Sean Carroll+

This is all wonderful, except of course most physicists do agree on most things.

This is all wonderful, except of course most physicists do agree on most things. They don't agree on most *controversial* things, which is kind of a clear selection effect.

Seriously, the idea of giving rich people of various sorts an extra vote or repr

Seriously, the idea of giving rich people of various sorts an extra vote or representation “because they have a stake” is absurd. Poor people have a noticeably greater stake in the welfare of the country as a whole, not just the upper echelons.

I’d propose the opposite of this: sortition. Choose the House of Lords by random

I’d propose the opposite of this: sortition. Choose the House of Lords by random lot. Everyone chosen gets to serve for four years, and be addressed as Lord for the rest of their lives. Let’s do the same for the Senate hole we’re at it, minus the honorific. marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevo...

Vitor Cardoso on Why Black Holes Are Special (updated) | Mindscape 365

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/seanmcarroll Blog post with audio player, show notes, and transcript: https://preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2026/08/24/365-vitor-cardoso-on-why-black-holes-are-special/ Black holes, as Stephen Hawking discovered, do grow old: they emit radiation, lose mass, and eventually evaporate away. But our fascination with black holes never grows old. This is especially true today, as we are seeing a flood of new data and intriguing theoretical ideas, which both tests the limits of Einstein's general relativity and teach us new things about the astrophysical universe.

Sometimes the guest kind of takes over! I've started with "tell the audience who

Sometimes the guest kind of takes over! I've started with "tell the audience who you are" and they talked for 45 minutes. But I agree with the idea - it's like reading a science story about a new discovery that starts with 10 paragraphs setting the scene in some remote jungle.

It is now possible to listen to a different episode of #MindscapePodcast every d

It is now possible to listen to a different episode of #MindscapePodcast every day of the year, without dipping into AMAs or bonus episodes etc. Except for leap years. Just wait until next week!

Timing of this episode is synchronized with Black Hole Week, organized by the Ce

Timing of this episode is synchronized with Black Hole Week, organized by the Center of Gravity in Copenhagen. the-center-of-gravity.com/features/bla...

Mindscape 365 | Vitor Cardoso on Why Black Holes Are Special. We journey from th

Mindscape 365 | Vitor Cardoso on Why Black Holes Are Special. We journey from the theories to the observations and back. #MindscapePodcast preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2026...

Thanks!

Thanks!

The biggest ideas for just two bucks! Today only, a $1.99 Kindle deal on The Big

The biggest ideas for just two bucks! Today only, a $1.99 Kindle deal on The Biggest Ideas in the Universe: Space, Time, and Motion. www.amazon.com/Biggest-Idea...

I don't know the technical details, but my impression is that the protocol Blues

I don't know the technical details, but my impression is that the protocol Bluesky runs on was intended in part to enable something like this? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AT_Prot...

Granted that the actual humans might say stupid/awful things with greater probab

Granted that the actual humans might say stupid/awful things with greater probability than their tamed AI avatars, but still.

Harvard Business School selling courses taught by AI versions of its faculty. I

Harvard Business School selling courses taught by AI versions of its faculty. I can imagine why a student might want to sign up, but as faculty I would never license my likeness for this. What happens when your AI version says something stupid/awful? (It happens.) www.nytimes.com/2026/08/22/b...

Optimist: the cup is half full Pessimist: the cup is half empty Philosopher: c

Optimist: the cup is half full Pessimist: the cup is half empty Philosopher: can 'emptiness' be said to 'fill' a cup? Is 'fullness' something that can exist 'halfway'?

Congrats!

Congrats!

You left out where they wrote "It is often erroneously assumed that..."

You left out where they wrote "It is often erroneously assumed that..."

Whatever social media might be, it is not a mechanism for the successful additio

Whatever social media might be, it is not a mechanism for the successful addition of nuance.

Strangling science.

Strangling science.

Presumably there are historical cases of civilizations going into decline due to

Presumably there are historical cases of civilizations going into decline due to unavoidable exogenous factors, but I have a new appreciation for the role played by the civilization itself just turning its back on everything that made it succeed.

