302 | Chris Kempes on the Biophysics of ...

<p>Welcome to the November 2025 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are funded by&nbsp;<a href="https://www.patreon.com/seanmcarroll" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Patreon supporters</a>&nbsp;(who are also the ones asking the questions). We ... Show More

<p>Science has an incredibly impressive track record of uncovering nonintuitive ideas about the universe that turn out to be surprisingly accurate. It can be tempting to think of scientific discoveries as being carefully constructed atop a rock-solid foundation. In reality, scien ... Show More

<p>The universe as revealed by physics is objective: it's out there, existing and behaving in ways that are completely independent of human thought. But the process by which we learn about the universe, and the language with which we talk about it, is extremely human-dependent. D ... Show More

Modeling evolutionary processes goes way beyond the Hardy-Weinberg Equilibrium we all learned in biology class. Natural selection comes from many sources like resources availability, mate preferences, competition. Modeling entire populations of organisms of different species is t ... Show More

Kari Tanderup and Rob Chuter explain how the profession is reducing its carbon footprint 

Dr Jerry Coyne is an evolutionary biologist, professor at the University of Chicago, and an author. Has ideology hijacked academia? In fields like evolutionary biology, the data should speak for itself, but what happens when scientific findings clash with cultural taboos? How do ... Show More

Being human entails an astonishingly complex interplay of biology and culture, and while there are important differences between women and men, there is a lot more variation and overlap than we may realize. Sex Is a Spectrum offers a bold new paradigm for understanding the biolog ... Show More

This lecture was given on November 12th, 2023, at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. For more information on upcoming events, visit us at thomisticinstitute.org/upcoming-events About the Speaker: Fr. Nicanor Austriaco, OP, received his PhD in Biology from MIT and his S.Th.D. ... Show More

<p>The Politics Of Science: Voters Have An Important Voice</p> <p>This November’s general election season covers every level of government, from Congress at the federal level, to state governors and local ballot initiatives. Also on the ballot are <a href="https://www.sciencefrid ... Show More

<p>Sam Harris speaks with Richard Dawkins about his new book <em><a href="https://amzn.to/3X7oYQE">The Genetic Book of the Dead</a></em>, the genome as a palimpsest, what scientists of the future may do with genetic information, genotypes and phenotypes, embryology and epigenetic ... Show More

Jacob Kimmel thinks he can find the transcription factors to reverse aging. We do a deep dive on why this might be plausible and why evolution hasn’t optimized for longevity. We also talk about why drug discovery has been getting exponentially harder, and what a new platform for ... Show More

<p>This month's episode is an encore presentation of an interview with <a href="https://bsc.ua.edu/profiles/guy-a-caldwell/" target= "_blank" rel="noopener">Dr. Guy Caldwell</a> from the University of Alabama. Dr. Caldwell explains how tools from molecular biology make it possibl ... Show More

<p>Languages drift, adapt and evolve much like living species. In this wide-ranging conversation, evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins and linguist John McWhorter trace the parallels between biology and speech, from random mutations to cultural selection. They show how both gen ... Show More