305 | Lilliana Mason on Polarization and Political Psychology
Political outcomes would be relatively simple to predict and understand if only people were well-informed, entirely rational, and perfectly self-interested. Alas, real human beings are messy, emotiona...
17 Feb 20251h 17min
Bonus | Cuts to Science Funding and Why They Matter
The Trump administration, led by Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency, has proposed sweeping cuts to spending on science research here in the US, in particular at the National Institu...
12 Feb 20251h 10min
304 | James Evans on Innovation, Consolidation, and the Science of Science
It is a feature of many human activities - sports, cooking, music, interpersonal relations - that being able to do them well doesn't necessarily mean you can accurately describe how to do them well. S...
10 Feb 20251h 16min
AMA | February 2025
Welcome to the February 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 Pa...
3 Feb 20253h 44min
303 | James P. Allison on Fighting Cancer with the Immune System
A typical human lifespan is approximately three billion heartbeats in duration. Lasting that long requires not only intrinsic stability, but an impressive capacity for self-repair. Nevertheless, thing...
27 Jan 20251h 7min
302 | Chris Kempes on the Biophysics of Evolution
Randomness plays an important role in the evolution of life (as my evil twin will tell you). But random doesn't mean arbitrary. Biological organisms are physical objects, after all, and subject to the...
20 Jan 20251h 30min
301 | Tina Eliassi-Rad on Al, Networks, and Epistemic Instability
Big data is ruling, or at least deeply infiltrating, all of modern existence. Unprecedented capacity for collecting and analyzing large amounts of data have given us a new generation of artificial int...
13 Jan 20251h 9min
300 | Solo: Does Time Exist?
A new year, and a new centennial -- 300 (regularly-numbered) episodes of Mindscape! Our tradition is to have a solo episode, and what better topic than the nature of time? Physicists and philosophers ...
6 Jan 20252h 11min
