Podcasts · Science

Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas

Sean Carroll

300 episodes

Ever wanted to know how music affects your brain, what quantum mechanics really is, or how black holes work? Do you wonder why you get emotional each time you see a certain movie, or how on earth video games are designed? Then you've come to the right place. Each week, Sean Carroll will host conversations with some of the most interesting thinkers in the world. From neuroscientists and engineers to authors and television producers, Sean and his guests talk about the biggest ideas in science, philosophy, culture and much more.

Episodes page 2 of 6

  1. 335 | Andrew Jaffe on Models, Probability, and the Universe

    · 1 h 18 min · Episode 335

    Science has an incredibly impressive track record of uncovering nonintuitive ideas about the universe that turn out to be surprisingly accurate. It can be tempting to think of scientific discoveries as being carefully…

  2. 334 | Daniel Whiteson on the Physics of and by Aliens

    · 1 h 14 min · Episode 334

    The universe as revealed by physics is objective: it's out there, existing and behaving in ways that are completely independent of human thought. But the process by which we learn about the universe, and the language…

  3. 333 | Gordon Pennycook on Unthinkingness, Conspiracies, and What to Do About Them

    · 1 h 10 min · Episode 333

    Why are people wrong all the time, anyway? Is it because we human beings are too good at being irrational, using our biases and motivated reasoning to convince ourselves of something that isn't quite accurate? Or is it…

  4. 332 | Dmitri Tymoczko on the Mathematics Behind Music

    · 1 h 21 min · Episode 332

    Music is math that you can dance to. The fact that certain notes sound good when played together, or in succession, is related to the mathematical properties of the frequencies to which they correspond, an idea that…

  5. AMA | October 2025

    · 3 h 37 min · Bonus

    Welcome to the October 2025 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are funded by Patreon supporters (who are also the ones asking the questions). We take questions asked by Patreons, whittle…

  6. 331 | Solo: Fine-Tuning, God, and the Multiverse

    · 1 h 55 min · Episode 331

    Certain features of our universe seem unnatural to us. These include "constants of nature" such as the cosmological constant and the mass of the Higgs boson, as well as features of the initial conditions like the…

  7. 330 | Petter Törnberg on the Dynamics of (Mis)Information

    · 1 h 12 min · Episode 330

    A characteristic of complex systems is that individual components combine to exhibit large-scale emergent behavior even when the components were not specifically designed for any particular purpose within the…

  8. 329 | Steven Pinker on Rationality and Common Knowledge

    · 1 h 17 min · Episode 329

    Getting along in society requires that we mostly adhere to certainly shared norms and customs. Often it's not enough that we all know what the rules are, but also that everyone else knows the rules, and that they know…

  9. 328 | Mary Roach on Replacing Parts of Our Bodies

    · 1 h 07 min · Episode 328

    Like any machine, bodies occasionally break down, and it's natural to go in search of a replacement part. Ancient societies featured simple prosthetics for teeth, noses, and limbs, while modern medicine pursues more…

  10. AMA | September 2025

    · 3 h 30 min · Bonus

    Welcome to the September 2025 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are funded by Patreon supporters (who are also the ones asking the questions). We take questions asked by Patreons, whittle…

  11. 327 | Cass Sunstein on Liberalism

    · 1 h 10 min · Episode 327

    "Liberalism," divorced from its particular connotations in this or that modern political context, refers broadly to a philosophy of individual rights, liberties, and responsibilities, coupled with respect for…

  12. 326 | Natalie Batalha on What We Know and Will Learn About Exoplanets

    · 1 h 12 min · Episode 326

    In a relatively short period of time, exoplanets (planets around stars other than our Sun) have gone from an intriguing conjecture to an active field of scientific study, with over 5,000 confirmed discoveries. The task…

  13. 325 | Alvy Ray Smith on Pixar, Pixels, and the Great Digital Convergence

    · 1 h 27 min · Episode 325

    The world is becoming pixelated. As computers and other digital devices become ubiquitous, human knowledge and communication and information is gradually being converted into, and manipulated as, strings of bits. What…

  14. 324 | Elizabeth Mynatt on Universities and the Importance of Basic Research

    · 1 h 14 min · Episode 324

    It is not manifestly obvious that universities should be where most scholarly research is performed. One could imagine systems that separated out the tasks of "teaching students" and "generating new knowledge." But it…

  15. AMA | August 2025

    · 3 h 40 min · Bonus

    Welcome to the August 2025 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are funded by Patreon supporters (who are also the ones asking the questions). We take questions asked by Patreons, whittle them…

