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

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, emotional, imperfect creatures, so a successful theory of politics has to account for these features. One phenomenon that has grown in recent years is an alignment of cultural differences with political ones, so that polarization becomes more entrenched and even violent. I talk with political scientist Lilliana Mason about how this has come to pass, and how democracy can deal with it. Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2025/02/17/305-lilliana-mason-on-polarization-and-political-psychology/ [https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2025/02/17/305-lilliana-mason-on-polarization-and-political-psychology/] Support Mindscape on Patreon [https://www.patreon.com/seanmcarroll]. Lilliana Hall Mason received her Ph.D. in political psychology from Stony Brook University. She is currently an SNF Agora Institute Associate Professor of Political Science at Johns Hopkins University. She is the author of Uncivil Agreement: How Politics Became Our Identity [https://www.amazon.com/Uncivil-Agreement-Politics-Became-Identity/dp/022652454X/] and co-author (with Nathan Kalmoe) of Radical American Partisanship: Mapping Violent Hostility, Its Causes, and the Consequences for Democracy [https://www.amazon.com/Radical-American-Partisanship-Hostility-Consequences-ebook/dp/B09RVFRDVM]. * Web Site [https://www.lillianamason.com/] * Hopkins web page [https://snfagora.jhu.edu/person/lilliana-mason/] * Google Scholar publications [https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=hAKarYwAAAAJ&hl=en] * Bluesky [https://bsky.app/profile/lilymasonphd.bsky.social] 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].

The Trump administration, led by Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency, has proposed sweeping cuts [https://www.npr.org/2025/02/10/nx-s1-5292161/trump-administration-makes-deep-cuts-to-science-funding] to spending on science research here in the US, in particular at the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation. I explain a little about what is being cut and why these funds are important to scientific progress. I try, for what it's worth, to provide these explanations in a way that would be informative to those who generally favor cutting government waste in dramatic fashion. Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2025/02/12/bonus-cuts-to-science-funding-and-why-they-matter/ [https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2025/02/12/bonus-cuts-to-science-funding-and-why-they-matter/] Support Mindscape on Patreon [https://www.patreon.com/seanmcarroll]. * Indirect costs primer [https://nanoscale.blogspot.com/2025/02/indirect-costs-potential-unintended.html] * Cuts to NIH indirect costs [https://www.science.org/content/article/nih-slashes-overhead-payments-research-sparking-outrage] * Appropriated funds are mandated by statute [https://buttondown.com/sbagen/archive/indirect-costs-and-trumps-attack-on-independent/] * Proposed NSF cuts [https://www.science.org/content/article/my-boss-was-crying-nsf-confronts-potentially-massive-layoffs-and-budget-cuts] * Elon Musk doesn't understand indirect costs [https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1888022189984858476] * Shrimp treadmill story [https://x.com/pitdesi/status/1886642596296229365] * Bribing foreign officials [https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-loosen-enforcement-us-law-banning-bribery-foreign-officials-2025-02-10/] * Deleting NSA web pages [https://popular.info/p/the-nsas-big-delete] * Executive Orders are not laws [https://www.verifythis.com/article/news/verify/donald-trump/executive-orders-are-not-same-laws-passed-by-congress/536-bd4e950e-713b-42e9-b83b-e1ef7f99d19f] * History of impoundments [https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/what-you-need-to-know-about-impoundment-and-how-trump-vows-to-use-it] 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].

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. Science is no different. Many successful scientists are not very good at explaining what goes into successful scientific practice. To understand that, it's necessary to study science in a scientific fashion. What kinds of scientists, in what kinds of collaborations, using what kinds of techniques, do well? I talk with James Evans, an expert on collective intelligence and the construction of knowledge, about how science really works. Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2025/02/10/304-james-evans-on-innovation-consolidation-and-the-science-of-science/ [https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2025/02/10/304-james-evans-on-innovation-consolidation-and-the-science-of-science/] Support Mindscape on Patreon [https://www.patreon.com/seanmcarroll]. James Evans received his Ph.D. in Sociology from Stanford University. He is currently the Max Palevsky Professor of History and Civilizations, Director of Knowledge Lab, and Faculty Director of Computational Social Science at the University of Chicago; External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute; External Faculty at the Complexity Science Hub, Vienna; and Visiting Faculty Researcher at Google. * Knowledge Lab web site [https://knowledgelab.org/] * University of Chicago web page [https://sociology.uchicago.edu/directory/James-A-Evans] * Google scholar publications [https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=kV4N4zoAAAAJ&hl=en] 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].

Welcome to the February 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 questions and transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2025/02/03/ama-february-2025/ [https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2025/02/03/ama-february-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].

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, things do occasionally break down, and cancer is one of the most dramatic examples of such breakdown. Given that the body is generally so good at protecting itself, can we harness our internal security patrol - the immune system - to fight cancer? This is the hope of Nobel Laureate James Allison, who works on studying the structure and behavior of immune cells, and ways to coax them into fighting cancer. This approach offers hope of a way to combat cancer effectively, lastingly, and in a relatively gentle way. Support Mindscape on Patreon [https://www.patreon.com/seanmcarroll]. Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2025/01/27/303-james-p-allison-on-fighting-cancer-with-the-immune-system/ [https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2025/01/27/303-james-p-allison-on-fighting-cancer-with-the-immune-system/] James P. Allison received his Ph.D. in biology from the University of Texas at Austin. He is currently Regental Professor and Chair of the Department of Immunology, the Olga Keith Wiess Distinguished University Chair for Cancer Research, Director of the Parker Institute for Cancer Research, and Director of the James P. Allison Institute [https://www.mdanderson.org/research/departments-labs-institutes/institutes/allison-institute.html] at MD Anderson Cancer Center. He is the subject of the documentary film Jim Allison: Breakthrough [https://www.uncommonproductions.com/breakthrough]. Among his numerous awards are the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences and the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. * Web page [https://faculty.mdanderson.org/profiles/james_allison.html] * Nobel Prize citation [https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/2018/summary/] * Google Scholar publications [https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=Vq6NVkAAAAAJ&hl=en] * Wikipedia [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_P._Allison] 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].