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Sean Carroll | Wondery


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.


Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas

Why are people wrong all the time, anyway? Is it because we human beings are too good at being irrational, using our biases and motivated reasoning to convince ourselves of something that isn't quite accurate? Or is it something different -- unmotivated reasoning, or "unthinkingness," an unwillingness to do the cognitive work that most of us are actually up to if we try? Gordon Pennycook wants to argue for the latter, and this simple shift has important consequences, including for strategies for getting people to be less susceptible to misinformation and conspiracies.

Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2025/10/27/333-gordon-pennycook-on-unthinkingness-conspiracies-and-what-to-do-about-them/

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Gordon Pennycook received his Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Waterloo. He is currently an associate professor of psychology and Dorothy and Ariz Mehta Faculty Leadership Fellow at Cornell University as well as an Adjunct Professor at University of Regina’s Hill/Levene Schools of Business. He is a member of the Royal Society of Canada's College of New Scholars, Artists, and Scientists, and a 2016 winner of the IgNobel Prize for Peace.

Web siteCornell web pageGoogle Scholar publicationsWikipediaIgNobel Prize citation

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333 | Gordon Pennycook on Unthinkingness, Conspiracies, and What to Do About Them

Music is math that you can dance to. The fact that certain notes sound good when played together, or in succession, is related to the mathematical properties of the frequencies to which they correspond, an idea that goes back as far as Pythagoras himself. These days we have a much more intricate understanding of these relationships and how to manipulate them. I talk to composer and music theorist Dmitri Tymoczko about how different musical scales are constructed and the math underlying what sounds good.

Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2025/10/20/332-dmitri-tymoczko-on-the-mathematics-behind-music/

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Dmitri Tymoczko received a Ph.D. in music composition from the University of California, Berkeley. He is currently a professor of music at Princeton University as well as a composer and performer. He has been the recipient of Rhodes and Guggenheim fellowships. As a composer, his works have been performed by multiple groups, and recorded on several albums.

Personal web sitePrinceton web pageMad Musical Science • Spiral diagrams: 
rock music • , 
classical musicGoogle Scholar publicationsAmazon author pageWikipedia • William Sethares's 
Tuning Timbre Spectrum Scale

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332 | Dmitri Tymoczko on the Mathematics Behind Music

Welcome to the October 2025 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are funded by Patreon supporters (who are also the ones asking the questions). We take questions asked by Patreons, whittle them down to a more manageable number -- based primarily on whether I have anything interesting to say about them, not whether the questions themselves are good -- and sometimes group them together if they are about a similar topic. Enjoy!

Blog post with AMA questions and transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2025/10/13/ama-october-2025/

Support Mindscape on Patreon.

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AMA | October 2025

Certain features of our universe seem unnatural to us. These include "constants of nature" such as the cosmological constant and the mass of the Higgs boson, as well as features of the initial conditions like the curvature of space and the initial entropy. But they can't truly be "unnatural" -- they are literally features of Nature itself. Some have turned to the anthropic principle and the multiverse, while others look to theism for an explanation. I talk here about my views on the various attitudes one might take toward these apparent fine-tunings, and why it is important to think about them.

Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2025/10/06/331-solo-fine-tuning-god-and-the-multiverse/

Support Mindscape on Patreon.

Some readings of relevance:

 • Livio and Rees, 
Fine-Tuning, Complexity, and Life in the Multiverse • Carroll, 
In What Sense Is the Early Universe Fine-Tuned? • Barnes, 
A Reasonable Little Question: A Formulation of the Fine-Tuning Argument • Goff, 
Our Improbable Existence Is No Evidence for a Multiverse • Neal, 
Puzzles of Anthropic Reasoning Resolved Using Full Non-indexical Conditioning

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331 | Solo: Fine-Tuning, God, and the Multiverse

A characteristic of complex systems is that individual components combine to exhibit large-scale emergent behavior even when the components were not specifically designed for any particular purpose within the collective. Sometimes those individual components are us -- people interacting within societies or online communities. Studying the dynamics of such interactions is interesting both to better understand what is happening, and hopefully to designing better communities. I talk with Petter Törnberg about flows of information, how polarization develops, and how artificial agents can help steer things in better directions.

Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2025/09/29/330-petter-tornberg-on-the-dynamics-of-misinformation/

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Petter Törnberg received a Ph.D. in complex systems from Chalmers University of Technology. He is now an Assistant Professor at the Institute for Language, Logic and Computation at the University of Amsterdam, Associate Professor in Complex Systems at Chalmers University of Technology, NWO VENI laurate, and senior researcher at the University of Neuchâtel.

Web siteUniv. Amsterdam web pageGoogle Scholar publicationsAmazon author pageBluesky

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330 | Petter Törnberg on the Dynamics of (Mis)Information

Getting along in society requires that we mostly adhere to certainly shared norms and customs. Often it's not enough that we all know what the rules are, but also that everyone else knows the rules, and that they know that we know the rules, and so on. Philosophers and game theorists refer to this as common knowledge. In Steven Pinker's new book, When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows..., he explores how common knowledge (or its absence) explains money, power, and a wide variety of subtextual human interactions.

Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2025/09/22/329-steven-pinker-on-rationality-and-common-knowledge/

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Steven Pinker received his Ph.D. in psychology from Harvard University. He is currently the Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology at Harvard University. He is the author of several best-selling books and recipient of several honorary doctoral degrees. Among his awards are Humanist of the Year (two different organizations) and the William James Lifetime Achievement Award from the Association for Psychological Science.

Web siteHarvard web pageGoogle Scholar publicationsAmazon author pageWikipedia

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329 | Steven Pinker on Rationality and Common Knowledge

Like any machine, bodies occasionally break down, and it's natural to go in search of a replacement part. Ancient societies featured simple prosthetics for teeth, noses, and limbs, while modern medicine pursues more advanced ways of replacing internal organs and microbiomes. But what is striking is not just the impressive ingenuity of our attempts to replicate human anatomy, but the surprising level of difficulty involved in doing it well. I talk with author Mary Roach about the many ways in which humans have chosen to replace bits of themselves, as told in her recent book Replaceable You: Adventures in Human Anatomy.

Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2025/09/15/328-mary-roach-on-replacing-parts-of-our-bodies/

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Mary Roach received a bachelor's degree in psychology from Wesleyan University. Her books include multiple New York Times bestsellers and have appeared on numerous best-of lists. She was a guest editor in the Best American Science and Nature Writing series, and received the Rushdie Award from the Harvard Secular Society.

Web siteWikipediaBlueskyGoodreads profileAmazon author page

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328 | Mary Roach on Replacing Parts of Our Bodies

Welcome to the September 2025 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are funded by Patreon supporters (who are also the ones asking the questions). We take questions asked by Patreons, whittle them down to a more manageable number -- based primarily on whether I have anything interesting to say about them, not whether the questions themselves are good -- and sometimes group them together if they are about a similar topic. Enjoy!

Blog post with AMA questions and transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2025/09/08/ama-september-2025/

Support Mindscape on Patreon.

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AMA | September 2025

"Liberalism," divorced from its particular connotations in this or that modern political context, refers broadly to a philosophy of individual rights, liberties, and responsibilities, coupled with respect for institutions and rule of law over personalized power. As Cass Sunstein construes the term, liberalism encompasses a broad tent, from Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher to Martin Luther King and Franklin Roosevelt. But liberalism is being challenged both from the right and from the left, by those who think that individual liberties can go too far. We talk about the philosophical case for liberalism as well as the challenges to it in modern politics, as discussed in his new book On Liberalism: In Defense of Freedom.

Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2025/09/01/327-cass-sunstein-on-liberalism/

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Cass Sunstein received a J.D. from Harvard Law School, and worked as a clerk for Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. He is currently Robert Walmsley University Professor at Harvard. He served in several government roles during the Obama administration. He is recognized as "by far the most cited legal scholar in the United States and probably the world."

Harvard web pageGoogle Scholar publicationsSubstackAmazon author pageWikipedia

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327 | Cass Sunstein on Liberalism

In a relatively short period of time, exoplanets (planets around stars other than our Sun) have gone from an intriguing conjecture to an active field of scientific study, with over 5,000 confirmed discoveries. The task now is to move beyond merely accumulating new examples, and embarking on systematic studies of their properties. What fraction of stars have planets, how are they distributed in size and distance, what kinds of atmospheres do they have, are any promising homes for life? I talk with Natalie Batalha about what we've learned so far, and prospects for future discoveries.

Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2025/08/25/326-natalie-batalha-on-what-we-know-and-will-learn-about-exoplanets/

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Natalie Batalha received a Ph.D. in astrophysics from the University of California, Santa Cruz. She is currently a professor of astronomy and astrophysics at UCSC. She has served as Science Team Leader, Mission Scientist, and Project Scientist for NASA's Kepler satellite observatory. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and was listed as one of Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential People in the World in 2017.

Web pageGoogle Scholar publicationsWikipedia

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326 | Natalie Batalha on What We Know and Will Learn About Exoplanets

The Artificial Intelligence landscape is changing with remarkable speed these days, and the capability of Large Language Models in particular has led to speculation (and hope, and fear) that we could be on the verge of achieving Artificial General Intelligence. I don't think so. Or at least, while what is being achieved is legitimately impressive, it's not anything like the kind of thinking that is done by human beings. LLMs do not model the world in the same way we do, nor are they driven by the same kinds of feelings and motivations. It is therefore extremely misleading to throw around words like "intelligence" and "values" without thinking carefully about what is meant in this new context.

Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2023/11/27/258-solo-ai-thinks-different/

Support Mindscape on Patreon.

Some relevant references:

Introduction to LLMs by Andrej Karpathy • (video)
OpenAI's GPTMelanie Mitchell: Can Large Language Models Reason?Mitchell et al.: Comparing Humans, GPT-4, and GPT-4V On Abstraction and Reasoning TasksKim et al.: FANToM: A Benchmark for Stress-testing Machine Theory of Mind in InteractionsButlin et al.: Consciousness in Artificial Intelligence: Insights from the Science of ConsciousnessMargaret Boden: AI doesn't have feelings

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258 | Solo: AI Thinks Different

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