Why Sean Carroll Started the Mindscape Podcast

the J.R.O.O.G. experience. Right. And what was the motivation behind starting your podcast? It's called Mindscape. Mindscape, yeah. Mindscape. Yeah, I've been having lots of fun with the podcast. It's been great. And several episodes about quantum mechanics. Most recently, just last week, I did a whole two-hour solo episode on how space time can emerge from quantum mechanics. I'll tell you, the motivation was when I wrote my previous book, The Big Picture, it was a sprawling book. So it was not only physics, but also philosophy and neuroscience and biology and math and computer science. There's a whole bunch of things in there that I'm not an expert on. I'm a big believer that people should talk about things they're not an expert on, but they should talk about them in some sense of humility that I don't understand everything here, so I will talk to some experts, right? So I went around talking to experts. I interviewed people. And I had so much fun because I was writing a book, I could literally just email a Nobel Prize-winning biologist and say, could I drop by and talk to you for an hour? And they would say yes. And when the book was done, that went away. I don't have the license to just call people up randomly and say, can I talk to you for an hour? But if you have a podcast, then suddenly, yeah, people want to talk to you, right? So I've gotten, you know, I talked to Wynton Marsalis, the trumpet player, right? You know, the Grammy-winning trumpet player. I talked to Seth MacFarlane the other day. I've talked to Nobel Prize winners, MacArthur Prize winners, philosophers, biologists, documentary filmmakers. I just really have a blast. So, yeah, this podcasting thing, I think it's going to take off. You should look into it. Yeah. Well, for me, I mean, there's no way I would be able to get someone like you to sit down and explain things like this without a podcast. Well, it is a – it's taking advantage, I think, right? I mean, I'm not telling you this. I mean, let's say we're telling the audience this, but it's – we can talk as long as we want, right? Yes. You take advantage of this better than anybody. And it's different. It doesn't replace things like books, okay? But like, books are always where you can get into the weeds a little bit more specific, a little bit more careful. But there's a long road, you know, there's a lot of books out there. I'm not going to read all of them. But that was the other motivation behind starting my own podcast is that I had a stack of books I wanted to read. And to force myself to read them, I would invite the author onto the podcast. But I can't read all those books. Which books should I read? You know, there's a whole, you know, journey to saying, oh, like, this is important enough. I should dedicate myself to, you know, a week of my time to reading this book. And hearing people talk about it in an informal setting is, you know, both illuminating, but also like, oh, yeah, there's ideas in there I really need to get to. So I'm a big believer in diverse ecosystems. I like Twitter. I like little YouTube videos. I like podcasts. I like books. I like talks. There's all sorts of ways to get this information. Yeah, I think it's opened up the interest in a far broader group of human beings, too. Because in having conversations like this with you or with, you know, the hundreds of people that I get to talk to on a regular basis, it sparks ideas in people that, you know, in their seemingly mundane existence maybe just would never get in there. And it allows these new areas of inquiry and new areas for them personally to go look into. And I get messages and I meet people all the time that tell me how much it's changed the way they view things because they've now been exposed to interesting information that sort of sparked their view of the world in a different way, ignited different parts of their imagination. Absolutely. And including me, like literally yesterday, one of the areas that I had hoped to get onto Mindscape podcast is economics. I'm very interested in economics. But I realized, I don't know crap about economics. I'm not interested in, you know, the trade deal or what interest rate the Fed should set. And the problem with economics is it's too relevant to the real world. So people want to talk about, you know, monetary policy and things like that. But I want to talk about the underlying theoretical ideas, right? And I realized I just, it's hard to get those. So I downloaded some economics podcasts and I started listening to them. And this happens to me all the time. I'm listening to a good podcast. I'm in the car and I have to stop it to think about what just happened because, you know, they gave me, they said something and it gave me an idea. And the great thing about being a physicist is there's some relationship between what I do for a living and almost everything else, right? Like whether it's economics or biology or philosophy. So I can always say like, hmm, that's an interesting idea. I wonder if I should, you know, write a paper about that. So, and I wouldn't