#11 - Sean Carroll: Academia, Podcasting and Communicating Science

In this episode, Geoff Allen interviews Sean Carroll about his career as a theoretical physicist and science communicator. Sean speaks about his work with great energy and insight. He also ends with some pragmatic advice for graduate students!

Geoff and Sean cover topics such as: choosing a career path; the region of overlap between philosophy and science; productivity and workflow; life as an academic and science communicator; getting credit and ‘anti-credit’ for popularising science; mathematical ideas versus linguistic metaphors; simplification versus translation of complex ideas; public trust in scientists; science and scientists on social media; the motivations for podcasting; podcasting as a licence to talk to people!; how to tackle misinformation; the onus on readers to be discerning about sources; purpose, end goal and having fun at graduate school; and other topics.

Sean Carroll is a research professor of theoretical physics at the California Institute of Technology and a member of the Fractal Faculty at the Santa Fe Institute. He is also a well-known communicator of science – writing popular science books, contributing to magazines and journals, and appearing on popular science television shows.

Sean is the author of Something Deeply Hidden (2019), The Big Picture (2016), The Particle at the End of the Universe (2012), From Eternity to Here (2010) and Spacetime and Geometry (2003). He has made appearances on television shows like The Colbert Report and Through the Wormhole, with Morgan Freeman. Since 2018, he has hosted his own podcast, Sean Carroll’s Mindscape.

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