Thing I didn’t anticipate about living through civilizational decline is how man

Thing I didn’t anticipate about living through civilizational decline is how many people responsible for the decline would be loudly convinced they were saving civilization.

It's going to be heartbreaking the first time the Sixers lose a game this year.

It's going to be heartbreaking the first time the Sixers lose a game this year. Fortunately it probably won't happen. www.reddit.com/r/sixers/com...

You are defending Natalie Harp from a brief mention in a candidate's speech. We

You are defending Natalie Harp from a brief mention in a candidate's speech. We are defending Daron Acemoglu from a hit piece in The Economist. We are not the same.

Nolan adapting The Oresteia could be good.

Nolan adapting The Oresteia could be good.

Article about my paper with Nadiia Diachenko and Saakshi Dulani (arxiv.org/abs/2

Article about my paper with Nadiia Diachenko and Saakshi Dulani (arxiv.org/abs/2605.30405).

If you just say "he's been convicted of sexual assault and multiple other feloni

If you just say "he's been convicted of sexual assault and multiple other felonies" or "he instigated a mob invasion of the US Capitol" the major outlets will just move on. Too indecorous.

There is an art to this. One of Trump's superpowers is that so much of what he d

There is an art to this. One of Trump's superpowers is that so much of what he does is so completely out-of-bounds gross or illegal that the media blushes to talk about it. You have to draw attention to the stuff that is truly bizarre, but not so bizarre that you will be ignored.

People were criticizing Ossoff because "only politics nerds know who Natalie is

People were criticizing Ossoff because "only politics nerds know who Natalie is supposed to be." Trump knows!

Applications for this year's Guggenheim Fellowships @guggfellows.bsky.social are

Applications for this year's Guggenheim Fellowships @guggfellows.bsky.social are now open! Mid-career awards to individuals across the arts, humanities, natural sciences, social sciences, and interdisciplinary areas. Deadline Sept. 15. www.gf.org/program/how-...

Audio player: open.spotify.com/episode/4Y7n...

Audio player: open.spotify.com/episode/4Y7n...

Stuart actually has books on ignorance and failure in science, but the new one i

Stuart actually has books on ignorance and failure in science, but the new one is more optimistic: It Could Be Otherwise: Science in the Age of Uncertainty. bookshop.org/p/books/it-c...

Mindscape 364 | Stuart Firestein on How Science Relies on Ignorance and Failure.

Mindscape 364 | Stuart Firestein on How Science Relies on Ignorance and Failure. (That's for other scientists, of course. Not me.) #MindscapePodcast preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2026...

Stuart Firestein on How Science Relies on Ignorance and Failure | Mindscape 364

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/seanmcarroll Blog post with audio player, show notes, and transcript: https://preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2026/08/17/364-stuart-firestein-on-how-science-relies-on-ignorance-and-failure/ One of the paradoxes of science is that it seeks objectively true understanding of the world, but its methodology is driven by ignorance, failure, and uncertainty. Some phenomena we understand pretty well, but interesting research happens at the boundary of what we do and don't know. And there is no foolproof algorithm for moving in the right direction; we need to make con

Wild to me how historically recent is the widespread practice of having dinner i

Wild to me how historically recent is the widespread practice of having dinner in the evening as the heaviest, most formal meal of the day. Ubiquitous electrical lighting is presumably the most important factor. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinner

Could be mostly stills, La Jetee style.

Could be mostly stills, La Jetee style.

Combination of right neighborhood and soft hearts.

Combination of right neighborhood and soft hearts.

This clears up a lot for me.

This clears up a lot for me.

The stray kitty who hangs out in our backyard has been renamed Pippin, for the o

The stray kitty who hangs out in our backyard has been renamed Pippin, for the obvious reason: he comes out for breakfast, wanders around the yard, then always comes back for second breakfast. #Caturday

Congrats to all! Mindscape listeners will know my JHU colleagues @hahrie.bsky.s

Congrats to all! Mindscape listeners will know my JHU colleagues @hahrie.bsky.social and @himself.bsky.social. Wati Taylor and I were postdocs together and collaborated on papers about 2-d quantum gravity.

