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

28 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The search for a foundational theory of quantum mechanics that all physicists can agree on remains a...

21 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

When we think of the capacities that distinguish humans from other species, we generally turn to int...

14 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Quantum field theory is the basis for our most successful theories of fundamental physics. And yet, ...

Mon, 07 Jul

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Welcome to the July 2025 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are funded b...

Mon, 30 Jun

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Our universe started out looking very simple: hot, dense, smooth, rapidly expanding. According to ou...

Mon, 23 Jun

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It is common to refer to philosophy as "a series of footnotes to Plato." But in the original quote, ...

Mon, 16 Jun

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Economics is seeing an upsurge in the importance of controlled, reproducible empirical studies. One ...

Mon, 09 Jun

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The human brain is extremely complicated, but decades of careful neuroscientific research have revea...

Mon, 02 Jun

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Welcome to the June 2025 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are funded b...

Mon, 26 May

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Einstein's general theory of relativity, plus some reasonable assumptions about the universe and wha...

Mon, 19 May

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Every time you see an apple spontaneously break away from a tree, it falls downward. You therefore c...

Mon, 12 May

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There are living creatures dwelling deep below the surface of the Earth, as deep as we are able to d...

Mon, 05 May

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Medical science is advancing at an astonishing rate. Today we talk with leading expert Eric Topol ab...

Mon, 28 Apr

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Welcome to the May 2025 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are funded by...

Mon, 21 Apr

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The germ theory of disease is a crowning achievement of science, up there with modern physics, conti...

Mon, 14 Apr

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Questions about consciousness range from the precise and empirical -- what neurons fire when I have ...

Mon, 07 Apr

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Welcome to the April 2025 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are funded ...

Mon, 31 Mar

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Cosmologists were, let us be honest, pretty stunned in 1998 when observations revealed that the...

Mon, 24 Mar

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Consciousness is easier to possess than to define. One thing we can do is to look into the brain and...

Mon, 17 Mar

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We often study cognition in other species, in part to learn about modes of thinking that are differe...

Mon, 10 Mar

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Welcome to the March 2025 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are funded ...

Mon, 03 Mar

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A lot of science goes into crafting the perfect cocktail. Balancing sweet and bitter notes, providin...

Mon, 24 Feb

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It is commonplace to refer to the Earth's oceans as vast and largely unexplored. But we do understan...

Mon, 17 Feb

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Political outcomes would be relatively simple to predict and understand if only people were well-inf...

Wed, 12 Feb

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The Trump administration, led by Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency, has proposed...

Mon, 10 Feb

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It is a feature of many human activities - sports, cooking, music, interpersonal relations - that be...

Mon, 03 Feb

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Welcome to the February 2025 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are fund...

Mon, 27 Jan

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A typical human lifespan is approximately three billion heartbeats in duration. Lasting that long re...

Mon, 20 Jan

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Randomness plays an important role in the evolution of life (as my evil twin will tell you...

Mon, 13 Jan

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Big data is ruling, or at least deeply infiltrating, all of modern existence. Unprecedented capacity...

Mon, 06 Jan

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A new year, and a new centennial -- 300 (regularly-numbered) episodes of Mindscape! Our tradition is...

Mon, 23 Dec

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It's the end of the year, and time for our annual holiday break here at Mindscape. But as usual, we ...

Mon, 16 Dec

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Living organisms seem exquisitely organized and complex, with features clearly adapted to serving ce...

Mon, 09 Dec

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The number of neurons in the human brain is comparable to the number of stars in the Milky Way galax...

Mon, 02 Dec

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Welcome to the December 2024 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are fund...

Mon, 25 Nov

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Not too long ago, Brad Pitt and Eric Bana starred in a (loose) adaptation of Homer's epic ...

Mon, 18 Nov

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Biological evolution via natural selection is a simple idea that becomes enormously complicated in i...

Mon, 11 Nov

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Emergence is a centrally important concept in science and philosophy. Indeed, the existence of ...

Mon, 04 Nov

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Welcome to the November 2024 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are fund...

Mon, 28 Oct

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Erwin Schrödinger said that the important characteristic of life is that it "goes on doing somethin...

Mon, 21 Oct

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A large economy is one of the best examples we have of complex dynamics. There are multiple componen...

Mon, 14 Oct

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It's not immoral to kick a rock; it is immoral to kick a baby. At what point do we start saying that...

Mon, 07 Oct

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Welcome to the October 2024 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are funde...

Mon, 30 Sep

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Aging and death happen to the best of us, but there are increasing efforts to do something about it....

Mon, 23 Sep

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It's a wonder democracy works at all -- a collection of people with potentially different interests ...

Mon, 16 Sep

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As an experimental facility, the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Geneva has been extraordinarily su...

Mon, 09 Sep

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It wasn't that long ago, historically speaking, that you might put on your tuxedo or floor-length ev...

Mon, 02 Sep

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Welcome to the September 2024 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are fun...

Mon, 26 Aug

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One common feature of complex systems is sensitive dependence on initial conditions: a small change ...

Mon, 19 Aug

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Understanding how life began on Earth involves questions of chemistry, geology, planetary science, p...

Mon, 12 Aug

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Being rational necessarily involves engagement with probability. Given two possible courses of actio...

