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

336 | Anil Ananthaswamy on the Mathematics of Neural Nets and AI
Nov 24, 2025 · 01:14:11

Machine learning using neural networks has led to a remarkable leap forward in artificial intelligence, and the technological and social ramifications have been discussed at great length. To understand the orig…

AMA | November 2025
Nov 17, 2025 · 03:34:18

Welcome to the November 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 Pa…

335 | Andrew Jaffe on Models, Probability, and the Universe
Nov 10, 2025 · 01:17:38

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 ca…

334 | Daniel Whiteson on the Physics of and by Aliens
Nov 3, 2025 · 01:14:21

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 la…

333 | Gordon Pennycook on Unthinkingness, Conspiracies, and What to Do About Them
Oct 27, 2025 · 01:10:20

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? …

332 | Dmitri Tymoczko on the Mathematics Behind Music
Oct 20, 2025 · 01:21:11

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…

AMA | October 2025
Oct 13, 2025 · 03:37:18

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 Pat…

331 | Solo: Fine-Tuning, God, and the Multiverse
Oct 6, 2025 · 01:54:45

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 t…

330 | Petter Törnberg on the Dynamics of (Mis)Information
Sep 29, 2025 · 01:12:01

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 c…

329 | Steven Pinker on Rationality and Common Knowledge
Sep 22, 2025 · 01:16:32

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 th…

328 | Mary Roach on Replacing Parts of Our Bodies
Sep 15, 2025 · 01:07:20

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…

AMA | September 2025
Sep 8, 2025 · 03:30:04

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 P…

327 | Cass Sunstein on Liberalism
Sep 1, 2025 · 01:10:15

"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 i…

326 | Natalie Batalha on What We Know and Will Learn About Exoplanets
Aug 25, 2025 · 01:12:12

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. …

325 | Alvy Ray Smith on Pixar, Pixels, and the Great Digital Convergence
Aug 18, 2025 · 01:26:40

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 bit…

324 | Elizabeth Mynatt on Universities and the Importance of Basic Research
Aug 11, 2025 · 01:13:31

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."…

AMA | August 2025
Aug 4, 2025 · 03:39:58

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 Patr…

323 | Jacob Barandes on Indivisible Stochastic Quantum Mechanics
Jul 28, 2025 · 02:58:21

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, …

322 | Philip Pettit on Language, Agency, Politics, and Freedom
Jul 21, 2025 · 01:20:47

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…

321 | David Tong on Open Questions in Quantum Field Theory
Jul 14, 2025 · 01:19:25

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 a…

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