Geoffrey West

Theoretical physicist, Santa Fe Institute, author of Scale

On the podcast

In their own words

“So it's not only that if you're in a big city like New York, you have more cases of flu, influenza or COVID-19, but you're gonna get them faster. It's gonna happen much faster.”April 2020, on the Vance Crowe Podcast, on the Vance Crowe Podcast

“It just means very fast. Well, it's true that is part of an exponential, but an exponential is so much more than that. And in fact, one of the tough things about an exponential is that it actually starts out very slow, starts out very gentle and very slow.”April 2020, on the Vance Crowe Podcast, on the Vance Crowe Podcast

“Can man and woman live by the internet alone? Is that conceivable or is it like sleep? Namely, you know, you can have as much nutrition as good nutrition as you could possibly imagine... But if you are denied sleep, you will die very quickly.”April 2020, on the Vance Crowe Podcast, on the Vance Crowe Podcast

Where this conversation traveled

Moments in later episodes where Geoffrey West's ideas and work resurfaced, drawn from the show's transcripts.

If you valued this conversation

• Jim Rutt — both connected to the Santa Fe Institute's network and complexity-science community
• Spencer Wells — recorded within days of West on the same subject — how the coronavirus pandemic would unfold
• Joscha Bach — recorded in the same one-month window of pandemic-focused episodes in spring 2020

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This page is maintained by Articulate Ventures as part of the permanent record of the Vance Crowe Podcast. Quotes are drawn from episode transcripts.