Models are widely used in science to represent complex real-world phenomena in simplified forms to advance understanding. Though often overlooked, models can facilitate analysis by reducing scale and complexity and help to visualise things that are difficult to understand. But what makes for a good model and how does an approximation of something tell us more about the thing itself?

In this week’s podcast, we discuss models. We explore the desert kites of Asia and Africa, discuss heuristics, cartography, Borges, AI and machine learning, the historical development of models and examples of models that may surprise you. Finally, we describe some of our favourite model memories.

A few things we mentioned in this podcast:

- The oldest plans to scale of humanmade mega-structures https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0277927 - On Exactitude in Science https://kwarc.info/teaching/TDM/Borges.pdf - Spinal Tap - Stonehenge https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qAXzzHM8zLw - Bourton-on-the-Water model village https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bourton-on-the-Water_model_village - Mary Poppins: Let’s Go Fly a Kite https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WyhJhf6Q7lg

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