AMA | June 2026
6/1/20263 hr 57 min
Welcome to the June 2026 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 AMA questions and transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2026/06/01/ama-june-2026/
New paper I talk about in the beginning of the episode:
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsSpeaker 10:00
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Sean Carroll· Host0:40
Hello, everyone. Welcome to the June 2026 Ask Me Anything edition of the Mindscape podcast. I'm your host, Sean Carroll. Uh, so I don't know whether this is percolating into other parts of the world. Probably it is. But here in the United States, one of the many, many news stories [laughs] going on-- It's a news-rich environment these days. You have to at least say that. One of the many stories is that senior officials, senior elite members of our governing classes, uh, both literally in government and in industry, have been picking fights with the Pope, [laughs] with our new pope, Pope Leo XIV. Uh, he's an American pope from Chicago, first ever American pope. Um, but he's liberal in various of his inclinations, not