Mon, 05 Aug

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Welcome to the August 2024 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are funded...

Mon, 29 Jul

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The human brain does a pretty amazing job of taking in a huge amount of data from multiple sensory m...

Mon, 22 Jul

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Change is scary. But sometimes it can all work out for the best. There's no guarantee of that, howev...

Mon, 15 Jul

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The philosophy of mathematics would be so much easier if it weren't for infinity. The concept seems ...

Mon, 08 Jul

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Welcome to the July 2024 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are funded b...

Mon, 01 Jul

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Just like with physics, in biology it is perfectly possible to do most respectable work without thin...

Mon, 24 Jun

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Which is more intelligent, ChatGPT or a 3-year old? Of course this depends on what we mean by "...

Mon, 17 Jun

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For those of us who are not dualists, the mind arises from our physical bodies -- mostly the brain, ...

Mon, 10 Jun

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We claim to love all of our children, friends, and students equally. But perhaps deep down you assig...

Mon, 03 Jun

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Welcome to the June 2024 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are funded b...

Mon, 27 May

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String theory, the current leading candidate for a theory of quantum gravity as well as other partic...

Mon, 20 May

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The Earth's climate keeps changing, largely due to the effects of human activity, and we haven't bee...

Mon, 13 May

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Publication week! Say hello to Quanta and Fields, the second volume of the planned three-volume...

Mon, 06 May

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Welcome to the May 2024 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are funded by...

Mon, 29 Apr

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Modern biology is advancing by leaps and bounds, not only in understanding how organisms work, but i...

Mon, 22 Apr

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Humanity itself might be the hardest thing for scientists to study fairly and accurately. Not only d...

Mon, 15 Apr

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Science is enabled by the fact that the natural world exhibits predictability and regularity, at lea...

Mon, 08 Apr

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Welcome to the April 2024 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are funded ...

Mon, 01 Apr

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Einstein's theory of general relativity has been our best understanding of gravity for over a centur...

Mon, 25 Mar

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

Technology is changing the world, in good and bad ways. Artificial intelligence, internet connectivi...

Mon, 18 Mar

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When it comes to social change, two questions immediately present themselves: What kind of change do...

Mon, 11 Mar

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Welcome to the March 2024 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are funded ...

Mon, 04 Mar

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In the 1860s, James Clerk Maxwell argued that light was a wave of electric and magnetic fields. But ...

Mon, 26 Feb

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The twentieth century was something, wasn't it? Margaret Mead, as well as her onetime-husband&n...

Mon, 19 Feb

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Evolution is sometimes described -- not precisely, but with some justification -- as being about the...

Mon, 12 Feb

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Welcome to the February 2024 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are fund...

Mon, 05 Feb

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

Universities and their students are constantly being encouraged to produce more graduates majoring i...

Mon, 29 Jan

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

The radius of the Earth is over 6,000 kilometers, but the deepest we've ever dug below the...

Mon, 22 Jan

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Einstein's theory of general relativity is distinguished by its singular simplicity and beauty. The ...

Mon, 15 Jan

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Scientists and philosophers sometimes advocate pretty outrageous-sounding ideas about the fundamenta...

Mon, 08 Jan

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In mid-20th-century cosmology, there was a debate over the origin of the chemical elements. Some tho...

Mon, 01 Jan

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Octopuses, artificial intelligence, and advanced alien civilizations: for many reasons, it's interes...

Mon, 18 Dec

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The final Mindscape podcast of each year is devoted to a short, reflective Holiday Message. This yea...

Mon, 11 Dec

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It wasn't that long ago that topics like the nature of consciousness, or the foundations of quantum ...

Mon, 04 Dec

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Welcome to the December 2023 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are fund...

Mon, 27 Nov

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

The Artificial Intelligence landscape is changing with remarkable speed these days, and the capabili...

Mon, 20 Nov

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

Putting on clothes is one of the most universal human experiences. Inevitably, this involves choices...

Mon, 13 Nov

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There is an undeniable romance in the idea of traveling to, and even living in, outer space. In rece...

Mon, 06 Nov

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Welcome to the November 2023 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are fund...

Mon, 30 Oct

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

A "Theory of Everything" is physicists' somewhat tongue-in-cheek phrase for a hypothetical model of ...

Mon, 23 Oct

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It can be tempting, when first introduced to a deep concept of physics like Heisenberg's uncertainty...

Mon, 16 Oct

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David Deutsch is one of the most creative scientific thinkers working today, who has as a goal to un...

Mon, 09 Oct

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Welcome to the October 2023 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are funde...

Mon, 02 Oct

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

Our planet and its environment are in bad shape, in all sorts of ways. Those of us who want to impro...

Mon, 25 Sep

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

Biological organisms are paradigmatic emergent systems. That atoms of which they are made mindlessly...

Mon, 18 Sep

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

The modern world inundates us with both information and misinformation. What are the forces that con...

Mon, 11 Sep

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

The study of cognition and sentience would be greatly abetted by the discovery of intelligent alien ...

Mon, 04 Sep

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

Welcome to the September 2023 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are fun...

Mon, 28 Aug

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

Over the last year, AI large-language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT have demonstrated a remar...

Mon, 21 Aug

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Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2023/08/21/247-samuel-bowles...

Mon, 14 Aug

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You might remember the somewhat bizarre worries that swept through certain circles back in 2012, bas...

