9 | Solo -- Why Is There Something Rather than Nothing?

9 | Solo -- Why Is There Something Rather than Nothing?

It's fun to be in the exciting, chaotic, youthful days of the podcast, when anything goes and experimentation is the order of the day. So today's show is something different: a solo effort, featuring just me talking without any guests to cramp my style. This won't be the usual format, but I suspect it will happen from time to time. Feel free to chime in below on how often you think alternative formats should be part of the mix. The topic today is "Why Is There Something Rather than Nothing?", or equivalently "Why Does the Universe Exist at All?" Heady stuff, but we're not going to back away from the challenge. What I have to say will roughly follow my recent paper on the subject, although in a more chatty and accessible style. It concerns ideas at the intersection of physics, philosophy, and theology, so tune in if you're into that sort of thing. [smart_track_player url="http://traffic.libsyn.com/seancarroll/something-nothing.mp3" social_gplus="false" social_linkedin="true" social_email="true" hashtag="mindscapepodcast" ] Big news! After a number of people have asked, I have finally opened a Patreon account for people who would like to support Mindscape in some way. You can sign up to kick in a dollar or more per podcast episode, and in return you get 1) access to occasional Ask Me Anything episodes done exclusively for patrons, and 2) my undying gratitude. If the Patreon route is successful enough, I'll forego having ads on the podcast -- we'll see how it goes. Download Episode

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6 | Liv Boeree on Poker, Aliens, and Thinking in Probabilities

6 | Liv Boeree on Poker, Aliens, and Thinking in Probabilities

Poker, like life, is a game of incomplete information. To do well in such a game, we have to think in terms of probabilities, unpredictable strategies, and Bayesian inference. These are ideas that pla...

23 Heinä 20181h 10min

5 | Geoffrey West on Networks, Scaling, and the Pace of Life

5 | Geoffrey West on Networks, Scaling, and the Pace of Life

If you scale up an animal to twice its height, keeping everything else proportionate, its volume and weight become eight times as much. Such a scaling relation was used by J.B.S. Haldane in his famous...

16 Heinä 20181h 23min

4 |  Anthony Pinn on Humanism, Theology, and the Black Community

4 | Anthony Pinn on Humanism, Theology, and the Black Community

According to atheism, God does not exist. But religions have traditionally done much more than simply proclaim God's existence: they have provided communities, promoted the arts, handed down moral gui...

12 Heinä 20181h

3 | Alice Dreger on Sexuality, Truth, and Justice

3 | Alice Dreger on Sexuality, Truth, and Justice

The human mind loves nothing more than to build mental boxes -- categories -- and put things into them, then refuse to accept it when something doesn't fit. Nowhere is this more clear than in the idea...

11 Heinä 20181h 20min

2 | Carlo Rovelli on Quantum Mechanics, Spacetime, and Reality

2 | Carlo Rovelli on Quantum Mechanics, Spacetime, and Reality

Quantum mechanics and general relativity are the two great triumphs of twentieth-century theoretical physics. Unfortunately, they don't play well together -- despite years of effort, we currently lack...

10 Heinä 20181h 12min

1 | Carol Tavris on Mistakes, Justification, and Cognitive Dissonance

1 | Carol Tavris on Mistakes, Justification, and Cognitive Dissonance

For the first full episode of Mindscape, it's an honor to welcome social psychologist Carol Tavris. Her book with co-author Eliot Aronson, Mistakes Were Made (But Not By Me), explores the effect that ...

4 Heinä 20181h 11min

Welcome to the Mindscape Podcast!

Welcome to the Mindscape Podcast!

I've decided to officially take the plunge into the world of podcasting. The new show will be called Mindscape, and will mostly consist of me talking to smart people about interesting ideas. (Occasion...

1 Heinä 201816min

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