The most surprising discovery in fundamental physics during my career as a scientist was undoubtedly the acceleration of the universe, announced in 1998. The most straightforward explanation for these observations is a positive cosmological constant, or vacuum energy. I talk about the origin of the idea with Einstein, how quantum physicists started to think about it and understand the "cosmological constant problem," as well as how its discovery also raised the "coincidence problem." This is the first of two connected solo episodes; the next will be on theories of dark energy that are not the cosmological constant. Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2026/06/22/358-solo-vacuum-energy-and-the-cosmological-constant/ Support Mindscape on Patreon.

Messenger RNA (mRNA) plays a literally central role in the functioning of life as we know it, shuttling information back and forth between the DNA where it is stored to the ribosome where it is used to produce proteins. RNA may even have been the first molecule to kick-start the origin of life. Today, scientists are learning how to manipulate mRNA to cure and prevent diseases, whether through vaccination or literally editing one's DNA. Jeff Coller explains how it all works and how mRNA is revolutionizing medicine as we know it. Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2026/06/15/357-jeff-coller-on-mrna-vaccines-and-bespoke-therapeutics/ Support Mindscape on Patreon. Jeff Coller received his Ph.D. in cell and molecular biology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is currently Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Director of the RNA Innovation Center at Johns Hopkins University. He is co-founder of Tevard Biosciences and the Alliance for mRNA Medicines, and leads the REPAIRx consortium. He is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science

All ideas have a history, no matter how inevitable and well-entrenched they may seem to us today. The later Enlightenment was a heady time when people were exploring new conceptions of nature, humanity, and the self. Andrea Wulf is a writer of narrative histories, examining the origins of ideas through the lives of the people who explored them. In this episode we discuss three of her books: The Invention of Nature, about Alexander von Humboldt and environmentalism; Magnificent Rebels, about the Jena circle of Romantics including Goethe, Schiller, Schlegel, and others; and most recently The Traveller, about George Forster, an early naturalist, ethnographer, and champion of human equality. Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2026/06/08/356-andrea-wulf-on-enlightenment-nature-romanticism-and-modernity/  

Welcome to the June 2026 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are funded by Patreon supporters (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/2026/06/01/ama-june-2026/ New paper I talk about in the beginning of the episode: S.M. Carroll, N. Diachenko, and S. Dulani, "Toward a Phenomenologically Acceptable Quantum Cyclic Universe."

One of the major obstacles to understanding quantum mechanics is the difficulty we have in simply accepting what the theory itself is telling us. The problem is that we know what the everyday world looks like -- stuff, arranged in space, evolving through time. So we can't resist the temptation to impose that picture on the quantum description, even if it's not actually there. In this solo episode I talk about what it means to take quantum mechanics at face value, and the difficult work involved in understanding how the everyday world of our experience fits into the picture. Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2026/05/25/355-solo-looking-quantum-mechanics-in-the-eyeball/ Support Mindscape on Patreon. Here is the survey on physicists' opinions about unsettled big-picture questions: Afshordi, Halper, Rini, and Schirber, "Big Mysteries Survey: Physicists' Views on Cosmology, Black Holes, Quantum Mechanics, and Quantum Gravity." And here is a short technical overview on the ideas described in this episode: Carroll, "Reality as a Vector in Hilbert Space." If you want further papers, look at the papers cited in this one.

Did I have any freedom in choosing this particular podcast guest? At the level of particles, fields, and the fundamental laws of physics; no. At the level of human agents navigating the world, yes. Today's guest, Christian List, is a philosopher and political scientist who has arguably done the most to articulate the "compatibilist" perspective on free will, according to which the freedom of rational agents is entirely compatible with underlying mechanistic laws. The reconciliation depends on thinking carefully about emergence and the relationship between levels of reality. Take your personal data back with Incogni! Use code MINDSCAPE at this link and get 60% off an annual plan: https://incogni.com/mindscape #sponsored Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2026/05/18/354-christian-list-on-free-will-and-levels-of-reality/ Support Mindscape on Patreon. Christian List received his D.Phil in Politics from Oxford University. He is currently Professor of Philosophy and Decision Theory and Co-Director of the Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy at LMU Munich. He is a Fellow of the British Academy and a member of Academia Europaea the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities. Among his honors are the Joseph Gittler Award from the American Philosophical Association. He is the author of 

