- 0:08:47 — What is the new quantum cyclic universe paper about, does cosmic expansion invalidate Poincaré recurrence, and how would a Big Crunch physically unfold?
- 0:33:25 — Is boredom just a behavioral marker of consciousness, or does it point to something deeper — that consciousness requires ongoing needs that can fail to be satisfied?
- 0:36:32 — How do you feel about being deep faked 40 years after your death, à la Richard Feynman?
- 0:37:40 — If a particle is in superposition, do its different positions move through space at identical speeds — and could they experience different passages of time?
- 0:41:49 — Where do you stand on the word "matter" being problematic and unclear in physics?
- 0:46:02 — Have you swayed Sapolsky's mind on compatibilism — or is it time to get him and Pereboom back to defend their stances?
- 0:48:53 — Regarding UFO gravitational propulsion claims: what mechanism could allow an object outside gravity's influence to track one inside it?
- 0:51:56 — What do philosophers mean by "ontology" and "reality" in relation to physics — and why does no one claim classical phase space is "real" the way Hilbert space is? Priority Question
- 0:57:22 — Does cold fusion belong in the same category of impossible things as a perpetual motion machine?
- 0:59:05 — If there were practically infinite universes, would math necessarily be useful in all of them?
- 1:01:27 — Are you a coffee or tea person, how many cups a day, and is it true Americans don't use electric kettles?
- 1:03:39 — What are the boundary conditions for something to count as a Boltzmann brain — does it need full conscious experience, or could something much simpler qualify?
- 1:09:17 — Is Dennett unfairly characterized as a pure instrumentalist, when his actual view — that higher-level patterns are real — is closer to your own poetic naturalism?
- 1:12:51 — Are you rooting against the Knicks as Sixers villains, or for them because of their Villanova connections?
- 1:15:48 — Could AI be a real-world philosophical zombie — acting human with nothing going on inside?
- 1:17:52 — What are your long-term plans for Mindscape — do you have an episode target, and do you ever think about its end?
- 1:19:50 — Was the late 19th/early 20th century uniquely fertile for philosophical thinking, and if so, why was society more open to radical ideas then?
- 1:24:10 — Has your credence in AI as an existential risk increased recently? / Does OpenAI's recent proof of a mathematical conjecture change your view on LLMs contributing to new physics?
- 1:30:23 — How do you classify the top five NBA players in history — what criteria matter, and who would make your list?
- 1:36:34 — When you say the constants of nature could have been different, are you saying our knowledge underdetermines them — or that no deeper laws will fix their values?
- 1:40:23 — What is the classical limit and how is it calculated?
- 1:45:33 — What advice do you have for someone about to study physics at university?
- 1:50:47 — Who are your favorite moral philosophers, and what would you recommend for someone wanting to learn about moral constructivism?
- 1:52:48 — Could observers with radically different bodies or evolutionary histories coarse-grain the same quantum state into genuinely different but equally valid classical realities?
- 1:56:40 — What if alien life is common but so advanced we can't distinguish it from nature itself?
- 1:59:56 — Is Canada's notwithstanding clause best understood as a principled compromise between democratic and individual rights?
- 2:04:58 — What is the likeliest cause of human extinction: AI, natural stupidity, or something else?
- 2:08:18 — What is your opinion on nuclear energy?
- 2:10:26 — After your conversation with Christian List, I still can't pin down where exactly my choices affect the physical world — where does the rubber hit the road?
- 2:13:05 — What kind of science would an octopus or a dolphin create?
- 2:14:51 — Is using an LLM to draft prose and then revising it bad practice, or is the problem only uncritical copying and misrepresentation?
- 2:19:41 — How much do you think about whether you deserve your position versus seeing it as luck?
- 2:22:49 — Has the holographic principle been disproven — why have Susskind and others seemingly stopped talking about it?
- 2:24:04 — What do you think about sortition — electing representatives by random lottery rather than voting?
- 2:28:28 — If a gravitational wave makes space expand, why doesn't the light used in LIGO's measurement expand with it?
- 2:29:52 — What advice do you have for someone who wants to publish but has no current academic affiliation and few connections?
- 2:32:00 — Why do academics so often greet questions with "good" — is it a rhetorical technique, sometimes used to deflect deeper probing?
- 2:33:50 — What do you see in Angela Brennan's physics-inspired painting as a physicist — and does science genuinely inspire art for you?
