Babbage is The Economist’s weekly podcast on science and technology—named after Charles Babbage, the grandfather of computing. Explore the science changing the way we live from AI to genetics, particle physics and space travel with Alok Jha. This award-winning podcast features in-depth interviews with top scientists and special episodes investigating wellness trends. Published every Wednesday.
If you’re already a subscriber to The Economist, you’ll have full access to all our shows as part of your subscription.
For more information about Economist Podcasts+, including how to get access, please visit our FAQs page here https://myaccount.economist.com/s/article/What-is-Economist-Podcasts (https://myaccount.economist.com/s/article/What-is-Economist-Podcasts)
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy (https://acast.com/privacy) for more information.
The Economist's John Prideaux retraces Alexis de Tocqueville's 1831 journey to assess the enduring vitality of American democracy today.
26 Jan 2026TRANSCRIPT
Trailer: Boss Class Season 3
Andrew Palmer previews the third season of "Boss Class," exploring how AI transforms work and management, offering insights to convert anxiety into opportunity in the age of artificial intelligence; this is a trailer.
16 Jul 2025TRANSCRIPT
The bomb (part 1): were nuclear weapons inevitable?
Alok Jha interviews Frank Close, Cheryl Rofer, and Nicholas Lewis about the origins of nuclear physics in the early 20th century and its connection to the creation of the first atomic bomb.
30 Apr 2025TRANSCRIPT
Herman Pontzer: what people get wrong about metabolism
Evolutionary anthropologist Herman Pontzer discusses the exercise paradox, revealing how our bodies constrain energy use and challenging common weight loss assumptions in an interview with Alok Jha.
30 Apr 2025TRANSCRIPT
Trailer: Boss Class Season 2
Economist management columnist Andrew Palmer previews the second season of Boss Class, which features leaders from top companies and explores learnable management skills in an interview.
5 Feb 2025TRANSCRIPT
Trailer: Scam Inc
The Economist's Sue-Lin Wong investigates a shadowy, multi-billion dollar scam economy built on human trafficking and corruption, exploring its global reach and potential to be stopped.
29 May 2024TRANSCRIPT
Trailer: The Modi Raj
The Economist's Avantika Chilkoti interviews guests about Narendra Modi's political phenomenon and India's economic rise.
22 May 2024TRANSCRIPT
AI and health part one: DrGPT will see you now
Alok Jha interviews Natasha Loder, Gerald Lip, Peter Kecskemethy, Pranav Rajpurkar, and Hugh Harvey about how AI like ChatGPT improves patient access, disease detection, and medical research.
1 May 2024TRANSCRIPT
Babbage: Teens and their screens
Host Alok Jha interviews Tom Wainwright, Clare Fernyhough, Carol Vidal, and Pete Etchells about the complex relationship between teen mental health and screen time, exploring whether current concerns represent a moral panic or a genuine crisis.
6 Mar 2024TRANSCRIPT
Babbage: The science that built the AI revolution—part one
Alok Jha interviews Yoshua Bengio, a godfather of AI, exploring the scientific journey from early thinking machines to today's powerful language models.
21 Feb 2024TRANSCRIPT
Babbage: The hunt for dark matter
Alok Jha interviews scientists Don Lincoln, Christopher Karwin, Josef Aschbacher, Michael Murra, Jodi Cooley, Deborah Pinna, and others about the ongoing hunt for elusive dark matter.
24 Jan 2024TRANSCRIPT
Babbage: Sam Altman and Satya Nadella on their vision for AI
The Economist's Zanny Minton Beddoes interviews OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella about their AI vision and societal impacts.
20 Dec 2023
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 that have inspired them in their careers as science journalists.
Host: Alok Jha, The Economist’s science and technology editor. Contributors: Rachel Dobbs, The Economist’s climate correspondent; Kenneth Cukier, our deputy executive editor; The Economist’s Emilie Steinmark; Geoff Carr, our senior editor for science and technology; and Abby Bertics, The Economist’s science correspondent.
Reading list: “The Periodic Table” by Primo Levi; “When We Cease to Understand the World” by Benjamín Labatut; “A Theory of Everyone” by Michael Muthukrishna; “Madame Curie” by Ève Curie; “Sociobiology” by E. O. Wilson; “The Selfish Gene” by Richard Dawkins; “Why Fish Don't Exist” by Lulu Miller; and “How Far the Light Reaches” by Sabrina Imbler.
