334 | Daniel Whiteson on the Physics of and by Aliens
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, ...
3 Nov 20251h 14min
333 | Gordon Pennycook on Unthinkingness, Conspiracies, and What to Do About Them
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 ...
27 Okt 20251h 10min
332 | Dmitri Tymoczko on the Mathematics Behind Music
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 correspon...
20 Okt 20251h 21min
AMA | October 2025
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 Pat...
13 Okt 20253h 37min
331 | Solo: Fine-Tuning, God, and the Multiverse
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 conditi...
6 Okt 20251h 54min
330 | Petter Törnberg on the Dynamics of (Mis)Information
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 wi...
29 Sep 20251h 12min
329 | Steven Pinker on Rationality and Common Knowledge
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, a...
22 Sep 20251h 16min
328 | Mary Roach on Replacing Parts of Our Bodies
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 medici...
15 Sep 20251h 7min