Economic markets are efficient ways of deciding fair prices, at least in ideal circumstances of perfect competition, information, and choice. But there is more to life than fair prices. Two people might decide on a fair price to carry out a contract killing, but society generally frowns on the idea. Many examples of morally contestable markets feature less consensus than that one: sex work, drugs, selling organs, adopting children. In his new book Moral Economics, economist Alvin Roth investigates how we should reason through such tricky cases, and what we can learn from them. Get twenty percent off your first purchase at Fast Growing Trees when using the code MINDSCAPE at checkout. Mindscape listeners get free shipping and 365-day returns on clothing from Quince. Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2026/05/11/353-alvin-roth-on-the-economics-of-morally-contested-markets/ Support Mindscape on Patreon. Alvin Roth received his Ph.D. in operations research from Stanford University. He is currently the Craig and Susan McCaw Professor of Economics at Stanford University and the Gund Professor of Economics and Business Administration Emeritus at Harvard. He was President of the American Economic Association in 2017. He and Lloyd Shapley shared the 2012 Nobel Prize in Economics for "the theory of stable

Welcome to the May 2026 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are funded by Patreon supporters (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 full transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2026/05/04/ama-may-2026/ Henson Shaving is offering 100 blades free with the purchase of a razor — just head to hensonshaving.com/MINDSCAPE and or use code MINDSCAPE at checkout. #sponsored Take your personal data back with Incogni! Use code MINDSCAPE at this link and get 60% off an annual plan: https://incogni.com/mindscape #sponsored

The connectome is the wiring diagram of a brain, a big matrix that tells us what neurons talk to what other neurons. Understanding it is an important step to understanding how brains work, but a long way from the final answer. A big next step is understanding how neuronal circuits connect to and guide bodily behavior. Very recent work on mapping the fruit-fly connectome has brought us closer to that goal. I talk with neuroscientist Bing Brunton about the connectome, how we can study it to understand bodily motion in flies and other creatures, and where it's all taking us. Chubbies is here to keep you comfy and looking good year-round. Get 20% off with code MINDSCAPE at chubbiesshorts.com/MINDSCAPE! #chubbiespod Upgrade your denim game with Rag & Bone! Get 20% off sitewide with code MINDSCAPE at www.rag-bone.com. #ragandbonepod Support Mindscape on Patreon. Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2026/04/27/352-bing-brunton-on-connecting-the-connectome-to-the-body/ Bing Wen Brunton received her Ph.D. in neuroscience from Princeton University.. She is currently a Professor of Biology and the Richard & Joan Komen University Chair at the University of Washington, with affiliations at the eScience Institute for Data Science, the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering, and the Department of Applied Mathematics. Web site

Peter Singer has been an influential philosopher for a number of decades. He was a significant early voice in animal rights, has been a leading thinker of utilitarianism, and helped inspire the effective altruism movement. In this podcast episode, we try our best to talk about all of those things -- working from metaethical questions of consequentialism vs. other approaches, to specific flavors of utilitarianism, the practical demands that ethics places on people, the rights of animals, and the decisions we make at the end of our lives. Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2026/04/20/351-peter-singer-on-maximizing-good-for-all-sentient-creatures/ Support Mindscape on Patreon. Peter Singer received his B.Phil. in philosophy from the University of Oxford. He retired from Princeton University in 2023, and now lives in Melbourne, Australia. He is the author of a number of influential books, including Animal Liberation (1975). He has been named a Companion of the order of Australia, and is a winner of the Berg