- 2:36:22 — If two phenomena are both extremely improbable, should their coexistence increase our credence that they're causally related?
- 2:39:04 — Does dark matter have to be an independent degree of freedom, or is there a principled reason to rule out a purely geometric explanation?
- 2:40:39 — In your 2018 firewall paper, what does "recovering a black hole's information" actually mean for an observer on one branch — and how does that relate to the Page curve?
- 2:44:19 — If a new universe is more likely to form than a Coke can appearing, does that mean it's also more likely than a Boltzmann brain — and is that reassuring?
- 2:46:28 — Neutrino detectors are surrounded by radioactively decaying ores — is background contamination a problem, and can those neutrinos be distinguished from celestial ones?
- 2:49:09 — Why does moral philosophy feel like a battle for one true theory — isn't it more useful to apply whichever framework fits the situation, as in physics?
- 2:52:41 — Is there a deep structural reason why extra time dimensions are absent from mainstream theoretical physics?
- 2:54:53 — What do you make of NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani's approach and changes so far?
- 2:57:33 — Is rationality itself — not just rationality within a particular theory — also something you get to choose and define?
- 3:01:08 — Did your Bucks County high school football team beat mine (Council Rock) in the 1984 homecoming game?
- 3:02:11 — When a nation's laws and actions affect its citizens, does that count as genuine downward causation?
- 3:04:49 — If singularities don't exist at black hole centers or the Big Bang, do we still need a theory of quantum gravity?
- 3:06:26 — Fermions take up space and bosons don't — so helium is a fermion, right?
- 3:07:18 — Did you feel the same dissatisfaction I did with Alvin Roth's answers on poverty in your morally contested markets episode?
- 3:10:00 — How do you handle your personal finances — index funds, active management, or something else entirely?
- 3:15:15 — How intentional is cat tail movement — are cats consciously controlling it, and what do you get from Ariel and Caliban?
- 3:17:28 — Can plants and mushrooms have free will to any degree, or is everything they do purely environmental reflex?
- 3:18:21 — Why aren't hybrid approaches to moral philosophy — blending consequentialism and deontology — discussed more?
- 3:20:33 — Are there philosophical positions you think Dennett got wrong?
- 3:22:26 — Should societies aim to be fractal or scaleless — with self-governance applying equally from families all the way up to continents?
- 3:26:20 — Is there real physics behind saying a black hole's singularity is a moment in time rather than a place — or is it just a description of where GR breaks down?
- 3:27:33 — Do branches of the Everettian multiverse contain the full possibility space of evolution?
- 3:28:50 — Does your one-guest, one-appearance policy prohibit inviting people on whose podcast you've already appeared?
- 3:30:09 — What is your outlook on the future of war and international power in the drone era — and does it make nuclear conflict more likely?
- 3:33:47 — How can subjective experience of time passing be possible in a block universe where all of time already exists?
- 3:37:49 — If ASI will likely kill off mankind and can't be stopped, should we just focus on making whatever ASI emerges beneficial rather than preventing it?
- 3:41:03 — How much credence should a Bayesian assign to hard determinist arguments? / How can higher-level description be non-deterministic if it's made entirely of lower-level deterministic parts? / Doesn't determinism blend continuously across levels with no clear dividing line?
- 3:47:34 — Would the Superconducting Super Collider still be a worthy undertaking today if funding were secured?
- 3:50:31 — Would you have turned off a Sixers game if they were down 22 at halftime in a must-win game six?
Sean Michael Carroll (born October 5, 1966) is an American theoretical physicist who specializes in quantum mechanics, cosmology, and the philosophy of science. He is the Homewood Professor of Natural Philosophy at Johns Hopkins University. He was formerly a research professor at the Walter Burke Institute for Theoretical Physics at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) department of physics. He also is currently an external professor at the Santa Fe Institute,and he has been a contributor to the physics blog Cosmic Variance, where he has published in scientific journals such as Nature as well as other publications, including The New York Times, Sky & Telescope, and New Scientist. He is known for his atheism, his vocal critique of theism and defense of naturalism. He is considered a prolific public speaker and science popularizer. In 2007, Carroll was named NSF Distinguished Lecturer by the National Science Foundation.
Groundbreaking Genomic Test Could Spare Millions of Breast Cancer Patients ChemotherapyAndrew GregoryThe GuardianTrial suggests patients with a low test score could be treated with hormone therapy alone with near-identical outcomesMay 29, 2026
