Miskatonic University PressI’m new to the Mindscape podcast by physicist Sean Carroll, but I’m very much enjoying some of the episodes. He’s a good interviewer, who gets right to the conversation and then asks good questions, lets the guest talk but prods them along or probes a point when needed, and never does what bad interviewers do: “Actually that’s really interesting, because I [insert long personal anecdote].” A few episodes that looked interesting didn’t turn out to be, because of the guest, but it’s always easy to delete a podcast episode and move on.
This line from psychologist Ellen Langer (in episode 279) made me laugh. In a section on flow she says: “It’s interesting because Csimaksihalyi—well, we called him Mickey, can’t pronounce his name …”
I particularly recommend episode 288 with composer Max Richter (who is very thoughtful in his answers) and episode 292 on animal sentience with Jonathan Birch (whose book The Edge of Sentience: Risk and Precaution in Humans, Other Animals, and AI is available open access).