Learn about what happens after your life is "fully optimized" from a special guest: Professor Joseph M. Reagle Jr., author of the new book “Hacking Life: Systematized Living and Its Discontents.” You’ll also learn why white holes could explain some of the universe’s most unexplainable characteristics — at least, if they exist. Please support our sponsors! Get your first month of KiwiCo FREE by visiting https://www.kiwico.com/curiosity. In this podcast, Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer discuss the following story from Curiosity.com about why white holes could explain some of the universe’s most unexplainable characteristics: https://curiosity.im/2WvxfAw Publications and additional resources from Joseph M. Reagle, Jr: “Hacking Life: Systematized Living and Its Discontents” — https://amazon.com “Reading the Comments: Likers, Haters, and Manipulators at the Bottom of the Web” — https://amazon.com “Good Faith Collaboration: The Culture of Wikipedia” — https://amazon.com Official website — https://reagle.org/joseph/ Follow @jmreagle on Twitter — https://twitter.com/jmreagle MIT Press — https://mitpress.mit.edu/contributors/joseph-m-reagle-jr Get your copy of “Hacking Life: Systematized Living and Its Discontents” on Amazon: https://amazon.com If you love our show and you're interested in hearing full-length interviews, then please consider supporting us on Patreon. You'll get exclusive episodes and access to our archives as soon as you become a Patron! https://www.patreon.com/curiositydotcom Download the FREE 5-star Curiosity app for Android and iOS at https://curiosity.im/podcast-app. And Amazon smart speaker users: you can listen to our podcast as part of your Amazon Alexa Flash Briefing — just click “enable” here: https://curiosity.im/podcast-flash-briefing.
Learn about what happens after your life is "fully optimized" from a special guest: Professor Joseph M. Reagle Jr., author of the new book “Hacking Life: Systematized Living and Its Discontents.” You’ll also learn why white holes could explain some of the universe’s most unexplainable characteristics — at least, if they exist.
Please support our sponsors! Get your first month of KiwiCo FREE by visiting https://www.kiwico.com/curiosity.
In this podcast, Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer discuss the following story from Curiosity.com about why white holes could explain some of the universe’s most unexplainable characteristics: https://curiosity.im/2WvxfAw
Publications and additional resources from Joseph M. Reagle, Jr:
Get your copy of “Hacking Life: Systematized Living and Its Discontents” on Amazon: https://amazon.com
If you love our show and you're interested in hearing full-length interviews, then please consider supporting us on Patreon. You'll get exclusive episodes and access to our archives as soon as you become a Patron! https://www.patreon.com/curiositydotcom
Download the FREE 5-star Curiosity app for Android and iOS at https://curiosity.im/podcast-app. And Amazon smart speaker users: you can listen to our podcast as part of your Amazon Alexa Flash Briefing — just click “enable” here: https://curiosity.im/podcast-flash-briefing.
Find episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/life-after-life-hacking-w-professor-joseph-m-reagle-jr-and-white-hole-science
CODY: Hi! We’re here from curiosity-dot-com to help you get smarter in just a few minutes. I’m Cody Gough.
ASHLEY: And I’m Ashley Hamer. Today, you’ll learn about what happens after you’ve used life hacks to become fully optimized, in the final edition of our life hacking mini-series with Professor Joseph Reagle. You’ll also learn why we could explain some of the universe’s most unexplainable characteristics using white holes — but only if they actually exist.
CODY: Let’s satisfy some curiosity.
Joseph Reagle Clip 4 - Overview of life hacking and what happens next? (3:51) 6/6 (Cody)
Life hacks can’t solve all your problems, as you’ll learn in the final edition of our “Hacking Thursdays” mini-series. We’re joined by Joseph Reagle, an associate professor of communication studies at Northeastern University and author of the new book “Hacking Life: Systematized Living and Its Discontents.” In this clip, we’ll put a neat little bow on our conversation by getting a summary of how Professor Reagle actually categorizes life hacks, and where people sometimes end up once their lives are fully “optimized.”
[CLIP 3:51]
The key takeaway: feel free to try out the life hacks from our podcast, but don’t expect them to solve ALL your problems. Again, that was Joseph Reagle, an associate professor of communication studies at Northeastern University and author of the book “Hacking Life: Systematized Living and Its Discontents.” You can find a link to the book and past episodes from this mini-series in today’s show notes, and as always, you can find our full uncut conversation on our Patreon page at patreon-dot-com-slash-curiosity-dot-com, all spelled out.
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If White Holes Exist, They Could Explain a Lot — https://curiosity.im/2WvxfAw (from Saturday) (Ashley)
Einstein made some rock-solid predictions, from the existence of black holes to the way massive collisions could cause gravitational waves. One of his predictions that hasn’t come true YET is the theoretical opposite to black holes: white holes. And while we haven’t proven they exist yet, some scientists think they could explain some of the universe’s most unexplainable characteristics. So let’s talk white holes. You already know that black holes form when a massive star dies, and its core shrinks until it's so dense that nothing can escape its gravity. Inside of that point of no return, the star continues to collapse into an infinitely dense point, known as a singularity. The singularity is one of the places black holes get messy — at least, mathematically speaking. In 1935, Albert Einstein and fellow physicist Nathan Rosen fixed that math by extending the point into a path that leads to a second location. This path was called an Einstein-Rosen Bridge, but you probably know it as a wormhole. A black hole is at one end of a wormhole, and that means that the other end is — you guessed it — a white hole. While anything that enters a black hole can never escape, anything that escapes a white hole can never return. At least, theoretically. While we know that black holes exist, so far, white holes only exist in pages of physics papers. Some scientists say they’re probably just imaginary, but there are still physicists who keep coming back to them. In 2014, theorists Hal Haggard and Carlo Rovelli used quantum theory to show that black holes could actually transform into white holes via something called loop quantum gravity. That theory basically says that the fundamental building blocks of spacetime are shaped like tiny loops, and since those loops have a finite size, that means a dying star can’t actually collapse into a point of infinite density. Instead, right before it reaches infinity, a dying star would experience a quantum bounce that exerts an outward pressure and turns it into a white hole. (If true, this could be a solution to the black hole information paradox, which says that even though anything that falls into a black hole can never escape, black holes gradually emit radiation until they disappear completely. That's a problem because information cannot be destroyed. A white hole would deliver that information safely out the other side.)
The black-to-white transformation would happen in a few thousandths of a second, but because time dilates in the presence of gravity, that fraction of a second might seem more like billions of years to an outside observer. That could be a reason we haven't seen one yet: The universe is just too young, and most black holes are too big. For now, although white holes sure would be a convenient way to explain a lot of the universe's biggest mysteries, there’s a strong possibility that they’re just not a thing. Still, some of Einstein's wilder predictions turned out to be true — maybe we just need to wait another few billion years to find out.
CODY: Read about today’s stories and more on curiosity-dot-com!
ASHLEY: Join us again tomorrow for the award-winning Curiosity Daily and learn something new in just a few minutes. I’m [NAME] and I’m [NAME]. Stay curious!