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 transcribedWelcome to the July 2025 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are funded by Patreon supporters (who are also the ones asking...
Our universe started out looking very simple: hot, dense, smooth, rapidly expanding. According to our best current model, it will end up looking simpl...
It is common to refer to philosophy as "a series of footnotes to Plato." But in the original quote, Alfred North Whitehead was more careful: he limite...
Economics is seeing an upsurge in the importance of controlled, reproducible empirical studies. One area where this has had a great impact is on devel...
The human brain is extremely complicated, but decades of careful neuroscientific research have revealed quite a bit about how it works, including how...
Welcome to the June 2025 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are funded by Patreon supporters (who are also the ones asking...
Einstein's general theory of relativity, plus some reasonable assumptions about the universe and what it's made of, has a remarkable implication: that...
Every time you see an apple spontaneously break away from a tree, it falls downward. You therefore claim that there is a law of physics: apples fall d...
There are living creatures dwelling deep below the surface of the Earth, as deep as we are able to drill. These hearty microorganisms are related to m...
Medical science is advancing at an astonishing rate. Today we talk with leading expert Eric Topol about two aspects of this story. First, the use of a...
Welcome to the May 2025 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are funded by Patreon supporters (who are also the ones asking...
The germ theory of disease is a crowning achievement of science, up there with modern physics, continental drift, and evolution via natural selection....
Questions about consciousness range from the precise and empirical -- what neurons fire when I have some particular experience -- to the deeply profou...
Welcome to the April 2025 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are funded by Patreon supporters (who are also the ones askin...
Cosmologists were, let us be honest, pretty stunned in 1998 when observations revealed that the universe is accelerating. There was an obvious plausib...
Consciousness is easier to possess than to define. One thing we can do is to look into the brain and see what lights up when conscious awareness is ta...
We often study cognition in other species, in part to learn about modes of thinking that are different from our own. Today's guest, psychologist/philo...
Welcome to the March 2025 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are funded by Patreon supporters (who are also the ones askin...
A lot of science goes into crafting the perfect cocktail. Balancing sweet and bitter notes, providing the right amount of aeration and dilution, getti...
It is commonplace to refer to the Earth's oceans as vast and largely unexplored. But we do understand some aspects, and improving that understanding i...