Mon, 07 Aug

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Welcome to the August 2023 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are funded...

Mon, 31 Jul

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Physics is in crisis, what else is new? That's what we hear in certain corners, anyway, usually poin...

Mon, 24 Jul

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Is metaphysics like physics, but cooler? Or is it a relic of an outdated, pre-empirical way of think...

Mon, 17 Jul

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The Earth's atmosphere is good for some things, like providing something to breathe. But it does get...

Mon, 10 Jul

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

Complexity scientists have been able to make an impressive amount of progress despite the fact that ...

Mon, 03 Jul

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

Welcome to the July 2023 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are funded b...

Mon, 26 Jun

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

Last year's Nobel Prize for experimental tests of Bell's Theorem was the first Nobel in the foundati...

Mon, 19 Jun

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It's somewhat amazing that cosmology, the study of the universe as a whole, can make any progress at...

Mon, 12 Jun

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There is an image, especially in Western cultures, of the rugged, authentic, self-made individual ch...

Mon, 05 Jun

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Welcome to the June 2023 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are funded b...

Mon, 29 May

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

Modern computers are somewhat more secure against being hacked - either by an inanimate virus or a h...

Mon, 22 May

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

The modern world is large and interconnected, and there are a lot of systems that might be important...

Mon, 15 May

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

Is there a multiverse, and if so, how should we think of ourselves within it? In many modern cosmolo...

Mon, 08 May

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Welcome to the May 2023 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are funded by...

Mon, 01 May

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

What is the mind, and what does it try to do? An overly simplified materialist view might be that th...

Mon, 24 Apr

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Eukaryotic cells manage to pull off a number of remarkable feats. One is packing quite a long DNA mo...

Mon, 17 Apr

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Here at the Mindscape Podcast, we are firmly pro-reason. But what does that mean, fundamentally and ...

Mon, 10 Apr

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If you knew exactly when every person was going to die, or require medical care, you could make a ki...

Mon, 03 Apr

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Welcome to the April 2023 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are funded ...

Mon, 27 Mar

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

Human beings are small compared to the universe, but we're very important to ourselves. Humanism can...

Mon, 20 Mar

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Welcome to another episode of Sean Carroll's Mindscape. Today, we're joined by Raphaël Millière, a...

Mon, 13 Mar

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Every time our brain does some thinking, there are associated physical processes. In particular, ele...

Mon, 06 Mar

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Welcome to the March 2023 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are funded ...

Mon, 27 Feb

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

God is dead, as Nietzsche’s madman memorably reminded us. So what are we going to do about it? If ...

Mon, 20 Feb

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Most of us strive to be good, moral people. When we are doing that striving, what is happening in ou...

Mon, 13 Feb

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Cities are incredibly important to modern life, and their importance is only growing. As Geoffr...

Mon, 06 Feb

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Welcome to the February 2023 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are fund...

Mon, 30 Jan

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

Human beings have developed wondrous capacities to take in information about the world, mull it over...

Mon, 23 Jan

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

So you have some information — how are you going to share it with and present it to the rest of th...

Mon, 16 Jan

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

There are few human impulses more primal than the desire for explanations. We have expectations conc...

Mon, 09 Jan

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

Quantum gravity research is inspired by experiment — all of the experimental data that supports qu...

Mon, 02 Jan

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

One of the most powerful of all human capacities is the ability to imagine ourselves in hypothetical...

Mon, 19 Dec

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Welcome to that beloved Mindscape annual tradition, the Holiday Message. An opportunity for a quicke...

Mon, 12 Dec

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Life is rich with moments of uncertainty, where we’re not exactly sure what’s going to happen ne...

Mon, 05 Dec

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Welcome to the December 2022 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are fund...

Mon, 28 Nov

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It’s easy enough to proclaim that we are curious creatures, but what does that really mean? What k...

Mon, 21 Nov

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Stephen Hawking’s discoveries of black hole radiation, entropy, and the information-loss problem h...

Mon, 14 Nov

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Why do people voluntarily hand over authority to a government? Under what conditions should&nbs...

Mon, 07 Nov

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Welcome to the November 2022 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are fund...

Mon, 31 Oct

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

People have a complicated relationship to mathematics. We all use it in our everyday lives, from cal...

Mon, 24 Oct

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

The founders of statistical mechanics in the 19th century faced an uphill battle to convince their f...

Mon, 17 Oct

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It’s a big universe we live in, so it comes as no surprise that big numbers are needed to describe...

Mon, 10 Oct

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Welcome to the October 2022 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are funde...

Mon, 03 Oct

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

With communication satellites, weather satellites, GPS, and much more, what happens in space is alre...

Mon, 26 Sep

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The detection of gravitational waves from inspiraling black holes by the LIGO and Virgo collaboratio...

Mon, 19 Sep

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My little pandemic-lockdown contribution to the world was a series of videos called T...

Mon, 12 Sep

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What’s the fastest way to get a human being around a racetrack, if we ignore all the rules of raci...

Mon, 05 Sep

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People throughout history have imagined ideal societies of various sorts. As the twentieth century d...

Mon, 29 Aug

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Welcome to the September 2022 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are fun...

Mon, 22 Aug

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There is no human endeavor that does not have a theory of it — a set of ideas about what makes it ...

