Welcome to the February 2026 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/2026/02/02/ama-february-2026/

Note that Mindscape now has a new hosting provider, Libsyn. (Actually a return home, as that was my first host when Mindscape was launched.) Things seem to be going smoothly, but let us know if there are any technical glitches.

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Evolution with natural selection involves an intricate mix of the random and the driven. Mutations are essentially random, while selection pressures work to prefer certain outcomes over others. There is tremendous divergence of species over time, but also repeated convergence to forms and mechanisms that are unmistakably useful. We see this clearly in eyes and fins, but the basic pattern also holds for brains and forms of social organization. I talk with philosopher Rachell Powell about what these ideas mean for humans, other terrestrial species, and also for forms of life we have not yet encountered.

Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2026/01/26/342-rachell-powell-on-evolutionary-convergence-morality-and-mind/

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Rachell Powell received her Ph.D. in philosophy from Duke University. She is currently a Professor of Philosophy at Boston University. She has held fellowships at the National Humanities Center, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research, the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center, the Berlin School of Mind and Brain at Humboldt University, and the Center for Genetic Engineering and Society at North Carolina State University.

• Boston University web page
• PhilPapers publications

Welcome to the November 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/2025/11/17/ama-november-2025/

In the intro I mentioned a couple of my favorite TV shows of this year. Here is a more thought-out list (no particular order):

• Slow Horses
• Murderbot
• The Residence
• Poker Face
• Severance

Pluribus and Down Cemetery Road also look promising, but too early to tell. (There are a huge number of shows I've never seen, so feel free to add recommendations.)

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The twentieth century was something, wasn't it? Margaret Mead, as well as her onetime-husband Gregory Bateson, managed to play roles in several of its key developments: social anthropology and its impact on sex & gender mores, psychedelic drugs and their potential use for therapeutic purposes, and the origin of cybernetics, to name a few. Benjamin Breen discusses this impactful trajectory in his new book, Tripping on Utopia: Margaret Mead, the Cold War, and the Troubled Birth of Psychedelic Science. We talk about Mead and Bateson, the early development of psychedelic drugs, and how the possibility of a realistic utopia didn't always seem so far away.

Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2024/02/26/267-benjamin-breen-on-margaret-mead-psychedelics-and-utopia/

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Benjamin Breen received his Ph.D. in history from the University of Texas at Austin. He is currently an associate professor of history at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Among his awards are the National Endowment for the Humanities Award for Faculty and the William H. Welch Medal of the American Association for the History of Medicine. He writes on Substack at Res Obscura.

• Web site
• UCSC web page
• Wikipedia
• Amazon author page

Evolution is sometimes described -- not precisely, but with some justification -- as being about the "survival of the fittest." But that idea doesn't work unless there is some way for one generation to pass down information about how best to survive. We now know that such information is passed down in a variety of ways: through our inherited genome, through epigenetic factors, and of course through cultural transmission. Chris Adami suggests that we update Dobzhansky's maxim "Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution" to "... except in the light of information." We talk about information theory as a subject in its own right, and how it helps us to understand organisms, evolution, and the origin of life.

Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2024/02/19/266-christoph-adami-on-how-information-makes-sense-of-biology/

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Christoph Adami received his Ph.D. in physics from Stony Brook University. He is currently professor of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics as well as Physics and Astronomy at Michigan State University. Among his awards are the NASA Exceptional Achievement Medal and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Society for Artificial Life. His new book is The Evolution of Biological Information: How Evolution Creates Complexity, from Viruses to Brains.

• Web site
• Michigan State web page
• Google Scholar publications
• Wikipedia

Welcome to the February 2024 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 questions and transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2024/02/12/ama-february-2024/

Support Mindscape on Patreon.

Universities and their students are constantly being encouraged to produce more graduates majoring in STEM fields -- science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. That's the kind of training that will get you a rewarding job, students are told, while at the policy level it is emphasized how STEM workers are needed to drive innovation and growth. In his new book Wasted Education, sociologist John Skrentny points out that the post-graduation trajectories of STEM graduates are more likely to involve being chewed up and spit out by the tech economy than to end up with stable long-term careers. We talk about why that's the case and what might be done about it.

Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2024/02/05/265-john-skrentny-on-how-the-economy-mistreats-stem-workers/

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John Skrentny received his Ph.D. in sociology from Harvard University. He is currently Professor of Sociology at UC San Diego, and has previously served as the Co-Director of the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies and Director of the Yankelovich Center for Social Science Research.

• Web site
• UC San Diego web page
• Google Scholar publications
• Amazon author page

The radius of the Earth is over 6,000 kilometers, but the deepest we've ever dug below the surface is only about 12 km. Yet we have a quite reliable idea of the structure of the Earth's interior -- inner core, outer core, mantle, crust -- not to mention pretty good pictures of what's going on inside some other planets. How do we know those things, and what new things are we learning in the exoplanet era? I talk with astrophysicist and planetary scientist Sabine Stanley about how we use gravitation, seismology, magnetic fields, and other tools to learn what's happening inside planets.

Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2024/01/29/264-sabine-stanley-on-whats-inside-planets/

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Sabine Stanley received a Ph.D. in geophysics from Harvard University. She is currently a Bloomberg Distinguished Professor at Johns Hopkins University. She has been awarded the William Gilbert Award from the American Geophysical Union. Her recent book is What's Hidden Inside Planets?

• Website
• Johns Hopkins web page
• Publications from Google Scholar
• Wikipedia

Einstein's theory of general relativity is distinguished by its singular simplicity and beauty. The Standard Model of Particle Physics, by contrast, is a bit of a mess. So many particles and interactions, each acting somewhat differently, with a bunch of seemingly random parameters. But lurking beneath the mess are a number of powerful and elegant ideas, many of them stemming from symmetries and how they are broken. I talk about some of these ideas with Chris Quigg, who with collaborator Robert Cahn has written a new book on the development of the Standard Model: Grace in All Simplicity.

Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2024/01/22/263-chris-quigg-on-symmetry-and-the-birth-of-the-standard-model/

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Chris Quigg received his Ph.D. in physics from the University of California, Berkeley. He is currently Distinguished Scientist Emeritus at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. Among his awards is the J.J. Sakurai Prize in theoretical particle physics from the American Physical Society. He is also the author of Gauge Theories of the Strong, Weak, and Electromagnetic Interactions.

• Website
• Publications
• Amazon author page
• Wikipedia

Scientists and philosophers sometimes advocate pretty outrageous-sounding ideas about the fundamental nature of reality. (Arguably I have been guilty of this.) It shouldn't be surprising that reality, in regimes far away from our everyday experience, fails to conform to common sense. But it's also okay to maintain a bit of skepticism in the face of bizarre claims. Philosopher Eric Schwitzgebel wants us to face up to the weirdness of the world. He claims that there are no non-weird ways to explain some of the most important features of reality, from quantum mechanics to consciousness.

Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2024/01/15/262-eric-schwitzgebel-on-the-weirdness-of-the-world/

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Eric Schwitzgebel received his Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of California, Berkeley. He is currently a professor of philosophy at the University of California, Riverside. He is the author of several books, including the new The Weirdness of the World.

• UC Riverside web page
• The Splintered Mind blog
• Google Scholar publications
• PhilPeople profile
• Wikipedia

In mid-20th-century cosmology, there was a debate over the origin of the chemical elements. Some thought that they could be produced in the Big Bang, while others argued that they were made inside stars. The truth turns out to be a combination of both, with additional complications layered in. Some of the elements of the periodic table come all the way from the Big Bang, but others are made inside stars or in stellar explosions. But still others are made by cosmic rays or when neutron stars and black holes merge together. We talk to nuclear astrophysicist Sanjana Curtis about all the different ways that the universe is cleverly able to produce various elements.

Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2024/01/08/261-sanjana-curtis-on-the-origins-of-the-elements/

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Sanjana Curtis received her Ph.D. in physics from North Carolina State University. She is currently a National Science Foundation postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, Berkeley. Her research involves nuclear astrophysics, especially the production of heavier elements in supernova explosions and neutron-star/black-hole collisions. She is also active in science communication, including at her TikTok channel.

• Website
• Google Scholar publications

Octopuses, artificial intelligence, and advanced alien civilizations: for many reasons, it's interesting to contemplate ways of thinking other than whatever it is we humans do. How should we think about the space of all possible cognitions? One aspect is simply the physics of the underlying substrate, the physical stuff that is actually doing the thinking. We are used to brains being solid -- squishy, perhaps, but consisting of units in an essentially fixed array. What about liquid brains, where the units can move around? Would an ant colony count? We talk with complexity theorist Ricard Solé about complexity, criticality, and cognition.

Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2024/01/01/260-ricard-sole-on-the-space-of-cognitions/

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Ricard Solé received his Ph.D. in physics from the Polytechnic University of Catalonia. He is currently ICREA research professor at the Catalan Institute for research and Advanced Studies, currently working at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra, where he is head of the Complex Systems Lab. He is also an External Professor of the Santa Fe Institute, Fellow of the European centre for Living Technology, external faculty at the Center for Evolution and Cancer at UCSF, and a member of the Vienna Complex Systems Hub. He is the author of several technical books.

• Web site
• Google Scholar publications

The final Mindscape podcast of each year is devoted to a short, reflective Holiday Message. This year the theme is Immortality: whether it's an attractive idea, and whether the laws of physics and cosmology would allow for it in principle. (Spoiler: they do not.) Mindscape will return as usual on January 1, 2024. Happy holidays everyone!

Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2023/12/18/holiday-message-2023-reflections-on-immortality/

Support Mindscape on Patreon.

Here are some of the stories and papers mentioned in the episode:

• Borges, "The Immortal"
• Barnes, A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters
• The Good Place
• Chiang, Stories of Your Life and Others
• Dyson, "Time Without End: Physics and Biology in an Open Universe"

Science has an incredibly impressive track record of uncovering nonintuitive ideas about the universe that turn out to be surprisingly accurate. It can be tempting to think of scientific discoveries as being carefully constructed atop a rock-solid foundation. In reality, scientific progress is tentative and fallible. Scientists propose models, assign them probabilities, and run tests to see whether they succeed or fail. In cosmologist Andrew Jaffe's new book, The Random Universe, he illustrates how models and probability help us make sense of the cosmos.

Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2025/11/10/335-andrew-jaffe-on-models-probability-and-the-universe/

Support Mindscape on Patreon.

Andrew Jaffe received his Ph.D. in physics from the University of Chicago. He is currently a professor of astrophysics and cosmology and Director of the Imperial Centre for Inference and Cosmology at Imperial College, London. His research lies at the intersection of theoretical and observational cosmology, including the Planck Surveyor, Euclid, LISA, and Simons Observatory collaborations.

• Web site
• Imperial web page
• Google Scholar publications
• Amazon author page

It wasn't that long ago that topics like the nature of consciousness, or the foundations of quantum mechanics, or prospects for extraterrestrial life were considered fringey and disreputable by much of the scientific community. In all these cases, the tide of opinion is gradually changing. Life on other worlds, in particular, has seen a remarkable growth in interest -- how life could start on other worlds, how we can detect it in the solar system and on exoplanets, and even thoughts about advanced alien civilizations. I talk with astrophysicist Adam Frank about some of those thoughts. We also give the inside scoop on what professional scientists think about UFOs.

Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2023/12/11/259-adam-frank-on-what-aliens-might-be-like/

Support Mindscape on Patreon.

Adam Frank received a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Washington. He is currently the Helen F. and Fred H. Gowen Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy and Distinguished Scientist at the Laboratory for Laser Energetics at the University of Rochester. Among his awards are the National Honors Society Best Book in Science award, and the Carl Sagan Medal from the American Astronomical Society. His new book is The Little Book of Aliens.

• Web Site
• U Rochester web page
• Wikipedia
• Amazon author page

Welcome to the December 2023 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 questions and transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2023/12/04/ama-december-2023/

Link to the article referenced about time travel in movies: Ars Technica.

There will be no AMA in January due to holiday break.

Mindscape Big Picture Scholarship.

Support Mindscape on Patreon.

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 GPT
• Melanie Mitchell: Can Large Language Models Reason?
• Mitchell et al.: Comparing Humans, GPT-4, and GPT-4V On Abstraction and Reasoning Tasks
• Kim et al.: FANToM: A Benchmark for Stress-testing Machine Theory of Mind in Interactions
• Butlin et al.: Consciousness in Artificial Intelligence: Insights from the Science of Consciousness
• Margaret Boden: AI doesn't have feelings

Putting on clothes is one of the most universal human experiences. Inevitably, this involves choices; maybe you just grab the cheapest and most convenient clothing available, or maybe you want to fit seamlessly into your local environment, whatever that might be. But maybe you choose to dress more consciously, putting a bit of effort into crafting a personal style and creating a desired impression in others. Derek Guy has, to his own surprise, become well-known as the menswear guy on Twitter. He has put a lot of thought into both the practicalities of clothing (how to find a suit that fits) and its wider social impact (how fashion acts as a cultural language). We talk about both sides of the coin.

(Picture on right is not Derek, but rather former US Attorney General Elliot Richardson, whose dapper image Derek uses as his avatar.)

Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2023/11/20/257-derek-guy-on-the-theory-and-practice-of-dressing-well/

Support Mindscape on Patreon.

Derek Guy is a fashion writer living in San Francisco. He blogs at Die, Workwear!, and contributes to a number of publications.

• Twitter (X)
• Wikipedia
• Politico essay on John Fetterman

There is an undeniable romance in the idea of traveling to, and even living in, outer space. In recent years, a pragmatic justification has become increasingly popular: the Earth is vulnerable to threats both natural and human-made, and it seems only prudent to spread life to other locations in case a disaster befalls our home planet. But how realistic is such a grand ambition? The wife-and-husband team of Kelly and Zack Weinersmith have tackled this question from a dizzying number of angles, from aeronautics and biology to law and psychology. The result is their new book, A City on Mars: Can We Settle Space, Should We Settle Space, and Have We Really Thought This Through? It provides an exceptionally clear-eyed view of the challenges and opportunities ahead.

Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2023/11/13/256-kelly-and-zach-weinersmith-on-building-cities-on-the-moon-and-mars/

Support Mindscape on Patreon.

Kelly Weinersmith received a Ph.D. in ecology from the University of California, Davis. She is currently an adjunct professor in the department of biosciences at Rice University. Zack Weinersmith received a B.S. in English from Pfizer College. He is the creator of the popular webcomic Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, as well as the author and co-author of several books, including Bea Wolf, a retelling of Beowulf as a children's story, with illustrations by Boulet. Kelly and Zach are also co-authors of Soonish: Ten Emerging Technologies That'll Improve and/or Ruin Everything.

Welcome to the November 2023 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 questions and transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2023/11/06/ama-november-2023/

A "Theory of Everything" is physicists' somewhat tongue-in-cheek phrase for a hypothetical model of all the fundamental physical interactions. Of course, even if we had such a theory, it would tell us nothing new about higher-level emergent phenomena, all the way up to human behavior and society. Can we even imagine a "Theory of Everyone," providing basic organizing principles for society? Michael Muthukrishna believes we can, and indeed that we can see the outlines of such a theory emerging, based on the relationships of people to each other and to the physical resources available.

Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2023/10/30/255-michael-muthukrishna-on-developing-a-theory-of-everyone/

Support Mindscape on Patreon.

Michael Muthukrishna received his Ph.D. in psychology from the University of British Columbia. He is currently Associate Professor of Economic Psychology at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Among his awards are an Emerging Scholar Award from the Society for Personality and Social Psychology and a Dissertation Excellence Award from the Canadian Psychological Association. His new book is A Theory of Everyone: The New Science of Who We Are, How We Got Here, and Where We're Going.

• Web site
• LSE web page
• Google Scholar publications
• Wikipedia

It can be tempting, when first introduced to a deep concept of physics like Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, to draw grand philosophical conclusions about the impossibility of knowing anything precisely. That is generally a temptation to be resisted, just because it's so easy to do it wrong. But there is absolutely a place for a careful humanistic synthesis of these kinds of scientific ideas with other ideas, for example from philosophy or literature. That's the kind of task William Egginton takes on in his new book The Rigor of Angels, which compares the work of philosopher Immanuel Kant, physicist Werner Heisenberg, and author Jorge Luis Borges, three thinkers who grappled with limitations on our aspirations to know reality directly.

Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2023/10/23/254-william-egginton-on-kant-heisenberg-and-borges/

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William Egginton received his Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Stanford University. He is currently the Decker Professor in the Humanities and Director of the Alexander Grass Humanities Institute at Johns Hopkins. He is the author of numerous books on literature, literary theory, and philosophy. In addition to The Rigor of Angels, he has an upcoming book on the work of Chilean film director Alejandro Jodorowsky.

• Web site
• Johns Hopkins web page
• Wikipedia
• Amazon author page

David Deutsch is one of the most creative scientific thinkers working today, who has as a goal to understand and explain the natural world as best we can. He was a pioneer in quantum computing, and has long been an advocate of the Everett interpretation of quantum theory. He is also the inventor of constructor theory, a new way of conceptualizing physics and science more broadly. But he also has a strong interest in philosophy and epistemology, championing a Popperian explanation-based approach over a rival Bayesian epistemology. We talk about all of these things and more, including his recent work on the Popper-Miller theorem, which specifies limitations on inductive approaches to knowledge and probability.

Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2023/10/16/253-david-deutsch-on-science-complexity-and-explanation/

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David Deutsch received his Ph.D. in theoretical physics from the University of Oxford. He is currently a visiting professor in the Department of Atomic and Laser Physics at Oxford. He is a pioneer in quantum computation as well as initiating constructor theory. His books include The Fabric of Reality and The Beginning of Infinity. Among his awards including the Dirac Prize, the Dirac Medal, the Edge of Computation Science Prize, the Isaac Newton Medal, the Breakthrough Physics Prize, and a Royal Society Fellowship.

• Web site
• Oxford web page
• Google Scholar publications
• Amazon author page
• Wikipedia
• TED talk: After Billions of Years of Monotony, the Universe is Waking Up

Welcome to the October 2023 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 questions and transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2023/10/09/ama-october-2023/

Support Mindscape on Patreon.

The universe as revealed by physics is objective: it's out there, existing and behaving in ways that are completely independent of human thought. But the process by which we learn about the universe, and the language with which we talk about it, is extremely human-dependent. Does that mean that aliens would do science differently, and even think differently about physics, even if we all live in the same universe? Physicist Daniel Whiteson has teamed with cartoonist Andy Warner to investigate these questions in their new book Do Aliens Speak Physics?

Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2025/11/03/334-daniel-whiteson-on-the-physics-of-and-by-aliens/

Support Mindscape on Patreon.