Just publish it normally but create a sockpuppet to accuse it of being AI. Same

Just publish it normally but create a sockpuppet to accuse it of being AI. Same effect, but you can gin up a controversy while also claiming the moral high ground.

They're going to pretend that Irish are British (and Canadians are from the US).

They're going to pretend that Irish are British (and Canadians are from the US).

Pangram is surprisingly good. Teachers and graders should check it out. (And jou

Pangram is surprisingly good. Teachers and graders should check it out. (And journal editors .) www.pangram.com

Eric, maybe you mean? Those Weinstein brothers are hard to keep track of.

Eric, maybe you mean? Those Weinstein brothers are hard to keep track of.

Agreed. This is an example where @jamellebouie.net's reading is enormous value-a

Agreed. This is an example where @jamellebouie.net's reading is enormous value-added to the (already pretty valuable) text.

It's only competition is "modern universities would never hire a genius physicis

It's only competition is "modern universities would never hire a genius physicist who lacked social graces."

They honestly convince themselves that university departments would decline to h

They honestly convince themselves that university departments would decline to hire a superstar academic just because they weren't politically correct.

A good essay on responsible AI use - a rare find in the wild - by @mbolotnikova.

A good essay on responsible AI use - a rare find in the wild - by @mbolotnikova.bsky.social. So much of it just comes down to enjoying and cherishing, rather than trying to replace, what your brain can do. www.vox.com/future-perfe...

Eh. It’s true that we do not know the limit of the knowable, but that’s exactly

Eh. It’s true that we do not know the limit of the knowable, but that’s exactly why we should never classify something as unknowable, only unknown. Maybe someone will figure it out tomorrow!

More than one professional colleague has come to the house and eventually said "

More than one professional colleague has come to the house and eventually said "wow you talk about your cats a lot."

A bit familiar, yes!

A bit familiar, yes!

Indeed. Storms are a traumatic memory.

Indeed. Storms are a traumatic memory.

Scary noises can stop now.

Scary noises can stop now.

Cats not amused by the whole thing.

Cats not amused by the whole thing.

Achievement unlocked: using basement as a tornado shelter.

Achievement unlocked: using basement as a tornado shelter.

I'm a bit skeptical.

I'm a bit skeptical.

Yes.

Yes.

I think that’s a different thing. They call it “vacuum” birefringence, but it’s

I think that’s a different thing. They call it “vacuum” birefringence, but it’s really in the presence of a strong magnetic field, and should be explicable in standard QED. The cosmological version is likely something different.

No, distance doesn’t matter with standard electromagnetism. Shouldn’t be any twi

No, distance doesn’t matter with standard electromagnetism. Shouldn’t be any twisting at all.

More interesting evidence for a twisty universe, in which photons from the micro

More interesting evidence for a twisty universe, in which photons from the microwave background gently corkscrew around as they travel to us. Nailing this down will be difficult but important.

Lives Well Lived: I hop on Peter Singer's podcast, co-hosted with Kasia de Lazar

Lives Well Lived: I hop on Peter Singer's podcast, co-hosted with Kasia de Lazari Radek. Rarely has a single podcast episode divided its time so effectively between quantum mechanics and the objectivity of morality. www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8OI...

Audio player: open.spotify.com/episode/5e2w...

Audio player: open.spotify.com/episode/5e2w...

Mindscape 363 | Chandra Sripada on How LLMs and Humans are Cognitive Cousins. Fo

Mindscape 363 | Chandra Sripada on How LLMs and Humans are Cognitive Cousins. Food for thought here, whether you are biological or silicon! #MindscapePodcast preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2026...