have done that very easily without the podcast format. Yeah. No, it's a really interesting time. It's a really exciting time to spread information. It's a really exciting time to find things that you're interested in. Yeah. And also, you know, I've always noticed this about the internet in general, which is that it calls you on your crap a little bit, right? Like before the internet, you know, you could have opinions about things and you could spout off to your friends and, you know, over the dinner table or whatever over drinks. And suddenly when I started having a blog and I would spout off and people would say like, you know, you're full of shit. Like, what are you talking about? How do you say that? And I have to sit back and think like, oh, maybe I am full of shit. Like, where do I get that idea? Right. Yeah. And I think that despite all of the misinformation, et cetera, that's out there, if you are intellectually responsible and want to get things right, putting your ideas out there in public to be critiqued is a wonderful tool. And it really does go, oh yeah. So like it helps you figure out like what I do understand and know and what just were kind of vague ideas that somehow got into my brain for no good reason. Yeah. If you're open to the floodgates, that's the problem is there's so much feedback. It's really hard to separate the wheat from the chaff. It is. Yeah. And you know, different people have different strategies. Like when I talked to Seth Macmarlin, he, it was interesting. He reads the comments. Like he wants to know. Does he have like 12 million, 12 hours or something crazy? Yeah. And he hates it. He's like, it's poisonous and toxic. But he reads that. And, you know, for good reasons, he's like, look, I'm creating entertainment. Yes. Like if I don't know what the people I'm trying to reach think about it, what is the point? It's like much like me in physics, like the kind of physics I do is not building a better machine or curing cancer, right? It's only because human curiosity leads us there. So if I don't tell other people about it, what's the point? And, but we did have a conversation about blocking people on Twitter. Because I was like, the only reason why I like Twitter is because I block everyone who's a jerk, you know, like if they make my Twitter experience less pleasant, they get blocked right away. Yeah, that's a good move. Yeah. There's a lot of loud noise. And there's a lot of wonderful people. I've met wonderful people, like half of my podcast guests come because I got to know their Twitter feeds. Yeah. Yeah. I've read a lot of other people's things. I don't read any of my stuff, like any of the stuff that's coming at me. It just got too overwhelming after a while. And it also it interferes with the time that you have to put stuff out because people get wrapped up in responding to their mentions or reading their mentions. And there's an extraordinary amount of time that you can waste doing that. Yeah. I mean, that's the secret. Like people ask like, you know, how can I spend so much time on Twitter? And I'm like, what are you talking about? Like I spend five minutes a day on Twitter tweeting and maybe another 15 minutes reading other people's tweets and zero time responding to tweets. That's the secret. Yes. Like if you, Twitter is a terrible medium for conversing. You just can't be precise. You can easily misunderstand. And people easily become aggressive jerks, right? It's the worst possible way to have it back and forth unless you already know somebody and are just trying to clarify something. So I use it for linking to things. Like I say, Twitter is for linking, not for thinking. It's not supposed to. Yeah. It's like the hierarchy of communication. Top of the food chain is one on one talking. Just two people having a conversation. And especially without any sort of heightened sense of importance or anger or frustration with that other person. Just two people talking. That's number one. Like with no gravity, right? Number two is probably phone calls, like calling someone. They don't see them. It's not as good, you know, but like being in front of someone physically one to one is the best way to do it. Which is one of the reasons why I love podcasts as well. It's because you get a chance to put that energy out there. The energy of a one on one actual conversation with people. As opposed to writing an article, like, you know, I'm sure you've had snarky articles written about you. It's weird. It's like, well that wouldn't say that. Why are you saying it that way? You're determining my thoughts. And I've almost gotten to the point where I never respond to those. But I get a lot of them. I mean, I get a lot of them. I get a lot of them. I get a lot of them. I get a lot of them. I get a lot of them. I get a lot of them. I get a lot of them. I get a lot of them. I get a lot of them. I get a lot of them. I get a lot of them. I get a lot of them. I get a lot of them. I get a lot of them. I get a lot of them. I get a lot of them. I get a lot of them. I get a lot of them. 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