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

I talk with physicist Ryan Patterson about how we detect neutrinos and what we have learned from them.

I talk with philosopher Kevin Zollman about how game theory helps us understand the human and biological worlds.

Machine learning using neural networks has led to a remarkable leap forward in artificial intelligence, and the technological and social ramifications have been discussed at great length. To understand the origin and nature of this progress, it is useful to dig at least a little bit into the mathematical and algorithmic structures underlying these techniques. Anil Ananthaswamy takes up this challenge in his book Why Machines Learn: The Elegant Math Behind Modern AI. In this conversation we give a brief overview of some of the basic ideas, including the curse of dimensionality, backpropagation, transformer architectures, and more. Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2025/11/24/336-anil-ananthaswamy-on-the-mathematics-of-neural-nets-and-ai/ Support Mindscape on Patreon. Anil Ananthaswamy received a Masters degree in electrical engineering from the University of Washington, Seattle. He is currently a freelance science writer and feature editor for PNAS Front Matter. He was formerly the deputy news editor for New Scientist, a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT, and journalist-in-residence at the Simon Institute for the Theory of Computing, University of California, Berkeley. He organizes an annual science journalism workshop at the National Centre for Biological Sciences at Bengaluru, India.Web siteAmazon author pageWikipedia See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Welcome to the November 2025 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/2025/11/17/ama-november-2025/ In the intro I mentioned a couple of my favorite TV shows of this year. Here is a more thought-out list (no particular order):Slow HorsesMurderbotThe ResidencePoker FaceSeverancePluribus and Down Cemetery Road also look promising, but too early to tell. (There are a huge number of shows I've never seen, so feel free to add recommendations.) Support Mindscape on Patreon. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

I talk with cosmologist Andrew Jaffe about how models and probability help us make sense of the cosmos.