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.
423 episodes transcribedModern life has, in many ways, removed us from the environments in which our ancestors lived and adapted. Not only do we spend time looking at s...
The cosmological constant, as discussed last episode, provides a perfectly good (thus far) explanation for why we observe the universe to be accelerat...
The most surprising discovery in fundamental physics during my career as a scientist was undoubtedly the acceleration of the universe, announced in 19...
Messenger RNA (mRNA) plays a literally central role in the functioning of life as we know it, shuttling information back and forth between the D...
All ideas have a history, no matter how inevitable and well-entrenched they may seem to us today. The later Enlightenment was a heady time when...
Welcome to the June 2026 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are funded by Patreon supporters (who are also the ones asking...
One of the major obstacles to understanding quantum mechanics is the difficulty we have in simply accepting what the theory itself is telling us...
Did I have any freedom in choosing this particular podcast guest? At the level of particles, fields, and the fundamental laws of physics; no. At...
Economic markets are efficient ways of deciding fair prices, at least in ideal circumstances of perfect competition, information, and choice. Bu...
Welcome to the May 2026 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are funded by Patreon supporters (who are also the ones asking...
The connectome is the wiring diagram of a brain, a big matrix that tells us what neurons talk to what other neurons. Understanding it is an impo...
Peter Singer has been an influential philosopher for a number of decades. He was a significant early voice in animal rights, has been a leading...
We are more familiar with ourselves than with anything else in the universe, but we generally don't come very close to really understanding what...
Welcome to the April 2026 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are funded by Patreon supporters (who are also the ones...
There is something special about gravity. After decades of effort, there is still no convergence on the right way to reconcile Einstein's theory...
"Lamarkism" is a term often attached to a seemingly discredited idea in evolutionary biology: that one organism could acquire characteristics (e...
In the 18th century, philosopher Jeremy Bentham suggested the Panopticon as a model of a prison where inmates could be constantly observed by ju...
Intelligence is a many splendored thing, especially when it comes to comparisons between species. Chimpanzees are better than humans at some num...
Welcome to the March 2026 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are funded by Patreon supporters (who are also the ones...
Behaving rationally involves facing up to conditions of uncertainty; we never navigate the world with perfect confidence. Sometimes we are uncer...