Mon, 15 Aug

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It’s always a little humbling to think about what affects your words and actions might have on oth...

Mon, 08 Aug

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Evolution by natural selection is one of the rare scientific theories that resonates within the wide...

Mon, 01 Aug

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Welcome to the August 2022 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are funded...

Mon, 25 Jul

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The idea of an “interest rate” might seem mundane and practical, in comparison to our usual topi...

Mon, 18 Jul

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Recent years have seen a revolution in the study of exoplanets, planets that orbit stars other than ...

Mon, 11 Jul

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We describe the world using language — we can’t help it. And we all know that ordinary language ...

Mon, 04 Jul

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Welcome to the July 2022 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are funded b...

Mon, 27 Jun

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

The United States is suffering from an epidemic of tragic gun violence. While a political debate rag...

Mon, 20 Jun

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All of us construct models of the world, and update them on the basis of evidence brought to us by o...

Mon, 13 Jun

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Welcome to the June 2022 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! We are inaugurating a slightly differ...

Mon, 06 Jun

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The 200th episode of Mindscape! Thanks to everyone for sticking around for this long. To celebrate, ...

Mon, 30 May

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Time is everywhere, pervading each aspect of intellectual inquiry — from physics to philosophy to ...

Mon, 23 May

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The origin of life here on Earth was an important and fascinating event, but it was also a long time...

Mon, 16 May

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The concept of the city is a crucial one for human civilization: people living in proximity, bringin...

Thu, 12 May 2022 14:39:23 -0000

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

Welcome to the May 2022 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are funded by...

Mon, 09 May

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

To say that event A causes event B is to not only make a claim about our actual ...

Mon, 02 May

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Evolution has equipped species with a variety of ways to travel through the air — flapping, glidin...

Mon, 25 Apr

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Humans are related to all other species here on Earth, but some are closer relatives than others. Pr...

Mon, 18 Apr

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Every time we make an important decision, it’s hard not to wonder how things would have turned out...

Thu, 14 Apr 2022 17:15:52 -0000

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Welcome to the April 2022 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are funded ...

Mon, 11 Apr

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

Randomness and probability are central to modern physics. In statistical mechanics this is because w...

Mon, 04 Apr

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

The future grows out of the present, but it manages to consistently surprise us. How can we get bett...

Mon, 28 Mar

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Biological organisms are pretty good at healing themselves, but their abilities fall short in crucia...

Mon, 21 Mar

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All societies grant more power to some citizens, and there is always a temptation to use that power ...

Thu, 17 Mar 2022 15:08:33 -0000

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

Welcome to the March 2022 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are funded ...

Mon, 14 Mar

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

If extraterrestrial life is out there — not just microbial slime, but big, complex, macroscopic or...

Mon, 07 Mar

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We’re pretty well-calibrated when it comes to dealing with common, everyday-level setbacks. But ou...

Mon, 28 Feb

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Advances in technology have gradually been extending the human self beyond its biological extent, as...

Mon, 21 Feb

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One of the brilliant achievements of Darwin’s theory of natural selection was to help explain appa...

Mon, 14 Feb

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

Artificial intelligence is everywhere around us. Deep-learning algorithms are used to classify image...

Thu, 10 Feb 2022 18:08:37 -0000

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

Welcome to the February 2022 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are fund...

Mon, 07 Feb

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

Modern particle physics is a victim of its own success. We have extremely good theories — so good ...

Mon, 31 Jan

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Reality is just out there — but how we perceive reality and talk about it depends on choices we hu...

Mon, 24 Jan

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A good story takes you on an emotional journey, with ups and downs along the way. Thanks to science,...

Mon, 17 Jan

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Being a human is tricky. There are any number of unwritten rules and social cues that we have to lea...

Mon, 10 Jan

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Human beings like to divide themselves into groups, and then cooperate, socialize, and reproduce wit...

Mon, 03 Jan

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Are numbers real? What does that even mean? You can’t kick a number. But you can talk about number...

Mon, 20 Dec

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As each December comes to a close, we wrap up another year of podcasts with the Mindscape Holiday Me...

Wed, 15 Dec

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Welcome to the December 2021 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are fund...

Mon, 13 Dec

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

When it comes to thinking about quantum mechanics, there are levels. One level is shut-up-and-calcul...

Mon, 06 Dec

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We all know you can’t derive “ought” from “is.” But it’s equally clear that “is” —...

Mon, 29 Nov

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We’ve talked about the very origin of life, but certain transitions along its subsequent history w...

Mon, 22 Nov

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Mathematics is often thought of as the pinnacle of crisp precision: the square of the hypotenuse of ...

Wed, 17 Nov

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Welcome to the November 2021 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are fund...

Mon, 15 Nov

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

It’s a well-worn cliché that oceans cover seventy percent of the surface of Earth, but we tend to...

Mon, 08 Nov

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Science and storytelling have a long and tumultuous relationship. Scientists sometimes want stories ...

Mon, 01 Nov

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As the holidays approach, we are being reminded of the fragility of the global supply chain. But at ...

Mon, 25 Oct

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There is so much we don’t know about our universe. But our curiosity about the unknown shouldn’t...

Mon, 18 Oct

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

Games are everywhere, but why exactly do we play them? It seems counterintuitive, to artificially in...

