion of objectivity, push a faux-philosophical mysticism. It was maddening how the last story seemed like it was going to go into the way we perceive things. Was Robert's view meant to be a foil or straw man? It's implicitly contradicted by much of the discussion, but never explicitly addressed.

We have a really difficult time with the notion of nothing. Everything demands a context. How can a universe bubble into existence from nothing? That's beyond all human experience and imagination.

At the same time, the notion of a designer cobbling together something as complex and wondrous as a universe is equally incomprehensible. It's much easier to imagine (and be awestruck by) an emerging universe full of surprising twists and turns. If I were a god, what could be more delightful than planting these seeds and watching what springs forth.

An intriguing look at some amazing mysteries. I agree with Robert's sense that design points to a designer. Occam had something to say about simplicity. Considering the weight of all the inexplicably ordered yet observable phenomena in the universe, there is surely an engineer at its heart. Thanks for rebroadcasting.

Why is emergent systems that are not based on a ghost some how less meaningful? Every thought you will ever have is a biologic process. But that is totally amazing and pretty meaningful. Would it make it more meaningful if a ghost made it happen? Not really. Our quest for order within a systems is itself and emergent organized process. Its all a product of random noise in matter. Enough time passes with random noise and you get a protein that can clone itself by bumping into a different protein. Eventually you get a lifeform listening to radio lab. How is that not as meaningful as the stuff being created for a specific purpose? In the long run random noise is mandatory for complexity and for survival. We wouldn't be here if the Universe was not a crap shoot.

Buddhist teachings have much to say about how consciousness arises from the composite mind, and it always seems left out of these discussions, perhaps because it is classified as religion rather than science. You're right to say that you're reaching the edges of understanding, but perhaps that's only true for Western science.

I've seen the synchronization of fireflies at Elkmont in the smokies here in East Tn and it was absolutely amazing! I'm sad they failed to mention this in the episode.

To those looking for songs, may I suggest: www.tunefind.com

Thanks for your great work; but have you guys ever heard of SERENDIPITY?

In this program, Robert asks Jad something like, "So your view seems to remove purpose from the universe - and you're okay with that?" To which Jad replies, "Yeah!" But according to one of the most distinguished scholars associated with emergence, you are both missing the mark a little! Stuart Kauffman in his book _Reinventing the Sacred_ argues that purpose is a real quality of our universe (point Robert) - but that it is an EMERGENT quality of our universe. It is not bestowed, but rather it emerges, along with biology (point Jad?) "Part of my goal is to discuss newly discovered limitations to the reductionism that has dominated Western science at least since Galileo and Newton but leaves us in a meaningless world of facts devoid of values. In its place I will propose a worldview beyond reductionism, in which we are members of a universe of ceaseless creativity in which life, agency, meaning, value, consciousness, and the full richness of human action have emerged" (_Reinventing the Sacred_, p. 2). And although I really loved this episode, I have to ask: in a program about emergence, how could you leave out Stuart Kauffman?

Was just listening to this one and had to comment on the synchronistic fireflies that the couple went to Thailand to see. We do actually have these here in the U.S. Every July, in a specific part of the NC mountains, these fireflies emerge for a couple nights. It really is beautiful. At the same time, there are these blue fairy flies - with soft purplish-blue lights that don't blink at all - they stay lit. It's spectacular!

Love your show, by the way. Thanks!

Thanks guys! The podcast was amazing!

Hey Kent, do you know where in Pennsylvania you were when you saw this, and what time of year it was? I live in the Pittsburgh area, and would absolutely love to catch a glimpse of something like this.

Just listened to this episode for the first time. I work right above all the flower shops on 28th St they're talking about. Cool moment. Love when Radiolab comes to your own backyard :)

American fireflies at a specific location in the Smokey Mountains do synchronize for a few weeks every year and it is an unbelievable experience to watch them. http://www.nps.gov/grsm/naturescience/fireflies.htm

Just listened to the show again and then I saw this:

tongal.com

An anagram of Galton and a site that uses the principle that crowd-think works on all kinds of creative projects.

Well, I googled "Steven" and he came up as number seven (six if you count the two Spielberg links as a single one), so he's still going strong.

A comment was made early in the podcast that American fireflies do not synchronize like fireflies from other parts of the world. In about 1982 I was traveling across Pennsylvania in the middle of the night and I stopped for a break at a closed gas station. Behind the station was a gully and it had about ten thousand fireflies in it. Trees were completely synced, flashing off and on in perfect unison. Waves of flashes rippled across the ground where fireflies were sitting on the grass. My wife is a witness.

Does anyone know what song was playing at about 49:40?

Nevermind. I came across the answer. The song is An Ending by Brian Eno if anyone else is wondering. Here's a YouTube link to the song.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMXaE9NtQgg

Does anyone know the name of the song playing in the background at 25:10? It's incredibly familiar but I can't remember where it's from.