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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 4 of 6

  1. AMA | December 2023

    · 3 h 36 min · Bonus

    Welcome to the December 2023 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…

  2. 258 | Solo: AI Thinks Different

    · 1 h 21 min · Episode 258

    The Artificial Intelligence landscape is changing with remarkable speed these days, and the capability of Large Language Models in particular has led to speculation (and hope, and fear) that we could be on the verge of…

  3. 257 | Derek Guy on the Theory and Practice of Dressing Well

    · 1 h 21 min · Episode 257

    Putting on clothes is one of the most universal human experiences. Inevitably, this involves choices; maybe you just grab the cheapest and most convenient clothing available, or maybe you want to fit seamlessly into…

  4. 256 | Kelly and Zach Weinersmith on Building Cities on the Moon and Mars

    · 1 h 24 min · Episode 256

    There is an undeniable romance in the idea of traveling to, and even living in, outer space. In recent years, a pragmatic justification has become increasingly popular: the Earth is vulnerable to threats both natural…

  5. AMA | November 2023

    · 4 h 20 min · Bonus

    Welcome to the November 2023 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. 255 | Michael Muthukrishna on Developing a Theory of Everyone

    · 1 h 17 min · Episode 255

    A "Theory of Everything" is physicists' somewhat tongue-in-cheek phrase for a hypothetical model of all the fundamental physical interactions. Of course, even if we had such a theory, it would tell us nothing new about…

  7. 254 | William Egginton on Kant, Heisenberg, and Borges

    · 1 h 07 min · Episode 254

    It can be tempting, when first introduced to a deep concept of physics like Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, to draw grand philosophical conclusions about the impossibility of knowing anything precisely. That is…

  8. 253 | David Deutsch on Science, Complexity, and Explanation

    · 1 h 42 min · Episode 253

    David Deutsch is one of the most creative scientific thinkers working today, who has as a goal to understand and explain the natural world as best we can. He was a pioneer in quantum computing, and has long been an…

  9. AMA | October 2023

    · 2 h 58 min · Bonus

    Welcome to the October 2023 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…

  10. 252 | Hannah Ritchie on Keeping Hope for the Planet Alive

    · 1 h 16 min · Episode 252

    Our planet and its environment are in bad shape, in all sorts of ways. Those of us who want to improve the situation face a dilemma. On the one hand, we have to be forceful and clear-headed about how the bad the…

  11. 251 | Rosemary Braun on Uncovering Patterns in Biological Complexity

    · 1 h 11 min · Episode 251

    Biological organisms are paradigmatic emergent systems. That atoms of which they are made mindlessly obey the local laws of physics; even cells and organs do their individual jobs without explicitly understanding the…

  12. 250 | Brendan Nyhan on Navigating the Information Ecosystem

    · 58 min · Episode 250

    The modern world inundates us with both information and misinformation. What are the forces that conspire to make misinformation so prevalent? Can we combat the flow of misinformation, perhaps by legal restrictions?…

  13. 249 | Peter Godfrey-Smith on Sentience and Octopus Minds

    · 1 h 28 min · Episode 249

    The study of cognition and sentience would be greatly abetted by the discovery of intelligent alien beings, who presumably developed independently of life here on Earth. But we do have more than one data point to…

  14. AMA | September 2023

    · 4 h 03 min · Bonus

    Welcome to the September 2023 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…

  15. 248 | Yejin Choi on AI and Common Sense

    · 1 h 13 min · Episode 248

    Over the last year, AI large-language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT have demonstrated a remarkable ability to carry on human-like conversations in a variety of different concepts. But the way these LLMs "learn" is very…

  16. 247 | Samuel Bowles on Economics, Cooperation, and Inequality

    · 1 h 20 min · Episode 247

    Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2023/08/21/247-samuel-bowles-on-economics-cooperation-and-inequality/ Economics, much like thermodynamics, is a story of collective behavior…

  17. 246 | David Stuart on Time and Science in Maya Civilization

    · 1 h 09 min · Episode 246

    You might remember the somewhat bizarre worries that swept through certain circles back in 2012, based on the end of the world being predicted by the Maya calendar. The world didn't end, which is unsurprising because…

