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W Brian Arthur – Complexity and the Economy

    Sean Carroll’s Mindscape | 10 April 2017 | 1h 38m | Listen Later | Podcasts | Spotify

    Interview with W Brian Arthur drawing from his book Complexity and the Economy. Explains how traditional economics simplifies complex systems, assuming rationality and equilibrium. Introduces the El Farol game theory problem, demonstrating how individual adaptive decisions, not deductive optimisation, create emergent, dynamic patterns – a concept physicists grasped more readily than economists. Discusses how complexity economics drops these restrictive assumptions, viewing the economy as an evolving ecology of diverse, imperfectly informed agents. This approach, mirroring shifts in other sciences, enables understanding real-world phenomena like market bubbles and crashes, moving beyond static equilibrium models towards ‘messy vitality’.

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    Stuart Firestein – It Could Be Otherwise

      Science In the Age of Uncertainty

      Sean Carroll’s Mindscape | 17 August 2026 | 1h 16m | Listen Later | Podcasts | Spotify

      Interview with Stuart Firestein about his book It Could Be Otherwise: Science In the Age of Uncertainty. Explores how science education often misrepresents the scientific process by prioritising facts over the crucial role of ignorance, failure, and uncertainty. Argues for teaching science as a dynamic process of discovery, where acknowledging the unknown and learning from mistakes are central. Critiques the oversimplified scientific method, advocating instead for structured ignorance and counter-intuitive thinking to foster a deeper public understanding and trust in science. Also touches on pluralism – the existence of multiple, sometimes incompatible, truths – and the importance of philosophical optimism in scientific endeavour.

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      Luis M. A. Bettencourt – Introduction to Urban Science

        Evidence and Theory of Cities as Complex Systems

        Sean Carroll’s Mindscape | 27 July 2026 | 1h 20m | Listen Later | Podcasts | Spotify

        Interview with Luis M. A. Bettencourt about his book Introduction to Urban Science: Evidence and Theory of Cities as Complex Systems. Discusses cities as complex systems exhibiting universal scaling laws akin to biological organisms. Explains how urban size (population) quantitatively relates to socio-economic outputs – like crime, innovation, and infrastructure – through superlinear and sublinear scaling. Highlights cities as ‘social accelerators’, fostering innovation and personal transformation, through the division of knowledge and human interaction. Offers insights on how to build better urban environments.

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        Debin Ma – China, Japan, and the Other Paths to Prosperity

          Oh Humans | 7 May 2026 | 0h 46m | Listen Later | Podcasts | Spotify
          Interview with Debin Ma discussing the making of the modern world from an eastern perspective: why China fell behind, why Japan modernised early, China’s recent transformation, and why East Asia has experienced so many economic miracles. Draws from his book The Cambridge Economic History of China.

          Alvin Roth – Moral Economics

            Podcast | 11 May 2026 | 1h 16m | Listen Later | Podcasts | Spotify
            Interview with Alvin Roth about his book Moral Economics: From Prostitution to Organ Sales, What Controversial Transactions Reveal About How Markets Work. Discusses how we should reason about morally contested markets such as sex work, drugs, selling organs, and adopting children.

            Jessica Riskin – The Power of Life

              Sean Carroll’s Mindscape | 23 March 2026 | 1h 15m | Listen Later | Podcasts | Spotify
              Interview with Jessica Riskin about her book The Power of Life: The Invention of Biology and the Revolutionary Science of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck. Rehabilitates Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, contrasting his active mechanism with the passive model of organisms as externally designed machines. Explains that Charles Darwin shared Lamarck’s view that the “power of life” and inherited habits drive evolution. Discusses how later neo-Darwinists suppressed Lamarckian ideas for ideological reasons, including eugenics. But modern science – through epigenetics and the extended evolutionary synthesis – is rediscovering how behaviour and internal agency shape life.

              Karen Lloyd on the Deep Underground Biosphere

                Sean Carroll’s Mindscape | 12 May 2025 | 1h 09m | Listen Later | Podcasts | Spotify
                Interview with Karen Lloyd about her book Intraterrestrials: Discovering the Strangest Life on Earth. Discusses the living organisms that dwell deep below the Earth’s surface, as deep as we’re able to drill, and their relationship to more familiar life forms on land and underwater. Explores how they operate and survive in ways that are quite different from what we’re familiar with, living off nutrients that have penetrated from the surface, or sometimes off pure electrons.