We are more familiar with ourselves than with anything else in the universe, but we generally don't come very close to really understanding what our "self" is. That's not too surprising, as selves are very complicated and we are burdened by all sorts of biases. Today's guest is J. Eric Oliver, who has been teaching a popular course at the University of Chicago called "The Intelligible Self." His academic specialty is political science, but he brings together ideas from psychology, neuroscience, and a broad swath of the humanities. His view is summarized in his recent book, How to Know Yourself: The Art and Science of Discovering Who You Really Are. Take your personal data back with Incogni! Use code MINDSCAPE at this link and get 60% off an annual plan: https://incogni.com/mindscape #sponsored Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2026/04/13/350-j-eric-oliver-on-the-self-and-how-to-know-it/

Welcome to the April 2026 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are funded by Patreon supporters (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! Henson Shaving is offering 100 blades free with the purchase of a razor — just head to hensonshaving.com/MINDSCAPE and or use code MINDSCAPE at checkout. Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2026/04/06/ama-april-2026/ Support Mindscape on Patreon.

There is something special about gravity. After decades of effort, there is still no convergence on the right way to reconcile Einstein's theory of general relativity with the framework of quantum mechanics. But a number of intriguing ideas have arisen along the way, including black hole radiation, the wave function of the universe, the AdS/CFT correspondence, and the role of quantum information theory. Theoretical physicist Daniel Harlow has made significant contributions to our understanding of information loss in black holes; in this conversation we turn those insights onto quantum cosmology, with potentially significant implications for how quantum mechanics itself works. Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2026/03/30/349-daniel-harlow-on-what-quantum-gravity-teaches-us-about-quantum-mechanics/   Support Mindscape on Patreon. Daniel Harlow received his Ph.D. in physics from Stanford University. He is currently an associate professor of physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Among h

"Lamarkism" is a term often attached to a seemingly discredited idea in evolutionary biology: that one organism could acquire characteristics (e.g., becoming stronger through exercise) that would then be inherited by its descendants. This is a different story than the one ultimately told by the modern synthesis of evolutionary biology, according to which inheritance passes through our genome (which doesn't know that we've been working out). In her book The Power of Life: The Invention of Biology and the Revolutionary Science of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, historian of science Jessica Riskin argues that this picture is too simple, and that Lamarck made contributions we should still pay attention to: most significantly, the idea that organisms have a creative agency of their own, in addition to the influences of the outside world. Take your personal data back with Incogni! Use code MINDSCAPE at this link and get 60% off an annual plan: https://incogni.com/mindscape #sponsored   Blog post with transcript:

In the 18th century, philosopher Jeremy Bentham suggested the Panopticon as a model of a prison where inmates could be constantly observed by just a single prison guard. Although his original idea was never built, the word has come to indicate any system of social control through constant surveillance. Nowadays, we are close to creating such a system, not for prisons, but for our everyday lives. The data about our whereabouts and doings is collected by our smart devices, and available for search by the authorities. I talk with law professor Andrew Guthrie Ferguson about the new reality, as discussed in his book Your Data Will Be Used Against You: Policing in the Age of Self-Surveillance. Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2026/03/16/347-andrew-guthrie-ferguson-on-how-your-data-will-be-used-against-you/ Support Mindscape on Patreon. Andrew Guthrie Ferguson received his J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania, and an LL.M. fro

