Thanks to Callum and Maddie at the amazing Pints of Knowledge for hosting me and The World in A Phrase on January 28. And thanks to all the incredibly engaged folks who came out to Soho Comedy House to juggle words, ideas, and balls.

There was a blank sheet selected from the globe — once again, the first slip of paper chosen — and the topic was “technology”. With AI in mind, I managed to come up with this by British scientist Alfred North Whitehead:

Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking of them

though I could have also shared this by science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke, but I didn’t think of it until afterwards (l’esprit de l’escalier strikes again):

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic

which now also reminds me of Theodor W. Adorno’s classic:

Art is magic delivered from the lie of being truth.

This Behavioral Grooves episode about aphorisms is available on Spotify, Apple, and in glorious living color on YouTube. Thanks to groovy hosts Tim Houlihan and Kurt Nelson for a conversation covering everything from fortune cookies to cognitive heuristics.

And check out my conversation about aphorisms with legendary broadcaster and author Michael Rosen on BBC 4’s wonderful Word of Mouth program. For a blast from the past, revisit this December 2, 2005 Word of Mouth conversation with Michael Rosen about the same subject, broadcast when original edition of The World in A Phrase (then known as We Are What We Think in the UK) came out.