Thu, 14 Oct 2021 16:39:26 -0000

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

Welcome to the October 2021 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are funde...

Mon, 11 Oct

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

Those of us who think that that the laws of physics underlying everyday life are completel...

Mon, 04 Oct

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

Traditional physics works within the “Laplacian paradigm”: you give me the state of the universe...

Mon, 27 Sep

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

In the question to understand the biology of life, we are (so far) limited to what happened here on ...

Mon, 20 Sep

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

It's pretty clear that our genes affect, though they don't completely determine, who we grow up to b...

Thu, 16 Sep 2021 18:56:21 -0000

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

Welcome to the September 2021 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are fun...

Mon, 13 Sep

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

How human beings behave is, for fairly evident reasons, a topic of intense interest to human beings....

Mon, 06 Sep

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

Physics is extremely good at describing simple systems with relatively few moving parts. Sadly, the ...

Mon, 30 Aug

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

There is no general theory of problem-solving, or even a reliable set of principles that will usuall...

Mon, 23 Aug

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

Economies in the modern world are incredibly complex systems. But when we sit down to think about th...

Mon, 16 Aug

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

Plato and Aristotle founded much of what we think of as Western philosophy during the fourth and fif...

Thu, 12 Aug 2021 14:12:52 -0000

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

Welcome to the August 2021 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are funded...

Mon, 09 Aug

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

Neuroscience has given us great insights into how our brains work. But there is still room for purel...

Mon, 02 Aug

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

The arrow of time — all the ways in which the past differs from the future — is a fascinating su...

Mon, 26 Jul

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

Natural selection has done a pretty good job at creating a wide variety of living species, but we hu...

Mon, 19 Jul

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

How can data be biased? Isn’t it supposed to be an objective reflection of the real world? We all ...

Mon, 12 Jul

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

It’s not easy, figuring out the fundamental laws of physics. It’s even harder when your chosen m...

Fri, 09 Jul

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

Welcome to the July 2021 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are funded b...

Mon, 05 Jul

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

Religion is an important part of the lives of billions of people around the world, but what religiou...

Mon, 28 Jun

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

Depending on who you listen to, quantum computers are either the biggest technological change coming...

Mon, 21 Jun

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

It’s all well and good to talk abstractly about morality and justice, but at some point you have t...

Mon, 14 Jun

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

Any system in which politicians represent geographical districts with boundaries chosen by the polit...

Thu, 10 Jun 2021 01:05:58 -0000

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

Welcome to the June 2021 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are funded b...

Mon, 07 Jun

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

You observe a phenomenon, and come up with an explanation for it. That’s true for scientists, but ...

Mon, 31 May

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

The challenge to a theoretical physicist pushing beyond our best current theories is that there are ...

Mon, 24 May

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

Democracy posits the radical idea that political power and legitimacy should ultimately be found in ...

Mon, 17 May

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

For as much as people talk about food, a good case can be made that we don’t give it the attention...

Thu, 13 May 2021 01:16:01 -0000

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

Welcome to the May 2021 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are funded by...

Mon, 10 May

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

“A way that math can make the world a better place is by making it a more interesting place to be ...

Mon, 03 May

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

The world has gone through a tough time with the COVID-19 pandemic. Every catastrophic event is uniq...

Mon, 26 Apr

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

I’ve been a professional physicist since the 1980’s, and not once over the course of my career h...

Mon, 19 Apr

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

Mom, apple pie, and rationality — all things that are unquestionably good, right? But rationality,...

Wed, 14 Apr

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

Welcome to the April 2021 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are funded ...

Mon, 12 Apr

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

Telling a story seems like the most natural, human thing in the world. We all do it, all the time. A...

Mon, 05 Apr

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

In a world flooded with information, everybody necessarily makes choices about what we pay attention...

Mon, 29 Mar

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

“Time” and “the brain” are two of those things that are somewhat mysterious, but it would be...

Mon, 22 Mar

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

Imagine two people with exactly the same innate abilities, but one is born into a wealthy family and...

Mon, 15 Mar

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

You might think that human beings, exhausted by competing for resources and rewards in the real worl...

Wed, 10 Mar

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

Welcome to the March 2021 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These are funded by Patreon sup...

Mon, 08 Mar

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

On a spectrum of philosophical topics, one might be tempted to put mathematics and morality on oppos...

Mon, 01 Mar

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

The internet has made it so much easier for people to talk to each other, in a literal sense. But it...

Mon, 22 Feb

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

In our postmodern world, studying the classics of ancient Greece and Rome can seem quaint at best, d...

Wed, 17 Feb

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

Welcome to the February 2021 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These are funded by Patreon ...

Mon, 15 Feb

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

A common argument against free will is that human behavior is not freely chosen, but rather determin...

Mon, 08 Feb

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

It’s a truism that what we see about the world is a small fraction of all that exists. At the simp...

Thu, 04 Feb 2021 19:59:01 -0000

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

Here is a special bonus punishment treat for Mindscape listeners: an interview of me, by D...

Mon, 01 Feb

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

As a semi-outsider, it’s fun for me to watch as a new era dawns in biology: one that adds ideas fr...

Mon, 25 Jan

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

The possible existence of technologically advanced extraterrestrial civilizations — not just alien...

