Big Picture Science: Swarm in Here... Or Is It Just Me?

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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

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