Daniel Whiteson received his Ph.D. in physics from the University of California at Berkeley. He is currently a professor of physics at the University of California, Irvine. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and recipient of an Emmy nomination. He is the author of several books, often with co-author Jorge Cham. He is the co-host (with Kelly Weinersmith) of the podcast Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe.

• UCI web page
• Google Scholar publications
• Amazon author page
• Wikipedia

Our planet and its environment are in bad shape, in all sorts of ways. Those of us who want to improve the situation face a dilemma. On the one hand, we have to be forceful and clear-headed about how the bad the situation actually is. On the other, we don't want to give the impression that things are so bad that it's hopeless. That could -- and, empirically, does -- give people the impression that there's no point in working to make things better. Hannah Ritchie is an environmental researcher at Our World in Data who wants to thread this needle: things are bad, but there are ways we can work to make them better.

Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2023/10/02/252-hannah-ritchie-on-keeping-hope-for-the-planet-alive/

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Hannah Ritchie received her Ph.D. in geosciences from the University of Edinburgh. She is currently Senior Researcher and the Head of Research at Our World in Data, and a researcher at the Oxford Martin Programme in Global Development at the University of Oxford. Her upcoming book is Not the End of the World: How We Can Be the First Generation to Build a Sustainable Planet.

• Web site
• Oxford web page
• Google scholar publications
• Substack
• Wikipedia

Biological organisms are paradigmatic emergent systems. That atoms of which they are made mindlessly obey the local laws of physics; even cells and organs do their individual jobs without explicitly understanding the larger whole of which they are a part. And yet the system as a whole functions beautifully, with apparent purpose and function. How do the small parts come together to form the greater whole? I talk with biophysicist Rosemary Braun about what we're learning about collective behavior within organisms from the modern era of huge biological datasets, especially crucial aspects like timekeeping (with bonus implications for dealing with jet lag).

Support Mindscape on Patreon.

Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2023/09/25/251-rosemary-braun-on-uncovering-patterns-in-biological-complexity/

Rosemary Braun received her Ph.D. in physics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and an M.P.H. in biostatistics from Johns Hopkins. She is currently an associate professor of molecular biosciences, applied math, and physics at Northwestern University and external faculty at the Santa Fe Institute.

• Lab web page
• Northwestern faculty page
• Google Scholar publications

The modern world inundates us with both information and misinformation. What are the forces that conspire to make misinformation so prevalent? Can we combat the flow of misinformation, perhaps by legal restrictions? Would that even be a good idea? How can individuals help distinguish between true and false claims as they come in? What are the biases that we are all subject to? I talk to political scientist Brendan Nyhan about how information and misinformation spread, and what we can do as individuals and as a society to increase the amount of truth we all believe.

Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2023/09/18/250-brendan-nyhan-on-navigating-the-information-ecosystem/

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Brendan Nyhan received his Ph.D. in political science from Duke University. He is currently James O. Freedman professor of government at Dartmouth College. Among his awards are an Emerging Scholar award from the American Political Science Association, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

• Web site
• Dartmouth web page
• Google Scholar publications
• Wikipedia

The study of cognition and sentience would be greatly abetted by the discovery of intelligent alien beings, who presumably developed independently of life here on Earth. But we do have more than one data point to consider: certain vertebrates (including humans) are quite intelligent, but so are certain cephalopods (including octopuses), even though the last common ancestor of the two groups was a simple organism hundreds of millions of years ago that didn't have much of a nervous system at all. Peter Godfrey-Smith has put a great amount of effort into trying to figure out what we can learn about the nature of thinking by studying how it is done in these animals with very different brains and nervous systems.

Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2023/09/11/249-peter-godfrey-smith-on-sentience-and-octopus-minds/

Support Mindscape on Patreon.

Peter Godfrey-Smith received his Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of California, San Diego. He is currently professor in the School of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Sydney. Among his books are Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness and Metazoa: Animal Life and the Birth of the Mind.

• Web site
• University of Sydney web page
• Google Scholar publications
• PhilPeople profile
• Wikipedia
• Amazon author page

Here are some of the papers mentioned in this episode:

• Crook (2021), Octopus pain
• Gibbons et al. (2022), Bee pain
• Gutnick et al. (2011), Octopus arm behavior

Welcome to the September 2023 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 questions and transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2023/09/04/ama-september-2023/

And you can now pre-order The Biggest Ideas in the Universe Vol. 2: Quanta and Fields!

Over the last year, AI large-language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT have demonstrated a remarkable ability to carry on human-like conversations in a variety of different concepts. But the way these LLMs "learn" is very different from how human beings learn, and the same can be said for how they "reason." It's reasonable to ask, do these AI programs really understand the world they are talking about? Do they possess a common-sense picture of reality, or can they just string together words in convincing ways without any underlying understanding? Computer scientist Yejin Choi is a leader in trying to understand the sense in which AIs are actually intelligent, and why in some ways they're still shockingly stupid.

Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2023/08/28/248-yejin-choi-on-ai-and-common-sense/

Support Mindscape on Patreon.

Yejin Choi received a Ph.D. in computer science from Cornell University. She is currently the Wissner-Slivka Professor at the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Washington and also a senior research director at AI2 overseeing the project Mosaic. Among her awards are a MacArthur fellowship and a fellow of the Association for Computational Linguistics.

• University of Washington web page
• Google Scholar publications
• Wikipedia

Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2023/08/21/247-samuel-bowles-on-economics-cooperation-and-inequality/

Economics, much like thermodynamics, is a story of collective behavior arising from the interactions of many individual constituents. The big difference is that in economics, the constituents are themselves complicated human beings with their own goals and limitations. We can still make progress by positing some simple but plausible axioms governing human behavior, and proving theorems about what those axioms imply, such as the famous supply-and-demand curves. The trick is picking the right axioms that actually do apply to any given situation. Samuel Bowles is a highly regarded economist who has helped understand the emergence of political hierarchy and economic inequality, often drawing on wide-ranging ideas from game theory and evolutionary biology. We talk about how people evolved to cooperate, and why nevertheless inequality seems to be ubiquitous.

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Samuel Bowles received a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University. He has taught at Harvard University, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and the University of Siena, and he is currently Director of the Behavioral Sciences Program at the Santa Fe Institute. He has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Leontief Prize, and is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is one of the developers of the CORE Econ project.

• Web page
• Google Scholar publications
• Wikipedia
• Amazon author page

You might remember the somewhat bizarre worries that swept through certain circles back in 2012, based on the end of the world being predicted by the Maya calendar. The world didn't end, which is unsurprising because the Maya hadn't predicted that, and for that matter they had no way of doing so. But there is very interesting archeology behind our understanding of how the Maya developed their calendar, as well as other aspects of their language and scientific understanding. Mayanist David Stuart takes us on a tour of what we know and what we're still discovering.

Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2023/08/14/246-david-stuart-on-time-and-science-in-maya-civilization/

Support Mindscape on Patreon.

David Stuart received his Ph.D. in anthropology from Vanderbilt University. He is currently professor of Art History and Director of the Mesoamerica Center at the University of Texas, Austin. He is the youngest-ever recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship. Among his books is The Order of Days: Unlocking the Secrets of the Ancient Maya.

• Web site
• University of Texas web page
• Google Scholar publications
• Wikipedia

Welcome to the August 2023 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 questions and transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2023/08/07/ama-august-2023/

Physics is in crisis, what else is new? That's what we hear in certain corners, anyway, usually pointed at "fundamental" physics of particles and fields. (Condensed matter and biophysics etc. are just fine.) In this solo podcast I ruminate on the unusual situation fundamental physics finds itself in, where we have a theoretical understanding that fits almost all the data, but which nobody believes to be the final answer. I talk about how we got here, and argue that it's not really a "crisis" in any real sense. But there are ways I think the academic community could handle the problem better, especially by making more space for respectable but minority approaches to deep puzzles.

Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2023/07/31/245-solo-the-crisis-in-physics/

Support Mindscape on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/seanmcarroll

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/

Support Mindscape on Patreon.

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 site
• Cornell web page
• Google Scholar publications
• Wikipedia
• IgNobel Prize citation

Is metaphysics like physics, but cooler? Or is it a relic of an outdated, pre-empirical way of thinking about the world? Closer to the former than the latter. Rather than building specific quantitative theories about the world, metaphysics aims to get a handle on the basic logical structures that help us think about it. I talk with philosopher Katie Elliott on how metaphysics helps us think about questions like counterfactuals, possible worlds, time travel, mathematical equivalence, and whether everything happens for a reason.

Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2023/07/24/244-katie-elliott-on-metaphysics-chance-and-time/

Support Mindscape on Patreon.

Katrina (Katie) Elliott received her Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. After being an assistant professor of philosophy at UCLA, she is now on the faculty at Brandeis. Her research covers topics in metaphysics and the philosophy of science, including explanation, chances, and the logic of time travel.

• Web page
• Brandeis web page
• PhilPeople profile

The Earth's atmosphere is good for some things, like providing something to breathe. But it does get in the way of astronomers, who have been successful at launching orbiting telescopes into space. But gravity and the ground are also useful for certain things, like walking around. The Moon, fortunately, provides gravity and a solid surface without any complications of a thick atmosphere -- perfect for astronomical instruments. Building telescopes and other kinds of scientific instruments on the Moon is an expensive and risky endeavor, but the time may have finally arrived. I talk with astrophysicist Joseph Silk about the case for doing astronomy from the Moon, and what special challenges and opportunities are involved.

Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2023/07/17/243-joseph-silk-on-science-on-the-moon/

Support Mindscape on Patreon.

Joseph Silk received his Ph.D. in Astronomy from Harvard University. After serving on the faculty at UC Berkeley and Oxford, he is currently Professor of Physics at the Institut d'astrophysique de Paris, Université Pierre et Marie Curie, and Homewood Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Johns Hopkins University. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society, the National Academy of Sciences, the American Astronomical Society, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Among his awards are the Balzan Prize, the Henry Norris Russell Lectureship, and the Gruber Prize in cosmology. His new book is Back to the Moon: The Next Giant Leap for Humankind.

• Johns Hopkins web page
• Google Scholar publications
• AIP Oral History interview
• Wikipedia

Complexity scientists have been able to make an impressive amount of progress despite the fact that there is not universal agreement about what "complexity" actually is. We know it when we see it, perhaps, but there are a number of aspects to the phenomenon, and different researchers will naturally focus on their favorites. Today's guest, David Krakauer, is president of the Santa Fe Institute and a longtime researcher in complexity. He points the finger at the concept of agency. A ball rolling down a hill just mindlessly obeys equations of motion, but a complex system gathers information and uses it to adapt. We talk about what that means and how to think about the current state of complexity science.

Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2023/07/10/242-david-krakauer-on-complexity-agency-and-information/

Support Mindscape on Patreon.

David Krakauer received his D.Phil. in evolutionary biology from Oxford University. He is currently President and William H. Miller Professor of Complex Systems at the Santa Fe Institute. Previously he was at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, where he was the founding director of the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery and the Co-director of the Center for Complexity and Collective Computation. He was included in Wired magazine's list of "50 People Who Will Change the World."

• Web site
• Santa Fe Institute web page
• Wikipedia
• Google Scholar

Welcome to the July 2023 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.

We're experimenting with a new benefit for Patreon supporters: short video (or audio-only) reflections by me on the podcast that just happened. If you've been wondering whether to join up, this could be the time.

Blog post with questions and transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2023/07/03/ama-july-2023/

Last year's Nobel Prize for experimental tests of Bell's Theorem was the first Nobel in the foundations of quantum mechanics since Max Born in 1954. Quantum foundations is enjoying a bit of a resurgence, inspired in part by improving quantum technology but also by a realization that understanding quantum mechanics might help with other problems in physics (and be important in its own right). Tim Maudlin is a leading philosopher of physics and also a skeptic of the Everett interpretation. We discuss the logic behind hidden-variable approaches such as Bohmian mechanics, and also the broader question of the importance of the foundations of physics.

Support Mindscape on Patreon.

Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2023/06/26/241-tim-maudlin-on-locality-hidden-variables-and-quantum-foundations/

Tim Maudlin received his Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Pittsburgh. He is currently a professor of philosophy at New York University. He is a member of the Academie Internationale de Philosophie des Sciences and the Foundational Questions Institute (FQXi). He has been a Guggenheim Fellow. He is the founder and director of the John Bell Institute for the Foundations of Physics in Croatia.

• Web site
• NYU web page
• Google Scholar publications
• PhilPeople profile
• Amazon author page
• Wikipedia
• Contribute to the John Bell Institute!

It's somewhat amazing that cosmology, the study of the universe as a whole, can make any progress at all. But it has, especially so in recent decades. Partly that's because nature has been kind to us in some ways: the universe is quite a simple place on large scales and at early times. Another reason is a leap forward in the data we have collected, and in the growing use of a powerful tool: computer simulations. I talk with cosmologist Andrew Pontzen on what we know about the universe, and how simulations have helped us figure it out. We also touch on hot topics in cosmology (early galaxies discovered by JWST) as well as philosophical issues (are simulations data or theory?).

Support Mindscape on Patreon.

Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2023/06/19/240-andrew-pontz…and-the-universe/

Andrew Pontzen received his Ph.D. in astronomy from the University of Cambridge. He is currently Professor of Cosmology at University College London. In addition to his research in cosmology, he frequently writes popular articles and appears in science documentaries. His new book is The Universe in a Box: Simulations and the Quest to Code the Cosmos.

• Web site
• UCL web page
• Publications at arxiv.org
• Twitter

There is an image, especially in Western cultures, of the rugged, authentic, self-made individual choosing how to navigate the intricacies of the social world. But there is no mystical soul within us, manifesting as the immutable essence of self. What we think of as our "self" is shaped by our environment and our genes, and most of all by our interactions with other people. Psychologist Brian Lowery argues for a strong version of this thesis, positing that our sense of self is largely a social construct. We talk about the implications of this idea, and what it means for shifting notions of personal identity.

Post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2023/06/12/239-brian-lowery-on-the-social-self/

Support Mindscape on Patreon.