  18. AMA | August 2023

    · 3 h 38 min · Bonus

    Welcome to the August 2023 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…

  19. 245 | Solo: The Crisis in Physics

    · 4 h 22 min · Episode 245

    Physics is in crisis, what else is new? That's what we hear in certain corners, anyway, usually pointed at "fundamental" physics of particles and fields. (Condensed matter and biophysics etc. are just fine.) In this…

  20. 244 | Katie Elliott on Metaphysics, Chance, and Explanation

    · 1 h 37 min · Episode 244

    Is metaphysics like physics, but cooler? Or is it a relic of an outdated, pre-empirical way of thinking about the world? Closer to the former than the latter. Rather than building specific quantitative theories about…

  21. 243 | Joseph Silk on Science on the Moon

    · 1 h 11 min · Episode 243

    The Earth's atmosphere is good for some things, like providing something to breathe. But it does get in the way of astronomers, who have been successful at launching orbiting telescopes into space. But gravity and the…

  22. 242 | David Krakauer on Complexity, Agency, and Information

    · 1 h 33 min · Episode 242

    Complexity scientists have been able to make an impressive amount of progress despite the fact that there is not universal agreement about what "complexity" actually is. We know it when we see it, perhaps, but there…

  23. AMA | July 2023

    · 3 h 05 min · Bonus

    Welcome to the July 2023 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…

  24. 241 | Tim Maudlin on Locality, Hidden Variables, and Quantum Foundations

    · 1 h 34 min · Episode 241

    Last year's Nobel Prize for experimental tests of Bell's Theorem was the first Nobel in the foundations of quantum mechanics since Max Born in 1954. Quantum foundations is enjoying a bit of a resurgence, inspired in…

  25. 240 | Andrew Pontzen on Simulations and the Universe

    · 1 h 26 min · Episode 240

    It's somewhat amazing that cosmology, the study of the universe as a whole, can make any progress at all. But it has, especially so in recent decades. Partly that's because nature has been kind to us in some ways: the…

  26. 239 | Brian Lowery on the Social Self

    · 1 h 11 min · Episode 239

    There is an image, especially in Western cultures, of the rugged, authentic, self-made individual choosing how to navigate the intricacies of the social world. But there is no mystical soul within us, manifesting as…

  27. AMA | June 2023

    · 2 h 58 min · Bonus

    Welcome to the June 2023 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…

  28. 238 | Scott Shapiro on the Technology and Philosophy of Hacking

    · 1 h 28 min · Episode 238

    Modern computers are somewhat more secure against being hacked - either by an inanimate virus or a human interloper - than they used to be. But as our lives are increasingly intertwined with computers, the dangers that…

  29. 237 | Brooke Harrington on Offshore Wealth as a Complex System

    · 1 h 18 min · Episode 237

    The modern world is large and interconnected, and there are a lot of systems that might be important to how it functions but about which most people are barely aware. One of these is the offshore wealth management…

  30. 236 | Thomas Hertog on Quantum Cosmology and Hawking's Final Theory

    · 1 h 09 min · Episode 236

    Is there a multiverse, and if so, how should we think of ourselves within it? In many modern cosmological models, the universe includes more than one realm, with possibly different laws of physics, and these realms may…

  31. AMA | May 2023

    · 3 h 08 min · Bonus

    Welcome to the May 2023 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…

  32. 235 | Andy Clark on the Extended and Predictive Mind

    · 1 h 22 min · Episode 235

    What is the mind, and what does it try to do? An overly simplified materialist view might be that the mind emerges from physical processes in the brain. But you can be a materialist and still recognize that there is…

  33. 234 | Tobias Warnecke on Cellular Structure and Evolution

    · 1 h 07 min · Episode 234

    Eukaryotic cells manage to pull off a number of remarkable feats. One is packing quite a long DNA molecule, with potentially billions of base pairs, into a tiny central nucleus. A key role is played by histones,…

