349 | Daniel Harlow on What Quantum Gravity Teaches Us About Quantum Mechanics
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and IdeasShow Notes
There is something special about gravity. After decades of effort, there is still no convergence on the right way to reconcile Einstein's theory of general relativity with the framework of quantum mechanics. But a number of intriguing ideas have arisen along the way, including black hole radiation, the wave function of the universe, the AdS/CFT correspondence, and the role of quantum information theory. Theoretical physicist Daniel Harlow has made significant contributions to our understanding of information loss in black holes; in this conversation we turn those insights onto quantum cosmology, with potentially significant implications for how quantum mechanics itself works.
Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2026/03/30/349-daniel-harlow-on-what-quantum-gravity-teaches-us-about-quantum-mechanics/
Support Mindscape on Patreon.
Daniel Harlow received his Ph.D. in physics from Stanford University. He is currently an associate professor of physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Among his awards are a Packard Fellowship and the New Horizons in Physics Prize. Web site MIT web page Google Scholar publications Wikipedia
More from Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
Humanity is merely one species out of millions living on Earth, but we have a disproportionate impact on the rest of the biosphere. Recent transformations have accelerated that impact, but in fact it stretches back to the earliest days in human history. In his new book The Last Animal: Human History and the Fate of Life on Earth from the Ice Age to the Sixth Extinction, historian Kyle Harper traces how humans have impacted the rest of the planet, from extinction events to much more subtle changes. Blog post with transcript: https://preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2026/10/19/371-kyle-harper-on-how-humans-have-shaped-life-on-earth/ Listen or watch Rolex Planet Visionaries wherever you get your podcasts. #ad Got to https://scribe.how/mindscape and mention Mindscape for you first month of Scribe Capture free on select plans. #ad Stop piecing your software together. Go to https://odoo.com/mindscape to learn more. #ad Upgrade your everyday with Quince and get free shipping and 365-day returns at https://quince.com/MINDSCAPE. #ad
Welcome to the October 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 show notes, AMA questions, and transcript: https://preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2026/10/12/ama-october-2026/ Listen or watch Rolex Planet Visionaries wherever you get your podcasts. #ad Upgrade to a TP-Link WiFi Mesh System -- use code MINDSCAPE10 at https://us.store.tp-link.com. #ad
One reason it's been so hard to directly detect the dark matter is that we're not sure what it is. But for a long time, a leading candidate has been "Weakly Interacting Massive Particles" (WIMPs), so an impressive amount of experimental effort has been put into trying to detect them. Recently, a single provocative event appeared in the LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) dark matter experiment. Daniel Akerib, a physicist at LZ, joins us to talk about dark matter and the recent data, which has low statistical significance but is intriguing nevertheless. Blog post with show notes and transcript: https://preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2026/10/05/370-daniel-akerib-on-a-faint-hint-of-dark-matter/
The worry about debates over free will is that they degenerate into semantics -- what do you mean by "free will," really? But there are important substantive issues that shouldn't be ignored. Do people deserve blame for doing wrong things? Can we make choices that create meaning for our lives? Philosopher Gregg Caruso denies the reality of free will, but is in favor of making good choices, as he discusses in his new book How to Live Well Without Free Will. Listen or watch Rolex Planet Visionaries wherever you get your podcasts. #ad
In all sorts of ways, the modern world makes it difficult to nurture our individual humanity and connect with the humanity of others. The disciplines that try to do so are, naturally enough, the humanities. Poet Elizabeth Alexander's new book, Signals Across Vast Distances, grapples with the question of how literature and other humanistic studies can help us build empathy and become better people, and why that task is crucial to a flourishing democratic society. Blog post with transcript: https://preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2026/09/21/368-elizabeth-alexander-on-why-democracy-needs-imagination/ Use code MINDSCAPE at https://monarch.com/ to get your first year of Monarch Core half off at just $50. #ad Upgrade your everyday with Quince and get free shipping and 365-day returns at https://quince.com/MINDSCAPE. #ad Listen or watch Rolex Planet Visionaries wherever you get your podcasts. #ad