Mon, 18 Jan

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

What is the world made of? How does it behave? These questions, aimed at the most basic level of rea...

Mon, 11 Jan

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

The first full week of 2021 has been action-packed for those of us in the United States of America, ...

Mon, 04 Jan

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

We all know stereotypes about people from different countries; but we also recognize that there real...

Mon, 21 Dec

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

Welcome to the third annual Mindscape Holiday Message! Just a chance for me to be a little more chat...

Mon, 14 Dec

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

Many characteristics go into making human beings special — brain size, opposable thumbs, etc. Sure...

Wed, 09 Dec

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

Getting into the swing of things here with monthly Ask Me Anything episodes. If you missed the expla...

Mon, 07 Dec

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

Those of us living in democracies tend to take the idea for granted. We forget what an audacious, ra...

Mon, 30 Nov

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

Aristotle conceived of the world in terms of teleological “final causes”; Darwin, or so the stor...

Mon, 23 Nov

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

Time! It doesn’t stop, psychological effects of being under lockdown notwithstanding. How we exper...

Fri, 20 Nov

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

As you have likely heard me mention before, I have an account on Patreon, where people can sign...

Mon, 16 Nov

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

Emotions are at the same time utterly central to who we are — where would we be without them? — ...

Mon, 09 Nov

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

Imagine you were locked in a sealed room, with no way to access the outside world but a few screens ...

Mon, 02 Nov

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

This episode is published on November 2, 2020, the day before an historic election in the United Sta...

Mon, 26 Oct

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

Erwin Schrödinger’s famous book What Is Life? highlighted the connections between physi...

Mon, 19 Oct

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

In the service of seeking truth, there would seem to be value in intellectual diversity, both in kee...

Mon, 12 Oct

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

Astronomers rocked the cosmological world with the 1998 discovery that the universe is accelerating....

Mon, 05 Oct

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

Evolution is a messy business, involving as it does selection pressures, mutations, genetic drift, a...

Mon, 28 Sep

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

How can, and should, we talk to each other, especially to people with whom we disagree? “Free spee...

Mon, 21 Sep

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

Stephen Hawking made a number of memorable contributions to physics, but perhaps his greatest w...

Mon, 14 Sep

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

Sexuality is, and always has been, a topic that is endlessly fascinating but also contentious. You m...

Mon, 07 Sep

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

You can’t always get what you want, as a wise person once said. But we do try, even when someone e...

Mon, 31 Aug

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

Not too long ago nobody carried a mobile phone; now almost everybody does. That’s the kind of rate...

Mon, 24 Aug

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

Human civilization is only a few thousand years old (depending on how we count). So if civilization ...

Mon, 17 Aug

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

Physicists have traditionally simplified systems as much as possible, in order to shed light on fund...

Mon, 10 Aug

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

It’s easy to foresee that technological progress will change how we live; it’s much harder to an...

Mon, 03 Aug

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

We are living, in case you haven’t noticed, in a world full of bullshit. It’s hard to say whethe...

Mon, 27 Jul

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

Despite occasional and important disagreements, most people are in rough agreement about what it mea...

Mon, 20 Jul

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

Someday, most likely, we will encounter life that is not as we know it. We might find it elsewhere i...

Mon, 13 Jul

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

We gather empirical evidence about the nature of the world through our senses, and use that evidence...

Mon, 06 Jul

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

Creativity is one of those things that we all admire but struggle to define or make concrete. Music ...

Mon, 29 Jun

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

Cooking is art, but it’s also very much science — mostly chemistry, but with important contribut...

Mon, 22 Jun

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

The best chess and Go players in the world aren’t human beings any more; they’re artificially-in...

Mon, 15 Jun

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

I recently saw an estimate that if you took all the novel coronaviruses in the world (the actual vir...

Mon, 08 Jun

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

A podcast only hits the century mark once! And for Mindscape, this is it. There have been holiday me...

Mon, 01 Jun

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

There are some problems for which it’s very hard to find the answer, but very easy to check the an...

Mon, 25 May

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

Each of us is different, in some way or another, from every other person. But some are more differen...

Mon, 18 May

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

Humans build machines, in part, to relieve themselves from the burden of work on difficult, repetiti...

Mon, 11 May

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

The past few centuries of scientific progress have displaced humanity from the center of it all: the...

Mon, 04 May

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

Everybody talks about the truth, but nobody does anything about it. And to be honest, how we talk ab...

Mon, 27 Apr

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

Artificial intelligence has made great strides of late, in areas as diverse as playing Go and recogn...

Mon, 20 Apr

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

Human beings have a strange fascination with dangerous, predatory animals — bears, lions, wolves, ...

Mon, 13 Apr

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

It’s hard doing science when you only have one data point, especially when that data point is subj...

Mon, 06 Apr

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

If one of the ambitious goals of philosophy is to determine the meaning of life, one of the ambitiou...

Mon, 30 Mar

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

Science costs money. And for a brief, glorious period between the start of the Manhattan Project in ...

Mon, 23 Mar

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

What direction does time point in? None, really, although some people might subconsciously put the p...

Wed, 18 Mar

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

This is a special episode of Mindscape, thrown together quickly. Many thanks to Tara Smith for joini...

Mon, 16 Mar

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

“What good is half a wing?” That’s the rhetorical question often asked by people who have trou...

