Starting on September 21st I'll be giving a series of talks on Thursdays at 3 pm UK time in Room 6206 of the James Clerk Maxwell Building at the University of Edinburgh.  Here's the topic of the first couple talks:

    Categorification and the periodic table of n-categories 

Categorification is a not-completely-systematic process of taking known math and replacing sets by categories, functions by functors, and equations by natural isomorphisms. Often categorifying simple results in math leads to deeper, more interesting results. When we iterate categorification we're pushed into higher categories. Higher categories exhibit striking patterns visible in the "periodic table" of n-categories, such as the Stabilization Hypothesis, Tangle Hypothesis and Cobordism Hypothesis. I'll concentrate on sketching the basic ideas, since the evidence is much easier to explain than the rigorous proofs. This will be an elementary introduction to higher categories. 

Then I'll talk for a while about how combinatorics is categorified ring theory... and then other stuff.

The first talk is Thursday September 21st and the last on Thursday November 30th. I’ll skip October 19th and 27th… and any days there are strikes.

We'll make the talks hybrid on Zoom so you can join online:

https://ed-ac-uk.zoom.us/j/82270325098
Meeting ID: 822 7032 5098
Passcode: XXXXXX36

Here the X’s stand for the name of that famous lemma in category theory.

We'll also record them and make them available here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCy9yxdnj0yfOiMWvMa47PNw

If you join the Category Theory Community Server, you can discuss the talks here:

https://categorytheory.zulipchat.com/#narrow/stream/229141-general.3A-events/topic/This.20Week's.20Finds.20seminar

And I'll put notes here: https://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/twf/