Brian Lowery received his Ph.D. in psychology from the University of California Los Angeles. He is currently Walter Kenneth Kilpatrick Professor of Organizational Behavior at Stanford University Graduate School of Business. His new book is Selfless: The Social Creation of "You."

• Web page
• Wikipedia
• Amazon author page
• Twitter

Welcome to the June 2023 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!

Post with questions and full transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2023/06/05/ama-june-2023/

Support Mindscape on Patreon.

Modern computers are somewhat more secure against being hacked - either by an inanimate virus or a human interloper - than they used to be. But as our lives are increasingly intertwined with computers, the dangers that hacking poses are enormously greater. Why don't we just build unhackable computers? Scott Shapiro, who is a law professor and philosopher, explains why that's essentially impossible. On a philosophical level, computers rely on an essential equivalence between "data" and "code," which is vulnerable to exploitation. And on a psychological level, human beings will always be the weakest link in the chain of security.

Web page with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2023/05/29/238-scott-shapiro-on-the-technology-and-philosophy-of-hacking/

Support Mindscape on Patreon.

Scott Shapiro received a J.D. from Yale Law School and a Ph.D. in philosophy from Columbia. He is currently the Charles F Southmayd Prof of Law and Philosophy at Yale University. He is the Director of the Yale Center for Law and Philosophy and also Director of the Yale Cybersecurity Lab. He is the Co-Editor of Legal Theory, and Co-Editor for philosophy of Law at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. His new book is Fancy Bear Goes Phishing: The Dark History of the Information Age, in Five Extraordinary Hacks.

• Yale web page
• Google Scholar publications
• Wikipedia
• Twitter

The modern world is large and interconnected, and there are a lot of systems that might be important to how it functions but about which most people are barely aware. One of these is the offshore wealth management network, which wealthy individuals can use both legitimately (to invest and plan their money) and less legitimately (to avoid taxation or hide questionable practices generally). Brooke Harrington is a sociologist who has studied offshore wealth management, including by training to be one. In a recent paper, she and colleagues analyze networks of offshore wealth managers as a complex system, uncovering power-law behavior and interesting nation-dependent network structures.

Web site with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2023/05/22/237-brooke-harrington-on-offshore-wealth-as-a-complex-system/

Support Mindscape on Patreon.

Brooke Harrington received her Ph.D. in sociology from Harvard University. She is currently a professor of sociology at Dartmouth College. Among her awards are the IPM Outstanding Book Award from the American Sociological Association. She is the author of Capital Without Borders: Wealth Management and the One Percent.

• Web site
• Dartmouth web page
• Google Scholar publications
• Amazon author page
• Wikipedia
• Twitter

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/

Support Mindscape on Patreon.

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 site
• Princeton web page
• Mad Musical Science
• Spiral diagrams: rock music, classical music
• Google Scholar publications
• Amazon author page
• Wikipedia
• William Sethares's Tuning Timbre Spectrum Scale

Is there a multiverse, and if so, how should we think of ourselves within it? In many modern cosmological models, the universe includes more than one realm, with possibly different laws of physics, and these realms may or may not include intelligent observers. There is a longstanding puzzle about how, in such a scenario, we should calculate what we, as presumably intelligent observers ourselves, should expect to see. Today's guest, Thomas Hertog, is a physicist and longstanding collaborator of Stephen Hawking. They worked together (often with James Hartle) to address these questions, and the work is still ongoing.

Support Mindscape on Patreon.

Thomas Hertog received his Ph.D. in physics from the University of Cambridge. He is currently a professor of theoretical physics at KU Leuven. His new book is On the Origin of Time: Stephen Hawking's Final Theory.

• KU Leuven web page
• Wikipedia
• Google Scholar publications

Welcome to the May 2023 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!

Support Mindscape on Patreon.

What is the mind, and what does it try to do? An overly simplified materialist view might be that the mind emerges from physical processes in the brain. But you can be a materialist and still recognize that there is more to the mind than just the brain: the rest of our bodies play a role, and arguably we should count physical artifacts that contribute to our memory and cognition as part of "the mind." Or so argues today's guest, philosopher/cognitive scientist Andy Clark. As to what the mind does, it tries to predict what happens next. This simple idea provides a powerful lens through which to interpret all the different things our minds do, including the idea that "perception is controlled hallucination."

Support Mindscape on Patreon.

Andy Clark received his Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Sussex. He is currently Professor of Cognitive Philosophy at Sussex. He was Director of the Philosophy/Neuroscience/Psychology Program at Washington University in St Louis, and Director of the Cogntive Science Program at Indiana University. His new book is The Experience Machine: How Our Minds Predict and Shape Reality.

• Sussex web page
• Google Scholar publications
• Wikipedia
• New Yorker profile