Over the past two decades, complexity science has matured from its origins as a small, largely esoteric subfield of theoretical statistical physics and mathematics into an expansive area of inquiry that bridges disciplines and addresses some of the world’s most acute interconnected challenges.  Nowhere has this interdisciplinary, applied process become more apparent than with the ongoing convergence of complexity and health.  This convergence is happening at all scales—individual and collective, private and public—across approaches to prevention, treatment, management, and containment in integrative and public health spaces, as well as through applied research and innovation. “Our methodological approach goes on and on down to the level of microbiology and finally finding cures for many diseases,” says Italian American physicist and complex networks scientist Alessandro Vespignani. “All that goes through networks and through a vision that has complex systems at the core. Network science is a way to approach complex systems,” Vespignani explained from within Northeastern University’s Network Science Institute, where he serves as director, leads the Laboratory for the Modeling of Biological and Socio-technical Systems (MOBS) lab, and heads several impactful public health initiatives. “We look at elements and their interactions, and we do not get rid of nonlinear phenomena, feedback loops, et cetera, that exist in real world systems; we need to consider those,” Vespignani continues. “And in that sense, there is even more urgency in the work that we as a community do to respond to those challenges and to be of service to the society.” Explore the full InterDialogue with Alessandro Vespignani. The COVID-19 pandemic served as a critical moment of applied research and broad engagement with public health policy for those, like Vespignani, who work at the interface of complexity and health. But theoretical research and its translation into experiments and action began several years prior and...

In this guest InterDialogue, folklorist and InterPlex content and operations strategist Rowan Glass converses with K. Brandon Barker, Associate Professor of Folklore at Indiana University Bloomington and editor of Children’s Folklore Review. Barker co-authored the book Folk Illusions with Claiborne Rice, introducing the term “folk illusions” to study children’s play forms in relation to the science of perception and cognition. He has also written on animal cognition and the folklore of science with comparative psychologist Daniel Povinelli, with whom he co-edited the book The Aesop’s Fable Paradigm. For several years, Barker led the Folklore and Science Section of the American Folklore Society, which he helped found. The conversation begins with two notoriously murky words: how to define both folklore and science when both terms carry so much baggage? Barker makes the case that “the folk” are far less naive than some scientists assume, and that folklore’s ethnographic methods can offer insights into problems like vaccine hesitancy and misinformation by taking seriously perspectives often overlooked by or inaccessible to scholars in other fields. Glass then addresses Barker’s research on folk illusions and what children’s play reveals about adultcentrism, body acquisition, and the science of perception. They probe the epistemological stakes of folklore scholarship in relation to the natural sciences, asking whether folklorists can or should advance universal claims and broad theoretical frameworks. They also talk about computation folklore and Barker’s work on the folklore of animal cognition. The conversation then turns toward humans’ seemingly inherent tendencies toward anthropomorphism and human exceptionalism—whether applied to animals or artificial intelligence. Barker asserts that our seemingly inherent penchant for projecting human qualities onto the non-human world might be more powerful, and perhaps more dangerous, than we realize. Timestamps 0:00 – Introduction 2:22 – Defining folklore 4:14 – Defining science and the “folk as naive” blind...

Marta González is a Venezuelan-American physicist and complexity scientist whose research explores the dynamics of human mobility, urban systems, and sustainability through the lens of statistical physics and network science. She is a professor of civil and environmental engineering and city and regional planning at the University of California, Berkeley, where she also serves as associate director of the Transportation Sustainability Research Center. González is internationally recognized for pioneering the use of large-scale mobility data to better understand cities and inform public policy. In this wide-ranging InterDialogue, González reflects on her journey from physics into complexity science and urban research, explaining how statistical physics provides powerful tools for understanding human mobility and the collective dynamics of cities. We discuss the emergence of urban science as an interdisciplinary field, the opportunities and limitations of mobile phone and mobility datasets, and how these data can improve transportation planning, climate adaptation, and the design of more resilient and sustainable cities. González also explores the challenges of translating scientific research into public policy, including questions of data access, privacy, and collaboration between researchers, governments, and industry. We further examine the future of urban mobility, autonomous vehicles, and clean energy, as well as the importance of international collaboration and expanding scientific capacity across the Global South. Finally, she reflects on the broader promise of complexity science for addressing some of the most pressing social and environmental challenges facing rapidly urbanizing societies. Timestamps 0:00 – Introduction and Marta González’s path into complexity science 5:01 – From statistical physics to human mobility research 10:18 – Mobile phone data and the emergence of urban science 15:42 – Sustainable cities, climate adaptation, and resilience 20:24 – Privacy, data access, and international collaboration 25:42 – Using complexity science to inform urban policy 29:32 – Measuring the impact of remote work...

