Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas

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, and the language with which we talk about it, is extremely human-dependent. Does that mean that aliens would do science differently, and even think differently about physics, even if we all live in the same universe? Physicist Daniel Whiteson has teamed with cartoonist Andy Warner to investigate these questions in their new book Do Aliens Speak Physics? [https://sites.uci.edu/alienphysics/] Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2025/11/03/334-daniel-whiteson-on-the-physics-of-and-by-aliens/ [https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2025/11/03/334-daniel-whiteson-on-the-physics-of-and-by-aliens/] Support Mindscape on Patreon [https://www.patreon.com/seanmcarroll]. Daniel Whiteson received his Ph.D. in physics from the University of California at Berkeley. He is currently a professor of physics at the University of California, Irvine. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and recipient of an Emmy nomination. He is the author of several books, often with co-author Jorge Cham [http://jorgecham.com/]. He is the co-host (with Kelly Weinersmith [http://www.weinersmith.com/]) of the podcast Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe [https://sites.uci.edu/danielandkelly/]. * UCI web page [https://sites.uci.edu/daniel/] * Google Scholar publications [https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C21&q=daniel+whiteson&btnG=] * Amazon author page [https://www.amazon.com/stores/Daniel-Whiteson/author/B078H9D52X] * Wikipedia [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Whiteson] See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy [https://art19.com/privacy] and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info [https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info].

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 accurate? Or is it something different -- unmotivated reasoning, or "unthinkingness," an unwillingness to do the cognitive work that most of us are actually up to if we try? Gordon Pennycook wants to argue for the latter, and this simple shift has important consequences, including for strategies for getting people to be less susceptible to misinformation and conspiracies. Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2025/10/27/333-gordon-pennycook-on-unthinkingness-conspiracies-and-what-to-do-about-them/ [https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2025/10/27/333-gordon-pennycook-on-unthinkingness-conspiracies-and-what-to-do-about-them/] Support Mindscape on Patreon [https://www.patreon.com/seanmcarroll]. Gordon Pennycook received his Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Waterloo. He is currently an associate professor of psychology and Dorothy and Ariz Mehta Faculty Leadership Fellow at Cornell University as well as an Adjunct Professor at University of Regina’s Hill/Levene Schools of Business. He is a member of the Royal Society of Canada's College of New Scholars, Artists, and Scientists, and a 2016 winner of the IgNobel Prize for Peace. * Web site [https://gordonpennycook.com/] * Cornell web page [https://psychology.cornell.edu/gordon-pennycook] * Google Scholar publications [https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=AIbJenwAAAAJ&hl=en] * Wikipedia [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_Pennycook] * IgNobel Prize citation [https://improbable.com/ig/winners/#ig2016] See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy [https://art19.com/privacy] and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info [https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info].

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 correspond, an idea that goes back as far as Pythagoras himself. These days we have a much more intricate understanding of these relationships and how to manipulate them. I talk to composer and music theorist Dmitri Tymoczko about how different musical scales are constructed and the math underlying what sounds good. Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2025/10/20/332-dmitri-tymoczko-on-the-mathematics-behind-music/ [https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2025/10/20/332-dmitri-tymoczko-on-the-mathematics-behind-music/] Support Mindscape on Patreon [https://www.patreon.com/seanmcarroll]. Dmitri Tymoczko received a Ph.D. in music composition from the University of California, Berkeley. He is currently a professor of music at Princeton University as well as a composer and performer. He has been the recipient of Rhodes and Guggenheim fellowships. As a composer, his works have been performed by multiple groups, and recorded on several albums. * Personal web site [https://dmitri.mycpanel.princeton.edu/index.html] * Princeton web page [https://music.princeton.edu/people/dmitri-tymoczko] * Mad Musical Science [https://www.madmusicalscience.com/] * Spiral diagrams: rock music [https://www.madmusicalscience.com/cs.html?chord=C,E,G&scale=12], classical music [https://www.madmusicalscience.com/cs.html?chord=C,E&scale=7] * Google Scholar publications [https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C21&q=dmitri+tymoczko&btnG=&oq=dmitri+tym] * Amazon author page [https://www.amazon.com/stores/Dmitri-Tymoczko/author/B0046CHXOO] * Wikipedia [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dmitri_Tymoczko] * William Sethares's Tuning Timbre Spectrum Scale [https://sethares.engr.wisc.edu/ttss.html] See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy [https://art19.com/privacy] and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info [https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info].

AMA | October 2025

Welcome to the October 2025 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are funded by Patreon supporters [https://www.patreon.com/seanmcarroll] (who are also the ones asking the questions). We take questions asked by Patreons, whittle them down to a more manageable number -- based primarily on whether I have anything interesting to say about them, not whether the questions themselves are good -- and sometimes group them together if they are about a similar topic. Enjoy! Blog post with AMA questions and transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2025/10/13/ama-october-2025/ [https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2025/10/13/ama-october-2025/] Support Mindscape on Patreon [https://www.patreon.com/seanmcarroll]. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy [https://art19.com/privacy] and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info [https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info].

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 conditions like the curvature of space and the initial entropy. But they can't truly be "unnatural" -- they are literally features of Nature itself. Some have turned to the anthropic principle and the multiverse, while others look to theism for an explanation. I talk here about my views on the various attitudes one might take toward these apparent fine-tunings, and why it is important to think about them. Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2025/10/06/331-solo-fine-tuning-god-and-the-multiverse/ [https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2025/10/06/331-solo-fine-tuning-god-and-the-multiverse/] Support Mindscape on Patreon [https://www.patreon.com/seanmcarroll]. Some readings of relevance: * Livio and Rees, Fine-Tuning, Complexity, and Life in the Multiverse [https://arxiv.org/pdf/1801.06944] * Carroll, In What Sense Is the Early Universe Fine-Tuned? [https://arxiv.org/abs/1406.3057] * Barnes, A Reasonable Little Question: A Formulation of the Fine-Tuning Argument [https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/ergo/12405314.0006.042/--reasonable-little-question-a-formulation-of-the-fine-tuning?rgn=main;view=fulltext] * Goff, Our Improbable Existence Is No Evidence for a Multiverse [https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/our-improbable-existence-is-no-evidence-for-a-multiverse/] * Neal, Puzzles of Anthropic Reasoning Resolved Using Full Non-indexical Conditioning [https://arxiv.org/abs/math/0608592] See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy [https://art19.com/privacy] and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info [https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info].