  16. 323 | Jacob Barandes on Indivisible Stochastic Quantum Mechanics

    · 2 h 58 min · Episode 323

    The search for a foundational theory of quantum mechanics that all physicists can agree on remains active. Over the last century a number of contenders have emerged, including Many-Worlds, pilot-wave theories, and…

  17. 322 | Philip Pettit on Language, Agency, Politics, and Freedom

    · 1 h 21 min · Episode 322

    When we think of the capacities that distinguish humans from other species, we generally turn to intelligence and its byproducts, including our technological prowess. But our intelligence is highly connected to our…

  18. 321 | David Tong on Open Questions in Quantum Field Theory

    · 1 h 19 min · Episode 321

    Quantum field theory is the basis for our most successful theories of fundamental physics. And yet, there are things we don't understand about it. Some of these puzzles are relatively well-known, while others are less…

  19. AMA | July 2025

    · 4 h 03 min · Bonus

    Welcome to the July 2025 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are funded by Patreon supporters (who are also the ones asking the questions). We take questions asked by Patreons, whittle them…

  20. 320 | Solo: Complexity and the Universe

    · 2 h 15 min · Episode 320

    Our universe started out looking very simple: hot, dense, smooth, rapidly expanding. According to our best current model, it will end up looking simple once again: cold, dark, empty. It's in between -- now, roughly…

  21. 319 | Bryan Van Norden on Philosophy From the Rest of the World

    · 1 h 13 min · Episode 319

    It is common to refer to philosophy as "a series of footnotes to Plato." But in the original quote, Alfred North Whitehead was more careful: he limited his characterization to "the European philosophical tradition."…

  22. 318 | Edward Miguel on the Developing Practice of Development Economics

    · 1 h 21 min · Episode 318

    Economics is seeing an upsurge in the importance of controlled, reproducible empirical studies. One area where this has had a great impact is on development economics, which studies the economies of low- and…

  23. 317 | Nicole Rust on Why Neuroscience Hasn't Solved Brain Disorders

    · 1 h 15 min · Episode 317

    The human brain is extremely complicated, but decades of careful neuroscientific research have revealed quite a bit about how it works, including how certain genes affect particular brain behaviors. Nevertheless, this…

  24. AMA | June 2025

    · 3 h 23 min · Bonus

    Welcome to the June 2025 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are funded by Patreon supporters (who are also the ones asking the questions). We take questions asked by Patreons, whittle them…

  25. 316 | Niayesh Afshordi and Phil Halper

    · 1 h 29 min · Episode 316

    Einstein's general theory of relativity, plus some reasonable assumptions about the universe and what it's made of, has a remarkable implication: that as we trace cosmic evolution into the far past, we ultimately hit a…

  26. 315 | Branden Fitelson on the Logic and Use of Probability

    · 1 h 29 min · Episode 315

    Every time you see an apple spontaneously break away from a tree, it falls downward. You therefore claim that there is a law of physics: apples fall downward from trees. But how can you really know? After all, tomorrow…

  27. 314 | Karen Lloyd on the Deep Underground Biosphere

    · 1 h 09 min · Episode 314

    There are living creatures dwelling deep below the surface of the Earth, as deep as we are able to drill. These hearty microorganisms are related to more familiar life forms on land and under water, but the operate and…

  28. 313 | Eric Topol on the Changing Face of Medicine and Aging

    · 1 h 12 min · Episode 313

    Medical science is advancing at an astonishing rate. Today we talk with leading expert Eric Topol about two aspects of this story. First, the use of artificial intelligence in medicine, especially in diagnostics. This…

  29. AMA | May 2025

    · 3 h 38 min · Bonus

    Welcome to the May 2025 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are funded by Patreon supporters (who are also the ones asking the questions). We take questions asked by Patreons, whittle them…

  30. 312 | Thomas Levenson on the Mutual History of Humans and Germs

    · 1 h 32 min · Episode 312

    The germ theory of disease is a crowning achievement of science, up there with modern physics, continental drift, and evolution via natural selection. (Even if there will always be cranky skeptics.) But the road to…

  31. 311 | Annaka Harris on Whether Consciousness is Fundamental

    · 1 h 10 min · Episode 311

    Questions about consciousness range from the precise and empirical -- what neurons fire when I have some particular experience -- to the deeply profound -- does consciousness emerge from matter, or does matter emerge…

  32. AMA | April 2025

    · 3 h 30 min · Bonus

    Welcome to the April 2025 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are funded by Patreon supporters (who are also the ones asking the questions). We take questions asked by Patreons, whittle them…

  33. 310 | Marc Kamionkowski on Dark Energy and Cosmic Anomalies

    · 1 h 26 min · Episode 310

    Cosmologists were, let us be honest, pretty stunned in 1998 when observations revealed that the universe is accelerating. There was an obvious plausible explanation, the cosmological constant proposed by Einstein,…