Mon, 09 Mar

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

If you tell me that one of the world’s leading neuroscientists has developed a theory of how the b...

Mon, 02 Mar

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

Anyone who has read histories of the Cold War, including the Cuban Missile Crisis and the&...

Mon, 24 Feb

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

It’s hard to make decisions that will change your life. It’s even harder to make a decision if y...

Mon, 17 Feb

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

Nations generally want their economies to be rich, robust, and growing. But it’s also important to...

Mon, 10 Feb

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

The Greek statesman Demosthenes is credited with saying “I am a citizen of the world,” and the i...

Mon, 03 Feb

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

The Convention on Psychotropic Substances was a 1971 United Nations treaty that placed str...

Mon, 27 Jan

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

People have always disagreed about politics, passionately and sometimes even violently. But in certa...

Mon, 20 Jan

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

Physics is simple; people are complicated. But even people are ultimately physical systems, made of ...

Mon, 13 Jan

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

We are all alive, but “life” is something we struggle to understand. How do we distinguish a “...

Mon, 06 Jan

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

Wilfrid Sellars described the task of philosophy as explaining how things, in the broadest sense of ...

Sun, 22 Dec

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

Welcome to the second annual Mindscape Holiday Message! No substantive content or deep ideas, just m...

Mon, 16 Dec

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

In the United States, more than one in five deaths is caused by cancer. The medical community h...

Mon, 09 Dec

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

It’s too easy to take laws of nature for granted. Sure, gravity is pulling us toward Earth today; ...

Mon, 02 Dec

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

We've talked a lot recently about the Many Worlds of quantum mechanics. That’s one kind of multive...

Mon, 25 Nov

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

An infinite number of things happen; we bring structure and meaning to the world by making art and t...

Mon, 18 Nov

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

Changing technologies have always affected how we produce and enjoy art, and music might be the most...

Mon, 11 Nov

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

Maxwell's Demon is a famous thought experiment in which a mischievous imp uses knowledge of the velo...

Mon, 04 Nov

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

The human brain contains roughly 85 billion neurons, wired together in an extraordinarily complex ne...

Mon, 28 Oct

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

Cosmologists are always talking excitedly about the Big Bang and all the cool stuff that happened in...

Mon, 21 Oct

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

Like so many technological innovations, the internet is something that burst on the scene and pervad...

Mon, 14 Oct

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

Artificial intelligence is better than humans at playing chess or go, but still has trouble holding ...

Mon, 07 Oct

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

Our observable universe started out in a highly non-generic state, one of very low entropy, and diso...

Mon, 30 Sep

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

The idea of “red states” and “blue states” burst on the scene during the 2000 U.S. President...

Mon, 23 Sep

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

We had our fun last week, exploring how progress in renewable energy and electric vehicles may help ...

Mon, 16 Sep

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

The Earth is heating up, and it’s our fault. But human beings are not always complete idiots (occa...

Mon, 09 Sep

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

I suspect most loyal Mindscape listeners have been exposed to the fact that I’ve written...

Mon, 02 Sep

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

Physicists study systems that are sufficiently simple that it’s possible to find deep unifying pri...

Mon, 26 Aug

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

All of us have been wrong about things from time to time. But sometimes it was a simple, forgivable ...

Mon, 19 Aug

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

Memory takes different forms. Memories can be encoded in the strength of neural connections in our b...

Mon, 12 Aug

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

There are many mysteries surrounding quantum mechanics. To me, the biggest mysteries are why physici...

Mon, 05 Aug

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

Fiction shines a light on the human condition by putting people into imaginary situations and envisi...

Mon, 29 Jul

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

“Democracy may not exist, but we’ll miss it when it’s gone” — or so suggests the title of ...

Mon, 22 Jul

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

Scientists can’t quite agree on how to define “life,” but that hasn’t stopped them from stud...

Mon, 15 Jul

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

As you may have heard, I have a new book coming out in September, Something Deeply Hidden: Quantum W...

Mon, 08 Jul

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

It doesn’t mean much to say music affects your brain — everything that happens to you affects yo...

Mon, 01 Jul

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

What does it mean to be a good person? To act ethically and morally in the world? In the old days we...

Mon, 24 Jun

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

Games play an important, and arguably increasing, role in human life. We play games on our computers...

Mon, 17 Jun

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

Cosmologists have a standard set of puzzles they think about: the nature of dark matter and dark ene...

Mon, 10 Jun

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

It’s fun to spend time thinking about how other people should behave, but fortunately we also have...

Mon, 03 Jun

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

It’s easy to be cynical about humanity’s present state and future prospects. But we have made it...

Mon, 27 May

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

If you’re bad, we are taught, you go to Hell. Who in the world came up with that idea? Some will a...

Mon, 20 May

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

Most people in the modern world — and the vast majority of Mindscape listeners, I would imagine —...

Mon, 13 May

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

Most of us have no trouble telling the difference between a robot and a living, feeling organism. Ne...

Mon, 06 May

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

For decades now physicists have been struggling to reconcile two great ideas from a century ago: gen...

Mon, 29 Apr

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

  When we talk about the mind, we are constantly talking about consciousness and cognition. Antonio...

