Mindscape Podcast: Philosophy Outside Academia

It took me a while to catch on, but I’ve become very excited about the prospects of podcasting as a medium of intelligent conversation. My goal with Mindscape is to cross boundaries, featuring accessible discussions with experts in science, philosophy, politics, culture, and the arts. It’s still a relatively new project, but early returns have been promising.

Obviously starting a podcast is rather more work than, say, posting on Twitter or even having a blog. But there is also something uniquely compelling about the medium. Even very challenging topics become a bit less intimidating when presented as a conversation between two people, at least one of whom can play the role of the audience’s advocate, asking questions both for clarification and to challenge at appropriate points. There’s something comforting and inviting about listening in on a friendly dialogue.

Many of the best podcasts are formally inventive and carefully produced, with intercutting sound bites from various speakers, sound effects, and more. Mindscape is not that. Almost all of the episodes consist of me talking with someone who I think has interesting things to say, and the conversation is put online with very little editing. The one occasion is the occasional solo episode where it’s just me doing the talking. (People who contribute on Patreon get a third mode, in which I answer submitted questions.) Nothing is live, so I have the freedom to edit out something said by accident, or add in something that the guest requests afterward. But those interventions are few and far between, contributing to the feeling of spontaneity and genuineness of the proceedings.

My professional training is in theoretical physics, and my research increasingly involves philosophical topics. But a large component of my motivation for doing a podcast was to have the opportunity to talk to a very wide collection of thinkers, and the selection of episodes currently available reflects that. As of this writing there are two episodes where the guests are honest-to-goodness philosophers:

• Alex Rosenberg. We talk about the status of “aboutness” within naturalism, and the implications of modern philosophy and neuroscience for the stories we tell about history.
  
• David Chalmers. Predictably, we talk a great deal about consciousness, zombies, and the Hard Problem, but also about the possibility of living in a simulation and the attendant question of what counts as “real.”

But there are a number of other episodes that touch on philosophical themes in one way or another:

• Carol Tavris, a social psychologist, on cognitive dissonance and the ways in which people rationalize their choices after making them.
  
• Carlo Rovelli, a physicist, on the nature of spacetime and quantum mechanics.
  
• Alice Dreger, a historian of science, on intersexuality and social justice.
  
• Anthony Pinn, a theologian, on atheism and the African-American community.
  
• Liv Boeree, a professional poker player, on rationality and Bayesian inference.
  
• Yascha Mounk, a political scientist, on threats to liberal democracy.
  
• Carl Zimmer, a science writer, on modern views of heredity.
  
• Solo episode on “Why is there something, rather than nothing?”
  
• Alta Charo, a law professor, on biothics and its role in contemporary legal skirmishes.
  
• David Poeppel, a neuroscientist, on the relationship between language and thought.
  
• Tyler Cowen, an economist, on how we should discount the effects that our current actions have on future generations.
  
• Lisa Aziz-Zadeh, a neuroscientist, on embodied cognition, mirror neurons, and empathy.
  
• Roger Penrose, a mathematical physicist, on spacetime, cosmology, quantum mechanics, and consciousness.

There are also conversations that aren’t necessarily philosophical, but still worthwhile, with biologists, musicians, movie directors, designers, and more. In 2019 I have a number of more episodes with philosophers planned, talking about empathy, consciousness, quantum mechanics, epistemology, and rationality.

For anyone who might be tempted to start their own podcast: it can be incredibly rewarding, but does require a bit of effort. I was unpleasantly surprised by how much work was involved in setting things up in the first place. There’s website design, hosting of the audio files, purchasing the right recording equipment, learning how to use said equipment, and so on. But the very good news has been that keeping the operation going at a steady clip has been notably less work than I had feared. Aside from doing the interview itself, it only takes about two hours of effort to edit it, write the appropriate information to accompany the episode, and publish it. (That’s not including time I might spend reading articles and books to prepare for particular speakers – but I count that as fun, not work.) Of course, podcasts that are more carefully edited and produced will involve a much greater commitment of time.

Most of all I’ve been quite gratified at the response I’ve received from listeners. While I try very hard to keep the conversations accessible to the widest possible audience, I do understand that the topics we talk about require more attention than the typical podcast about movies or sports. (Modern apps will let you listen to podcasts and audiobooks at increased speeds of 1.5x or even 2x the ordinary rate of speech; more than one listener has noted that Mindscape is the one thing they prefer to hear at regular speed.) Nevertheless, there is clearly a substantial audience out there that is eager to hear ideas discussed in a serious way. It gives me a little bit more hope for our future.

Sean Carroll

Sean Carroll is a theoretical physicist at Caltech. His research involves cosmology, spacetime, and the foundations of quantum mechanics and statistical mechanics. He is the author of several books, most recently The Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself (2017).