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

Not too long ago, Brad Pitt and Eric Bana starred in a (loose) adaptation of Homer's epic poem The Iliad; next month, Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche will headline a film based on The Odyssey. Given that the originals were written (or at least written down) in the 8th century BCE, that is some impressive staying power. But they were also written in a very different time than ours, with different cultural context and narrative expectations. We talk about the issues of translation in general, and these Greek classics in particular, with Emily Wilson, whose recent translations of The Iliad and The Odyssey have garnered worldwide acclaim.Support Mindscape on Patreon.Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2024/11/25/297-emily-wilson-on-homer-poetry-and-translation/Emily Wilson received her Ph.D. in classical and comparative literature from Yale. She is currently Professor of Classical Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. Among her awards are the Charles Berheimer Prize from the American Comparative Literature Association, a Rome Prize fellowship from the American Academy in Rome, and Guggenheim and MacArthur fellowships.Web siteUPenn web pageWikipediaAmazon.com author pageYouTubeSubstackBlueSkySee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Biological evolution via natural selection is a simple idea that becomes enormously complicated in its realization. Populations of organisms are driven toward increased "fitness," a measure of how successfully we reproduce our genetic information. But fitness is a subtle concept, changing with time and environment and interactions with other organisms around us. We talk with biologist Brandon Ogbunu about the best mathematical and conceptual tools for thinking about the messy complexities of evolution, and how modern technology is changing our way of thinking about it.Support Mindscape on Patreon.Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2024/11/18/296-brandon-ogbunu-on-fitness-seascapes-and-the-course-of-evolution/Brandon Ogbunu received his Ph.D. in Genetics and Microbiology from Yale University. He is currently Assistant Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Yale, and External Faculty at the Santa Fe Institute. He has been awarded a Fullbright Fellowship and was the Martin Luther King Jr. Visiting Professor at MIT. He has contributed to a number of publications, including Wired, Undark, and Quanta.Lab web siteYale web pageGoogle Scholar publicationsWikipediaPublic talk: What is Lyfe? Towards a Biology of Context & ComplexitySee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Emergence is a centrally important concept in science and philosophy. Indeed, the existence of higher-level emergent properties helps render the world intelligible to us -- we can sensibly understand the macroscopic world around us without a complete microscopic picture. But there are various different ways in which emergence might happen, and a tendency for definitions of emergence to rely on vague or subjective criteria. Recently Achyuth Parola and I wrote a paper trying to clear up some of these issues: What Emergence Can Possibly Mean. In this solo podcast I discuss the way we suggest to think about emergence, with examples from physics and elsewhere.Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2024/11/11/295-solo-emergence-and-layers-of-reality/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.

Welcome to the November 2024 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!Support Mindscape on Patreon.Blog post with AMA questions and transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2024/11/04/ama-november-2024/See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.