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

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.
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Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2026/03/09/346-erica-cartmill-on-how-human-and-animal-minds-think-and-play/






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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. She is co-director of the Possible Minds lab at IU, and also manages the Observing Animals project, which asks for public input on how animals interact with each other.
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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!
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Blog post with questions and transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2026/03/02/ama-march-2026/



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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.
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Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2026/02/23/345-adam-elga-on-being-rational-in-a-very-large-universe/
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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.
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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."
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Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2026/02/16/344-adam-gurri-on-liberal-democracy-and-how-to-fight-for-it/






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Adam Gurri received an M.A. in Economics from George Mason University. He is the co-founder and Editor-in-Chief of Liberal Currents.
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Liberal Currents
Bluesky

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.
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Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2026/02/09/343-tom-griffiths-on-the-laws-of-thought/
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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 The Rational Use of Cognitive Resources.
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Princeton web page
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