117 | Sean B. Carroll on Randomness and the Course of Evolution

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

Sean Carroll | Wondery

Society & Culture, Physics, Philosophy, Science, Ideas, Society

4.8 • 4.4K Ratings

🗓️ 5 October 2020

⏱️ 81 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Evolution is a messy business, involving as it does selection pressures, mutations, genetic drift, and the effects of random external interventions. So in the end, how much of it is predictable, and how much is in the hands of chance? Today we’re thrilled to have as a guest my evil (but more respectable, by most measures) twin, the biologist Sean B. Carroll. Sean is both a leader of the modern evo-devo revolution, and a wonderful and diverse writer. We talk about the importance of randomness and unpredictability in life, from the evolution of species to the daily routine of every individual.

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Sean B. Carroll received a Ph.D. in immunology from Tufts University. He is currently the Andrew and Mary Balo and Nicholas and Susan Simon Endowed Chair of Biology at the University of Maryland, Vice-President for Science Education at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the Executive Director of HHMI Tangled Bank Studios, and Professor Emeritus of Genetics and Molecular Biology at the University of Wisconsin. His new book, A Series of Fortunate Events: Chance and the Making of the Planet, Life, and You, explores the role of chance in the development of life.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello everyone, welcome to the Mindscape Podcast.
0:03.3	I'm your host Sean Carroll, and today, special treat, our guest is also Sean Carroll.
0:09.9	But not because it's a solo episode, not because I'm the only one talking.
0:12.6	We have another Sean Carroll here today on the podcast.
0:16.2	This is Sean B. Carroll, and on his to goodness, another person with the same name as me,
0:21.4	different middle initial, who is a world famous biologist.
0:24.4	Who would have thought?
0:25.4	There's a lot of Sean Carroll's out there as it turns out.
0:27.6	I first heard of the other Sean Carroll.
0:30.6	When I was a graduate student, I was walking down the road in Harvard Square, and I stopped
0:36.0	at the out of town news, newsdance.
0:38.8	I saw that I think it was Time Magazine had a story about like the 30 scientists under 30
0:44.2	years old or something like that.
0:45.5	We're going to change the world.
0:47.5	And so, of course, as a joke, I opened it up, looking for myself.
0:52.8	Now I knew perfectly well.
0:53.8	I was not on that list.
0:54.8	You don't get on those lists without being told, but also in no sense that I deserved
0:58.8	to be on that list as a graduate student.
1:01.4	But to my surprise, there I found my name, and I realized that, oh my goodness, there's
1:05.9	another person with my name.
1:08.0	But the podcast is not going to be a whole bunch of jokes about us having the same name.
	...

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