Conversations with Vania

On the universe, value of science, human life: my conversation with Sean Carroll

I had the incredible honour of talking to Sean Carroll, cosmologist, science communicator, author of some amazing books like "The Big Picture" which I absolutely love, host of the Mindscape podcast. Sean Carroll is currently the Homewood Professor of Natural Philosophy at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and the Fractal Faculty at the Santa Fe Institute. Most of his career has been spent researching cosmology, field theory, and gravitation, working on topics such as dark matter and dark energy, modified gravity, topological defects, extra dimensions, and violations of fundamental symmetries. More recently, his focus has shifted to more fundamental questions, both in quantum mechanics (the origin of probability, the emergence of space and time) and statistical mechanics (entropy and the arrow of time, emergence and causation, the dynamics of complexity).It was a great pleasure to be able to talk to him about some of the questions that have been on my mind, and I'm happy to say that he provided many valuable insights and perspectives. Dr. Sean Carroll is someone I've wanted to talk to for years, his work has informed much of my thinking on these issues, and I'm so glad it finally worked out, and I got to talk to him.

Building blocks of the Universe, beauty of science: my conversation with Harry Cliff

Was very happy that I got to talk with Harry Cliff, whose books I've immensely enjoyed and who I've wanted to talk to for years. Harry is a particle physicist at the University of Cambridge working on the LHCb experiment, a huge particle detector buried 100 metres underground at CERN near Geneva. He's a member of an international team of around 1400 physicists, engineers, and computer scientists who are using LHCb to study the basic building blocks of our universe, in search of answers to some of the biggest questions in modern physics.He also spends a big chunk of his time sharing his love of physics with the public. His latest popular science book, Space Oddities, came out in 2024. His first book, How To Make An Apple Pie From Scratch, was published in August 2021. They are beautiful works of non-fiction and I encourage everyone to check them out.