Intelligence is a many splendored thing, especially when it comes to comparisons between species. Chimpanzees are better than humans at some numerical tasks, but less good at understanding what numbers actually mean. One window on the ways that species differ is how they play amongst themselves. I talk with anthropologist and cognitive scientist Erica Cartmill about modes of play and other social behaviors among various species, and what they reveal about the ways we all think. Upgrade your denim game with Rag & Bone! Get 20% off sitewide with code MINDSCAPE at www.rag-bone.com. #ragandbonepod Get twenty percent off your first purchase at Fast Growing Trees when using the code MINDSCAPE at checkout. Henson Shaving is offering 100 blades free with the purchase of a razor — just head to hensonshaving.com/MINDSCAPE and or use code MINDSCAPE at checkout. Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2026/03/09/346-erica-cartmill-on-how-human-and-animal-minds-think-and-play/ Support Mindscape on Patreon. Erica Cartmill received her Ph.D. in psychology and neuroscience from the University of St. Andrews. She is Professor of Cognitive Science, Anthropology, Animal Behavior, Psychology, and Informatics at Indiana University, Bloomington and an External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute. She is the co-chair of the EVOLANG conferences and the co-director of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute

Welcome to the March 2026 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are funded by Patreon supporters (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! Get twenty percent off your first purchase at Fast Growing Trees when using the code MINDSCAPE at checkout! #sponsored Blog post with questions and transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2026/03/02/ama-march-2026/ Support Mindscape on Patreon.

Behaving rationally involves facing up to conditions of uncertainty; we never navigate the world with perfect confidence. Sometimes we are uncertain about the way the world is, but we can also be uncertain about our place within the world. This kind of situation arises in cosmology (where the relevant world can extend very far in space or time), and also in quantum mechanics (where new worlds might be created at any measurement), but also when we are simply unsure about the future history of humanity or whether we live in a computer simulation. I talk with philosopher Adam Elga about how to deal with these unique kinds of uncertainties. Upgrade your denim game with Rag & Bone! Get 20% off sitewide with code MINDSCAPE at www.rag-bone.com #ragandbonepod #sponsored Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2026/02/23/345-adam-elga-on-being-rational-in-a-very-large-universe/ Support Mindscape on Patreon. Adam Elga received his Ph.D. in philosophy from MIT. He is currently a professor of philosophy at Princeton University. His research involves decision and game theory, epistemology, philosophy of probability, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of science. Web site Princeton web page Google Scholar publications PhilPeople profile

It's possible to look at the course of history over the past few centuries and discern a movement toward increasing democracy, freedom, and individual rights -- "liberalism," in the political-philosophy sense of the term. But such movement isn't inevitable or irreversible, and in very recent times there have been both intellectual arguments explicitly pushing back against the liberal consensus, and political movements that are more openly nativist and authoritarian. I talk with Adam Gurri, the editor-in-chief of Liberal Currents, a web site that "publishes writers of diverse perspectives who share an unflinching commitment to freedom, pluralism, and democracy, in opposition to authoritarianism at home and around the world." Go to https://surfshark.com/mindscape or use code MINDSCAPE at checkout to get 4 extra months of Surfshark VPN! Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2026/02/16/344-adam-gurri-on-liberal-democracy-and-how-to-fight-for-it/ Support Mindscape on Patreon. Adam Gurri received an M.A. in Economics from George Mason University. He is the co-founder and Editor-in-Chief of Liberal Currents. Web site Liberal Currents

For all that human beings spend a lot of their time thinking, it's far from obvious what that process actually entails. Part of it amounts to classical logical reasoning. But an even bigger part involves reasoning with probability and uncertainty. And some of it is governed by unavoidable limitations on time and accuracy. Psychologist and computer scientist Tom Griffiths suggests that we have thought about it enough to feel that we have come to understand some general principles, which he explains in his new book The Laws of Thought: The Quest for a Mathematical Theory of Mind. Take your personal data back with Incogni! Use code MINDSCAPE at this link and get 60% off an annual plan: https://incogni.com/mindscape #sponsore Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2026/02/09/343-tom-griffiths-on-the-laws-of-thought/ Support Mindscape on Patreon. Tom Griffiths received his Ph.D. in psychology from Stanford University. He is currently Professor of Psychology and Computer Science at Princeton University, Director of the Computational Cognitive Science Lab, and Director of the Princeton Laboratory for Artificial Intelligence. He is the co-author of Algorithms to Live By: The Computer Science of Human Decisions, as well as the upcoming