Jaishri Sanwal Bhatt is an Indian geologist and paleoclimatologist based at the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research in Bangalore, where she combines scientific research with a strong commitment to public outreach, advocacy, and science communication. For more than twenty years, Sanwal’s work has centered on reconstructing past climate change and active tectonic processes through the study of cave records and other geological proxies, especially paleolakes and speleothems. Her research has spanned the Indian and Nepalese Himalayas, the Andaman Islands, and both the eastern and western coasts of India, engaging major questions related to earth systems, water security, and natural hazards. In this wide-ranging and engaging InterDialogue, we discuss deep geological time, the proposed nuclear energy transition in India, the value of interdisciplinarity and clearer scientific communication, Sanwal’s efforts to organize science outreach initiatives in rural India, and much more. Timestamps 2:22 – Sanwal’s background and introduction to geology 8:43 – Big History and the evolution of the Earth through geology 14:25 – Sanwal’s research 16:45 – Tracking historical precipitation patterns through sediment 21:10 – Connecting paleoclimatology to contemporary climate science 25:53 – Tracking and analyzing extreme events through rocks 29:07 – Comparing chronological dating systems 32:52 – Sanwal’s work with lake cores 37:34 – Tracking tsunami episodes in the Andamans 44:09 – Evidence of tsunamis in mangrove forests 49:00 – Local knowledge and community collaborations 52:32 – Nuclear energy transition in India and waste disposal 57:18 – Risks of geological repositories for nuclear waste 1:00:16 – Sanwal’s rural science outreach and education initiatives

In this InterDialogue, Spanish physicist and complex systems theorist Jesús Gómez-Gardeñes speaks with The InterPlex founder Daniel Henryk Rasolt about a wide range of topics, beginning with a discussion of LANET, the Latin American Conference on Complex Networks, which he helped found. Jesús Gómez-Gardeñes is a Full Professor in the Department of Condensed Matter Physics at the University of Zaragoza in Spain, where he leads the Group of Theoretical & Applied Modeling (GOTHAM lab) at the BIFI Institute. Professor Gómez-Gardeñes has led a varied and impactful career. His research has explored topics such as collective behavior, nonlinear dynamics, evolutionary dynamics, epidemics, and theoretical biology, all from the standpoint of complex systems and network theory. He is currently organizing the 2026 CompleNet conference, to be held in Zaragoza from May 4 to 8. This dialogue ranges from Gómez-Gardeñes’s experiences as a thought leader in complex network sciences in Europe and Latin America to his work on epidemics, urban mobility, and metapopulation networks. He also touches on confronting anti-science rhetoric and the need for scientists to address misinformation by establishing effective links with the media and policymakers. The discussion concludes with an assessment of the complexity inherent to Colombia, a nation that Gómez-Gardeñes has spent much time working in, and a view toward his current and future projects. Timestamps 0:00 – Introduction 4:32 – How LANET Was Founded 8:23 – International Academic Exchange between Colombia and Europe 11:28 – The Role of Complex Networks in Interdisciplinary Collaborations 14:19 – Networking and Collaborating Through Conferences 17:17 – Building Local Capacity and Fostering International Collaborations 23:21 – Expanding Reach and Accessibility, Hybrid Courses 26:37 – Gómez-Gardeñes’s Research on Epidemics 32:33 – Metapopulation Networks 36:08 – Pivoting From Urban Mobility Research to Epidemics 41:10 – Mosquitoes as Vectors 47:03 – Socio-Behavioral Factors and Epidemic Forecasting...

Marcelino Sánchez Noé is an Indigenous leader and representative of the Ticuna People from the Colombian Amazon. He is the former general secretary and legal representative of the CIMTAR (Cabildo Indígena Mayor de Tarapacá) Association and has served as an Ethnoeducator in the Indigenous community of Caña Brava along the Cotuhue River, where he currently resides. This beautiful territory is deep in the Amazon Rainforest within the Putumayo River Basin, and near the border with Brazil. Since 2021 he has served as a senior advisor of the Greater Indigenous Council of Tarapacá and has participated in various intercultural collaborations with the Colombian State and with non-governmental organizations. His professional background is as a teacher and technician in comprehensive early childhood care, with a degree from SENA. In our Interdialogue we spoke about the beautiful culture and ancestral territory of the Tikuna, and how they have recently been roped into Colombia’s ongoing conflict, especially in relation to illegal gold mining. We then spoke about the central role of the “Chagra” (traditional rotational agriculture) for the Ticuna, and how circular bioeconomics focused on the Chagra and Non-timber forest products, as well as an appropriate integration of Western science and technology, can create sustainable livelihoods for the Ticuna. We also focused our conversation on the vital importance of autonomy and mutually respectful intercultural dialogue and collaborations, in order preserve both traditional cultures and the wider Andes-Amazon ecoregion. Note: This Interdialogue was recorded in Spanish and is subtitled in English. Timestamps 00:00:00 – Introduction 00:07:41 – Ancestral territory of the Ticuna and its place in Colombia’s ongoing conflict 00:11:53 – The importance of traditional knowledge, language and autonomous governance 00:16:52 – Bioeconomics, sustainable livelihoods and the central role of the “Chagra” 00:24:17 – Water, energy, communication, and the importance of weaving together science, technology...