181 | Peter Dodds on Quantifying the Shape of Stories
A good story takes you on an emotional journey, with ups and downs along the way. Thanks to science, we can quantify that. Peter Dodds works on understanding the structure of stories and other strings...
24 Jan 20221h 16min
180 | Camilla Pang on Instructions for Being Human
Being a human is tricky. There are any number of unwritten rules and social cues that we have to learn as we go, but that we ultimately learn to take for granted. Camilla Pang, who was diagnosed with ...
17 Jan 20221h 3min
179 | David Reich on Genetics and Ancient Humanity
Human beings like to divide themselves into groups, and then cooperate, socialize, and reproduce with members of their own group. But they're not very absolutist about it; groups tend to gradually (or...
10 Jan 20221h 13min
178 | Jody Azzouni on What Is and Isn't Real
Are numbers real? What does that even mean? You can't kick a number. But you can talk about numbers in useful ways, and we use numbers to talk about the real world. There's surely a kind of reality th...
3 Jan 20221h 14min
Holiday Message 2021 | On Disciplines & Cocktails
As each December comes to a close, we wrap up another year of podcasts with the Mindscape Holiday Message. Nothing too profound, just some thoughts that wouldn't fit easily into a regular podcast. Thi...
20 Dec 202159min
AMA | December 2021
Welcome to the December 2021 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are funded by Patreon supporters (who are also the ones asking the questions). I take the large number of qu...
15 Dec 20213h 37min
177 | Monika Schleier-Smith on Cold Atoms and Emergent Spacetime
When it comes to thinking about quantum mechanics, there are levels. One level is shut-up-and-calculate: find a wave function, square it to get a probability. One level is foundational: dig deeply int...
13 Dec 20211h 10min
176 | Joshua Greene on Morality, Psychology, and Trolley Problems
We all know you can't derive "ought" from "is." But it's equally clear that "is" — how the world actual works — is going to matter for "ought" — our moral choices in the world. And an important part o...
6 Dec 20211h 26min
