Babbage from The Economist

Trailer: Tocqueville Road Trip

When Alexis de Tocqueville visited America from France in 1831 he saw a new kind of society. Not just a country, but an idea that would change the world. His book “Democr

The bomb (part 1): were nuclear weapons inevitable?

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 understand how a scientific-m

AI and health part one: DrGPT will see you now

Artificial intelligence is already making its mark in health care—but new, bigger, models promise to improve how patients access services, help doctors spot diseases fast

Babbage: Teens and their screens

Ever since there have been smartphones and social media, there have been concerns about how they might be affecting children. Over the past decade, doctors have seen a de

Babbage: The science that built the AI revolution—part one

What is intelligence? In the middle of the 20th century, the inner workings of the human brain inspired computer scientists to build the first “thinking machines”. But ho

Babbage: The hunt for dark matter

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 it must exist becaus

Babbage: Sam Altman and Satya Nadella on their vision for AI

OpenAI and Microsoft are leaders in generative artificial intelligence (AI). OpenAI has built GPT-4, one of the world’s most sophisticated large language models (LLMs) an

Babbage: Science book club

Books are the original medium for communicating science to the masses. In a holiday special, producer Kunal Patel asks Babbage’s family of correspondents about the books

Babbage: Fei-Fei Li on how to really think about the future of AI

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 remarkable, human-lik

Babbage: How to avoid a battery shortage

In the coming decades, electric vehicles will dominate the roads and renewables will provide energy to homes. But for the green transition to be successful, unprecedented

Babbage: Trailer

Babbage is our weekly podcast on science and technology, named after Charles Babbage—a 19th-century polymath and grandfather of computing. Host Alok Jha talks to our corr