Sign up for a free trial (http://www.economist.com/podcastsplus-babbage) of Economist Podcasts+. If you’re already a subscriber to The Economist, you’ll have full access to all our shows as part of your subscription. For more information about how to access Economist Podcasts+, please visit our FAQs page (https://myaccount.economist.com/s/article/What-is-Economist-Podcasts) or watch our video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48TlDbL-4vU) explaining how to link your account.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy (https://acast.com/privacy) for more information.
22 Nov 2023
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-like abilities. Fears over the existential risks posed by AI have dominated the global conversation around the technology ever since.
Fei-Fei Li, a pioneer that helped lay the groundwork that underpins modern generative AI models, takes a more nuanced approach. She’s pushing for a human-centred way of dealing with AI—treating it as a tool to help enhance—and not replace—humanity, while focussing on the pressing challenges of disinformation, bias and job disruption.
Fei-Fei Li is the founding co-director of Stanford University’s Institute for Human-Centred Artificial Intelligence. Fei-Fei and her research group created ImageNet, a huge database of images that enabled computers scientists to build algorithms that were able to see and recognise objects in the real world. That endeavour also introduced the world to deep learning, a type of machine learning that is fundamental part of how large-language and image-creation models work.
Host: Alok Jha, The Economist’s science and technology editor.
Sign up for a free trial (http://www.economist.com/podcastsplus-babbage) of Economist Podcasts+. If you’re already a subscriber to The Economist, you’ll have full access to all our shows as part of your subscription. For more information about how to access Economist Podcasts+, please visit our FAQs page (https://myaccount.economist.com/s/article/What-is-Economist-Podcasts) or watch our video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48TlDbL-4vU) explaining how to link your account.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy (https://acast.com/privacy) for more information.
25 Oct 2023
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 amounts of energy storage is needed. Batteries will be used everywhere—from powering electric vehicles, to providing electricity when the sun doesn’t shine or the wind doesn’t blow. The current generation of batteries are lacking in capacity (https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2023/08/23/superbatteries-will-transform-the-performance-of-evs?utm_campaign=a.io&utm_medium=audio.podcast.np&utm_source=babbage&utm_content=discovery.content.anonymous.tr_shownotes_na-na_article&utm_term=sa.listeners) and are too reliant on rare metals (https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2023/09/11/how-to-avoid-a-green-metals-crunch?utm_campaign=a.io&utm_medium=audio.podcast.np&utm_source=babbage&utm_content=discovery.content.anonymous.tr_shownotes_na-na_article&utm_term=sa.listeners), though. Many analysts worry about material shortages. How can technology help?
Host: Alok Jha, The Economist’s science and technology editor. Contributors: Paul Markillie, our innovation editor; Matthieu Favas, our finance correspondent; Anjani Trivedi, our global business correspondent.
Sign up for Economist Podcasts+ now and get 50% off your subscription with our limited time offer (http://www.economist.com/podcastsplus-babbage).
If you’re already a subscriber to The Economist, you’ll have full access to all our shows as part of your subscription.
For more information about how to access Economist Podcasts+, please visit our FAQs page (https://myaccount.economist.com/s/article/What-is-Economist-Podcasts) or watch our video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48TlDbL-4vU) explaining how to link your account.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy (https://acast.com/privacy) for more information.
6 May 2015
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 correspondents about the innovations, discoveries and gadgetry shaping the world. Published every Wednesday.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy (https://acast.com/privacy) for more information.
Inside a recent episode
Trailer: Tocqueville Road Trip
Published 23 Jun 2026 · Transcript excerpt
[…] But Tocqueville caught a glimpse of what it could become. a new kind of society that would give the world a spectacle for which history had not prepared it. A land with no kings or queens, where citizens made the rules. And so he set off on a nine-month road trip to figure out how it worked. […]
Pod Engine is an independent podcast discovery and analytics service and is not affiliated with or endorsed by this podcast. Artwork and show content belong to their owners. Full legal notice.
Explore this show Podcast research with Pod Engine