Mon, 22 Apr

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

Some people never drink wine; for others, it’s an indispensable part of an enjoyable meal. Whateve...

Mon, 15 Apr

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

The space age officially began in 1957 with the launch of the Sputnik 1 satellite. But recent years ...

Mon, 08 Apr

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

One of the most important insights in the history of science is the fact that complex behavior can a...

Mon, 01 Apr

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

The modern world is full of technology, and also with anxiety about technology. We worry about robot...

Mon, 25 Mar

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

Consciousness has many aspects, from experience to wakefulness to self-awareness. One aspect is imag...

Mon, 18 Mar

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

Let’s say, for sake of argument, that you don’t believe in God or the supernatural. Is there sti...

Mon, 11 Mar

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

When many of us think “Ancient Rome,” we think of the Empire and the Caesars. But the Empire was...

Mon, 04 Mar

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

Quantum mechanics is our best theory of how reality works at a fundamental level, yet physicists sti...

Mon, 25 Feb

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

Everything we think about the world outside our immediate senses is shaped by information brought to...

Mon, 18 Feb

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

Within every person’s mind there is on ongoing battle between reason and emotion. It’s not alway...

Mon, 11 Feb

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

Reality is a tricky thing. Is love real? What about the number 5? This is clearly a job for a philos...

Mon, 04 Feb

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

Our climate is in the midst of dramatic changes, driven largely by human activity, with potentially ...

Mon, 28 Jan

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

String theory was originally proposed as a relatively modest attempt to explain some features of str...

Mon, 21 Jan

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

It’s hardly news that computers are exerting ever more influence over our lives. And we’re begin...

Mon, 14 Jan

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

Sometimes science is asking esoteric questions about the fundamental nature of reality. Other times,...

Mon, 07 Jan

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

Sir Roger Penrose has had a remarkable life. He has contributed an enormous amount to our understand...

Mon, 24 Dec

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

There won't be any regular episodes of Mindscape this week or next, as we take a holiday break. Regu...

Mon, 17 Dec

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

It's a big universe out there, full of an astonishing variety of questions and puzzles. Today's gues...

Mon, 10 Dec

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

Everywhere around us are things that serve functions. We live in houses, sit on chairs, drive in car...

Mon, 03 Dec

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

The "Easy Problems" of consciousness have to do with how the brain takes in information, thinks abou...

Mon, 26 Nov

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

I remember vividly hosting a colloquium speaker, about fifteen years ago, who talked about the LIGO ...

Mon, 19 Nov

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

Brains are important things; they're where thinking happens. Or are they? The theory of "embodied co...

Mon, 12 Nov

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

There's no question that human activity is causing enormous changes on our planet's environment, fro...

Mon, 05 Nov

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

We humans love to tell ourselves stories about why things happened the way they did; if the stories ...

Mon, 29 Oct

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

Special Halloween edition? Scott Derrickson is a film-lover first and a director second, but he's be...

Mon, 22 Oct

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

Economics, like other sciences (social and otherwise), is about what the world does; but it's natura...

Mon, 15 Oct

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

String theory is a speculative and highly technical proposal for uniting the known forces of nature,...

Mon, 08 Oct

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

The job of science fiction isn't to predict the future; it's to tell interesting stories in an imagi...

Mon, 01 Oct

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

Aging -- everybody does it, very few people actually do something about it. Coleen Murphy is an exce...

Sat, 08 Sep

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

Language comes naturally to us, but is also deeply mysterious. On the one hand, it manifests as a co...

Sat, 08 Sep

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

To paraphrase Ian Malcolm in Jurassic Park, scientists tend to focus on whether they can do somethin...

Sat, 08 Sep

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

For something of such obvious importance, money is kind of mysterious. It can, as Homer Simpson once...

Tue, 04 Sep 2018 16:28:22 -0000

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

Jazz occupies a special place in the American cultural landscape. It's played in elegant concert hal...

Mon, 27 Aug

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

Few events in recent astronomical history have had the worldwide emotional resonance as the 2006 ann...

Mon, 20 Aug

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

We're all going to die. But while we are alive, it's up to us how we understand and deal with that f...

Mon, 13 Aug

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

It's fun to be in the exciting, chaotic, youthful days of the podcast, when anything goes and experi...

Mon, 06 Aug

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

Our understanding of heredity and genetics is improving at blinding speed. It was only in the year 2...

Mon, 30 Jul

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

 Both words in the phrase "liberal democracy" carry meaning, and both concepts are under attack aro...

Mon, 23 Jul

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

Poker, like life, is a game of incomplete information. To do well in such a game, we have to think i...

Mon, 16 Jul

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

If you scale up an animal to twice its height, keeping everything else proportionate, its volume and...

Thu, 12 Jul 2018 13:42:33 -0000

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

According to atheism, God does not exist. But religions have traditionally done much more than simpl...

Wed, 11 Jul

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

The human mind loves nothing more than to build mental boxes -- categories -- and put things into th...

Tue, 10 Jul 2018 14:15:39 -0000

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

Quantum mechanics and general relativity are the two great triumphs of twentieth-century theoretical...

Wed, 04 Jul

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

For the first full episode of Mindscape, it's an honor to welcome social psychologist Carol Tavris. ...

Sun, 01 Jul

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

I've decided to officially take the plunge into the world of podcasting. The new show will be called...