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.
412 episodes transcribedThe concept of the city is a crucial one for human civilization: people living in proximity, bringing in resources from outside, separated from the la...
Welcome to the May 2022 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are funded by Patreon supporters (who are also the ones asking...
To say that event A causes event B is to not only make a claim about our actual world, but about other possible worlds — in worlds where A didn't happ...
Evolution has equipped species with a variety of ways to travel through the air — flapping, gliding, floating, not to mention jumping really high. But...
Humans are related to all other species here on Earth, but some are closer relatives than others. Primates, a group that includes apes, monkeys, lemur...
Every time we make an important decision, it's hard not to wonder how things would have turned out had we chosen differently. The set of all those hyp...
Welcome to the April 2022 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are funded by Patreon supporters (who are also the ones askin...
Randomness and probability are central to modern physics. In statistical mechanics this is because we don't know everything about the distribution of...
The future grows out of the present, but it manages to consistently surprise us. How can we get better at anticipating and preparing for what the futu...
Biological organisms are pretty good at healing themselves, but their abilities fall short in crucial ways. Planaria can be cut into pieces, and each...
All societies grant more power to some citizens, and there is always a temptation to use that power for the benefit of themselves rather than for the...
Welcome to the March 2022 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are funded by Patreon supporters (who are also the ones askin...
If extraterrestrial life is out there — not just microbial slime, but big, complex, macroscopic organisms — what will they be like? Movies have traine...
We're pretty well-calibrated when it comes to dealing with common, everyday-level setbacks. But our brains aren't naturally equipped for dealing with...
Advances in technology have gradually been extending the human self beyond its biological extent, as we augment who we are with a variety of interconn...
One of the brilliant achievements of Darwin's theory of natural selection was to help explain apparently "purposeful" or "designed" aspects of biology...
Artificial intelligence is everywhere around us. Deep-learning algorithms are used to classify images, suggest songs to us, and even to drive cars. Bu...
Welcome to the February 2022 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are funded by Patreon supporters (who are also the ones as...
Modern particle physics is a victim of its own success. We have extremely good theories — so good that it's hard to know exactly how to move beyond th...
Reality is just out there — but how we perceive reality and talk about it depends on choices we human beings make. We decide (consciously or not) to c...
