I talk with composer/music theorist Dmitri Tymoczko about the mathematical patterns underlying music.

Ask Me Anything episode for October 2025.

I talk about apparent fine-tunings in nature, and what they mean for science.

I talk with computational social scientist Petter Törnberg about the dynamics of online information.

I talk with Steven Pinker about the concept of common knowledge and how we use it in social life.

I talk with author Mary Roach about the science of replacing human body parts.

Ask Me Anything episode for September 2025

I talk with legal scholar Cass Sunstein about liberalism, broadly construed, and modern challenges to it.

I talk with planetary scientist Natalie Batalha about exoplanets, their atmospheres and other properties, and future prospects.

I talk with Alvy Ray Smith about the birth of Pixar and the pixelization of human knowledge.

I talk with computer scientist Elizabeth Mynatt about universities and basic research.

Welcome to the August 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 questions and transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2025/08/04/ama-august-2025/ 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 physicist/philosopher Jacob Barandes about a new stochastic approach to quantum mechanics.

I talk with philosopher Philip Pettit about how language defines humanity, which leads to conceptions of agency and freedom.

I talk with physicist David Tong about lattices, monopoles, and other quirky features of our best framework for fundamental physics.

Ask Me Anything episode for July 2025.

Solo episode on how to think about the origin of complexity over cosmological time.

I talk with philosopher Bryan Van Norden on the importance of traditions other than European philosophy.

I talk with economist Edward Miguel about the empirical methods in economics and how they help understand developing societies.

I talk with neuroscientist Nicole Rust about the difficulties in connecting neuroscience to clinical practice.