  34. 233 | Hugo Mercier on Reasoning and Skepticism

    · 1 h 13 min · Episode 233

    Here at the Mindscape Podcast, we are firmly pro-reason. But what does that mean, fundamentally and in practice? How did humanity come into the idea of not just doing things, but doing things for reasons? In this…

  35. 232 | Amy Finkelstein on Adverse Selection and Hidden Information

    · 1 h 14 min · Episode 232

    If you knew exactly when every person was going to die, or require medical care, you could make a killing buying and selling insurance. Nobody knows these things, of course -- the future is hard to predict -- but some…

  36. Ask Me Anything | April 2023

    · 4 h 04 min · Bonus

    Welcome to the April 2023 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. 231 | Sarah Bakewell on the History of Humanism

    · 1 h 21 min · Episode 231

    Human beings are small compared to the universe, but we're very important to ourselves. Humanism can be thought of as the idea that human beings are themselves the source of meaningfulness and mattering in our lives,…

  38. 230 | Raphaël Millière on How Artificial Intelligence Thinks

    · 1 h 58 min · Episode 230

    Welcome to another episode of Sean Carroll's Mindscape. Today, we're joined by Raphaël Millière, a philosopher and cognitive scientist at Columbia University. We'll be exploring the fascinating topic of how artificial…

  39. 229 | Nita Farahany on Ethics, Law, and Neurotechnology

    · 1 h 12 min · Episode 229

    Every time our brain does some thinking, there are associated physical processes. In particular, electric currents and charged particles jump between neurons, creating associated electromagnetic fields. These fields…

  40. AMA | March 2023

    · 3 h 01 min · Bonus

    Welcome to the March 2023 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…

  41. 228 | Skye Cleary on Existentialism and Authenticity

    · 1 h 17 min · Episode 228

    God is dead, as Nietzsche's madman memorably reminded us. So what are we going to do about it? If there is no powerful force out there to guide us and give meaning to our lives, how are we supposed to live? Do we have…

  42. 227 | Molly Crockett on the Psychology of Morality

    · 1 h 12 min · Episode 227

    Most of us strive to be good, moral people. When we are doing that striving, what is happening in our brains? Some of our moral inclinations seem pretty automatic and subconscious. Other times we have to sit down and…

  43. 226 | Johanna Hoffman on Speculative Futures of Cities

    · 1 h 13 min · Episode 226

    Cities are incredibly important to modern life, and their importance is only growing. As Geoffrey West points out, the world is adding urban areas equivalent to the population of San Francisco once every four days. How…

  44. AMA | February 2023

    · 3 h 08 min · Bonus

    Welcome to the February 2023 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…

  45. 225 | Michael Tomasello on The Social Origins of Cognition and Agency

    · 1 h 22 min · Episode 225

    Human beings have developed wondrous capacities to take in information about the world, mull it over, think about a suite of future implications, and decide on a course of action based on those deliberations. These…

  46. 224 | Edward Tufte on Data, Design, and Truth

    · 1 h 16 min · Episode 224

    So you have some information — how are you going to share it with and present it to the rest of the world? There has been a long history of organizing and displaying information without putting too much thought into…

  47. 223 | Tania Lombrozo on What Explanations Are

    · 1 h 11 min · Episode 223

    There are few human impulses more primal than the desire for explanations. We have expectations concerning what happens, and when what we experience differs from those expectations, we want to know the reason why.…

  48. 222 | Andrew Strominger on Quantum Gravity and the Real World

    · 1 h 25 min · Episode 222

    Quantum gravity research is inspired by experiment — all of the experimental data that supports quantum mechanics, and supports general relativity — but it's only inspiration, not detailed guidance. So it's easy to "do…

  49. 221 | Adam Bulley on How Mental Time Travel Makes Us Human

    · 1 h 21 min · Episode 221

    One of the most powerful of all human capacities is the ability to imagine ourselves in hypothetical situations at different times. We can remember the past, but also conjure up possible futures that haven't yet…

  50. Holiday Message 2022: Thinking Really Slowly

    · 48 min · Bonus

    Welcome to that beloved Mindscape annual tradition, the Holiday Message. An opportunity for a quicker and less-well-thought-out solo episode to round off another year. Ironically, this year the theme is the importance…

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