Chandra Sripada on How LLMs and Humans are Cognitive Cousins | Mindscape 363

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/seanmcarroll Blog post with audio player, show notes, and transcript: https://preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2026/08/10/363-chandra-sripada-on-how-llms-and-humans-are-cognitive-cousins/ Large Language Models display an uncanny ability to construct human-sounding speech, and can synthesize concepts in novel ways. Is this because they are truly thinking like human beings in some way, or have they found a way to be human-like without reproducing the internal mechanisms of human thought? Chandra Sripada argues that LLM cognition is more human-like than we suppos

"Quantum mechanics has developed to be our best theory of pretty much the entire

"Quantum mechanics has developed to be our best theory of pretty much the entire physical world. Quantum mechanics also pretty much entails that we live in a multiverse, and that quantum-mechanical processes are constantly causing the world to branch into unfathomably many copies of itself."

The dismantling of science/education is up there with the erosion of internation

The dismantling of science/education is up there with the erosion of international trust as long-lasting disaster legacies of the Trump administration that will not be reversed any time soon.

Always read it that way. You mean there is an alternative?

Always read it that way. You mean there is an alternative?

That fails to make me feel any better. Appreciate the effort, though.

That fails to make me feel any better. Appreciate the effort, though.

Excuse me while I sit in silence processing the idea that the mayor of New York

Excuse me while I sit in silence processing the idea that the mayor of New York was nine years old on 9/11/2001.

Great article on the value of human thinking by @sfiscience.bsky.social’s Chris

Great article on the value of human thinking by @sfiscience.bsky.social’s Chris Moore.

Oops, I found this old skeet and I just realized there is a typo in it that chan

Oops, I found this old skeet and I just realized there is a typo in it that changes the meaning entirely! It should say "as long as we *fail to* think of the quantum state as representing reality." Kind of the opposite.

New conspiracy theory just dropped

New conspiracy theory just dropped

If the arch gets built, demolishing it should be a featured part of the 2029 ina

If the arch gets built, demolishing it should be a featured part of the 2029 inauguration festivities. I want to see a special re white and blue wrecking ball.

Mindscape Ask Me Anything, Sean Carroll | August 2026

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/seanmcarroll Blog post with audio player, show notes, and transcript: https://preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2026/08/03/ama-august-2026/ Welcome to the August 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 abo

Luis Bettencourt on the Universal Properties of Self-Organizing Cities | Mindscape 362

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/seanmcarroll Blog post with audio player, show notes, and transcript: https://preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2026/07/27/362-luis-bettencourt-on-the-universal-properties-of-self-organizing-cities/ People who live in large cities produce more patents per person than those who live in small towns. They also walk faster down the street, and use less infrastructure per person. Indeed, the relationships between these quantities and city population obey power laws with apparently universal exponents, reminiscent of scaling laws is biological organisms? Luis Bettenc

Mindscape 362 | Luis Bettencourt on the Universal Properties of Self-Organizing

Mindscape 362 | Luis Bettencourt on the Universal Properties of Self-Organizing Cities. My favorite fact will always be that the speed with which people walk down the street scales with urban density. #MindscapePodcast preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2026...

Congrats!

Congrats!

We don’t want to suggest that all of Emily Wilson’s subsequent good fortune is d

We don’t want to suggest that all of Emily Wilson’s subsequent good fortune is due to appearing as a guest on #MindscapePodcast. preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2024...

Surely there should be evening cocktail receptions. Give people a chance to unwi

Surely there should be evening cocktail receptions. Give people a chance to unwind.

They’re good movies, so everyone wins!

They’re good movies, so everyone wins!

Great point. Many rules made sense for some context and some time. Bureaucracies

Great point. Many rules made sense for some context and some time. Bureaucracies generally do a very bad job with ongoing rule maintenance— going through the whole list, making sure everything is rational and useful.

Chatting with Brian Greene about the nature of reality for the World Science Fes

Chatting with Brian Greene about the nature of reality for the World Science Festival. www.youtube.com/watch?v=-U-O...

This is great, and should be a highlight policy for all Democrats in office. T

This is great, and should be a highlight policy for all Democrats in office. The contrast with DOGE is obvious and worth publicizing. “When the system is suffering, we treat the condition; all they know how to do is amputate without anesthesia.”

Democrats should be fine with Kentucky only having one working senator.

Democrats should be fine with Kentucky only having one working senator.