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 transcribedAging and death happen to the best of us, but there are increasing efforts to do something about it. That effort requires that we have some reasonable...
It's a wonder democracy works at all -- a collection of people with potentially different interests have to agree to abide by majority vote even when...
As an experimental facility, the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Geneva has been extraordinarily successful, discovering the Higgs boson and measurin...
It wasn't that long ago, historically speaking, that you might put on your tuxedo or floor-length evening gown to go out and hear a live opera or symp...
Welcome to the September 2024 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are funded by Patreon supporters (who are also the ones a...
One common feature of complex systems is sensitive dependence on initial conditions: a small change in how systems begin evolving can lead to large di...
Understanding how life began on Earth involves questions of chemistry, geology, planetary science, physics, and more. But the question of how random p...
Being rational necessarily involves engagement with probability. Given two possible courses of action, it can be rational to prefer the one that could...
Welcome to the August 2024 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are funded by Patreon supporters (who are also the ones aski...
The human brain does a pretty amazing job of taking in a huge amount of data from multiple sensory modalities -- vision, hearing, smell, etc. -- and c...
Change is scary. But sometimes it can all work out for the best. There's no guarantee of that, however, even when the change in question involves the...
The philosophy of mathematics would be so much easier if it weren't for infinity. The concept seems natural, but taking it seriously opens the door to...
Welcome to the July 2024 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are funded by Patreon supporters (who are also the ones asking...
Just like with physics, in biology it is perfectly possible to do most respectable work without thinking much about philosophy, but there are unmistak...
Which is more intelligent, ChatGPT or a 3-year old? Of course this depends on what we mean by "intelligence." A modern LLM is certainly able to answer...
For those of us who are not dualists, the mind arises from our physical bodies -- mostly the brain, but the rest of the body has a role to play. And y...
We claim to love all of our children, friends, and students equally. But perhaps deep down you assign a ranking to them, from favorite to not-so-favor...
Welcome to the June 2024 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are funded by Patreon supporters (who are also the ones asking...
String theory, the current leading candidate for a theory of quantum gravity as well as other particles and forces, doesn't connect directly to the wo...
The Earth's climate keeps changing, largely due to the effects of human activity, and we haven't been doing enough to slow things down. Indeed, over t...
