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 transcribedGod is dead, as Nietzsche's madman memorably reminded us. So what are we going to do about it? If there is no powerful force out there to guide us and...
Most of us strive to be good, moral people. When we are doing that striving, what is happening in our brains? Some of our moral inclinations seem pret...
Cities are incredibly important to modern life, and their importance is only growing. As Geoffrey West points out, the world is adding urban areas equ...
Welcome to the February 2023 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are funded by Patreon supporters (who are also the ones as...
Human beings have developed wondrous capacities to take in information about the world, mull it over, think about a suite of future implications, and...
So you have some information — how are you going to share it with and present it to the rest of the world? There has been a long history of organizing...
There are few human impulses more primal than the desire for explanations. We have expectations concerning what happens, and when what we experience d...
Quantum gravity research is inspired by experiment — all of the experimental data that supports quantum mechanics, and supports general relativity — b...
One of the most powerful of all human capacities is the ability to imagine ourselves in hypothetical situations at different times. We can remember th...
Welcome to that beloved Mindscape annual tradition, the Holiday Message. An opportunity for a quicker and less-well-thought-out solo episode to round...
Life is rich with moments of uncertainty, where we're not exactly sure what's going to happen next. We often find ourselves in situations where we hav...
Welcome to the December 2022 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are funded by Patreon supporters (who are also the ones as...
It's easy enough to proclaim that we are curious creatures, but what does that really mean? What kinds of curiosity are there? And how does curiosity...
Stephen Hawking's discoveries of black hole radiation, entropy, and the information-loss problem have both taught us an enormous amount about the rela...
Why do people voluntarily hand over authority to a government? Under what conditions should they do so? These questions are both timeless and extremel...
Welcome to the November 2022 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are funded by Patreon supporters (who are also the ones as...
People have a complicated relationship to mathematics. We all use it in our everyday lives, from calculating a tip at a restaurant to estimating the p...
The founders of statistical mechanics in the 19th century faced an uphill battle to convince their fellow physicists that the laws of thermodynamics c...
It's a big universe we live in, so it comes as no surprise that big numbers are needed to describe it. There are roughly 10^22 stars in the observable...
Welcome to the October 2022 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are funded by Patreon supporters (who are also the ones ask...