  34. 309 | Christof Koch on Consciousness and Integrated Information

    · 1 h 21 min · Episode 309

    Consciousness is easier to possess than to define. One thing we can do is to look into the brain and see what lights up when conscious awareness is taking place. A complete understanding of this would be known as the…

  35. 308 | Alison Gopnik on Children, AI, and Modes of Thinking

    · 1 h 10 min · Episode 308

    We often study cognition in other species, in part to learn about modes of thinking that are different from our own. Today's guest, psychologist/philosopher Alison Gopnik, argues that we needn't look that far: human…

  36. AMA | March 2025

    · 2 h 58 min · Bonus

    Welcome to the March 2025 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are funded by Patreon supporters (who are also the ones asking the questions). We take questions asked by Patreons, whittle them…

  37. 307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails

    · 1 h 17 min · Episode 307

    A lot of science goes into crafting the perfect cocktail. Balancing sweet and bitter notes, providing the right amount of aeration and dilution, getting it to just the right temperature and keeping it that way. And…

  38. 306 | Helen Czerski on Our Energetic Oceans

    · 1 h 12 min · Episode 306

    It is commonplace to refer to the Earth's oceans as vast and largely unexplored. But we do understand some aspects, and improving that understanding is crucial to ensuring the continued viability and success of life on…

  39. 305 | Lilliana Mason on Polarization and Political Psychology

    · 1 h 17 min · Episode 305

    Political outcomes would be relatively simple to predict and understand if only people were well-informed, entirely rational, and perfectly self-interested. Alas, real human beings are messy, emotional, imperfect…

  40. Bonus | Cuts to Science Funding and Why They Matter

    · 1 h 10 min · Bonus

    The Trump administration, led by Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency, has proposed sweeping cuts to spending on science research here in the US, in particular at the National Institutes of Health and…

  41. 304 | James Evans on Innovation, Consolidation, and the Science of Science

    · 1 h 16 min · Episode 304

    It is a feature of many human activities - sports, cooking, music, interpersonal relations - that being able to do them well doesn't necessarily mean you can accurately describe how to do them well. Science is no…

  42. AMA | February 2025

    · 3 h 44 min · Episode 303 · Bonus

    Welcome to the February 2025 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are funded by Patreon supporters (who are also the ones asking the questions). We take questions asked by Patreons, whittle…

  43. 303 | James P. Allison on Fighting Cancer with the Immune System

    · 1 h 08 min · Episode 303

    A typical human lifespan is approximately three billion heartbeats in duration. Lasting that long requires not only intrinsic stability, but an impressive capacity for self-repair. Nevertheless, things do occasionally…

  44. 302 | Chris Kempes on the Biophysics of Evolution

    · 1 h 31 min · Episode 302

    Randomness plays an important role in the evolution of life (as my evil twin will tell you). But random doesn't mean arbitrary. Biological organisms are physical objects, after all, and subject to the same laws of…

  45. 301 | Tina Eliassi-Rad on Al, Networks, and Epistemic Instability

    · 1 h 09 min · Episode 301

    Big data is ruling, or at least deeply infiltrating, all of modern existence. Unprecedented capacity for collecting and analyzing large amounts of data have given us a new generation of artificial intelligence models,…

  46. 300 | Solo: Does Time Exist?

    · 2 h 12 min · Episode 300

    A new year, and a new centennial -- 300 (regularly-numbered) episodes of Mindscape! Our tradition is to have a solo episode, and what better topic than the nature of time? Physicists and philosophers have so frequently…

  47. Holiday Message | Hits and Misses

    · 2 h 01 min · Bonus

    It's the end of the year, and time for our annual holiday break here at Mindscape. But as usual, we wrap up with a Holiday Message. This year, inspired by Joni Mitchell's "Hits" and "Misses" albums, I go through my…

  48. 299 | Michael Wong on Information, Function, and the Origin of Life

    · 1 h 13 min · Episode 299

    Living organisms seem exquisitely organized and complex, with features clearly adapted to serving certain functions needed to survive and procreate. Natural selection provides a compelling explanation for why that is…

  49. 298 | Jeff Lichtman on the Wiring Diagram of the Brain

    · 1 h 09 min · Episode 298

    The number of neurons in the human brain is comparable to the number of stars in the Milky Way galaxy. Unlike the stars, however, in the case of neurons the real action is in how they are directly connected to each…

  50. AMA | December 2024

    · 3 h 56 min · Bonus

    Welcome to the December 2024 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are funded by Patreon supporters (who are also the ones asking the questions). We take questions asked by Patreons, whittle…

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