Everything Falls Apart

On entropy, energy, and the art of building anyway

Throw a bucket of LEGO bricks into the air. Not one of the configurations they land in will be a castle. This is not bad luck. This is the Second Law of Thermodynamics - and it has something important to say about your life.

Entropy is the tendency of all things to move from order into disorder. Left alone, everything dissolves. The question is not whether this is true - it is - but what you do with that understanding.

In this episode, we take entropy out of the physics classroom and into everyday life. What happens to systems - cities, institutions, relationships, bodies - when they stop receiving energy. And what becomes possible when they do.

One question to carry into your week: where wi ...