Book · recommended on 2 episodes
Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History
Stephen Jay Gould ISBN 9780393307009
Find it on AmazonAffiliate link — we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you.
Stephen Jay Gould ISBN 9780393307009
Find it on AmazonAffiliate link — we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you.
This book by Stephen Jay Gould has come up 2 times on Lex Fridman. 2 of those mentions were genuine on-air recommendations, not just passing references. The people who brought it up: Betül Kaçar, Dennis Whyte. The earliest mention we indexed is from 2022-12-29 and the most recent from 2023-01-21. Every occurrence below links to the episode page and to the exact second it was said on YouTube.
What would the world have been like, if George Bailey of "It's A Wonderful Life" hadn't been born? George was lucky enough to have an angel that could roll back the tape of life and show him how things would have been different. He learned that one contingency changes everything. In "Wonderful LIfe", an homage to the American classic film, "It's A Wonderful Life", Stephen J. Gould plays the role of the angel, rolling back the tape of life a half billion years for his readers through the lens of the Burgess Shale (British Columbia), arguably the most important fossil site on the planet.
“one of my favorite books of all time from Stephen J Gould if you've never read that book it kind of blows your mind it's about the Cambrian explosion of life”— Dennis Whyte
The guest here is Dennis Whyte: Nuclear physicist at MIT and director of the MIT Plasma Science and Fusion Center. A leader of the SPARC tokamak effort and a co-founder of the MIT spinout Commonwealth Fusion Systems. MIT fusion scientist Dennis Whyte explains how nuclear fusion works and why commercial fusion power finally looks four years away, not forty.
“the Stephen J Gold's book Wonderful Life which changed I think a lot of scientists life including mine”— Betül Kaçar
The guest here is Betul Kacar: An astrobiologist at the University of Wisconsin who studies the essential biological attributes of life. Her lab resurrects ancient genes and engineers bacteria to understand how life and its translation machinery evolved over billions of years. Astrobiologist Betul Kacar walks Lex Fridman through the origin of life, ancient DNA resurrection, the cell's translation machinery, and whether we should seed other planets.
26× recommendedTom O'Neill
17× recommendedSteven Pressfield
17× recommendedS.C. Gwynne
16× recommendedMarcus Aurelius
16× recommendedViktor Frankl
15× recommendedBrian Muraresku