You and Betty and the Nancy's and Bill's and Joes and Jane's will find in the study of science

a richer, more rewarding life.

I'm Indravis Gantus.

Welcome to another episode of Inquiring Minds.

This is a podcast that explores the space where science and society collide.

We want to find out what's true, what's left to discover,

and why it matters.

2020 has been a notoriously bad year for a lot of us. There have been so many deaths related to the

pandemic. People have lost their jobs. There have been so many deaths related to the pandemic. People have

lost their jobs. There's been economic disruption that we're going to feel for years to come.

So I thought it might be fitting to end the year with a discussion of how everything might end.

And who better to contemplate the end of the universe than Katie Mack, an astrophysicist who has written

the book on the topic. A lot of you probably know her from Twitter at Astro Katie, and you might

know her from a previous episode of Inquiring Minds, where we talked to her about sexual harassment

in science. She's currently an assistant professor of physics at North Carolina State University,

and her book, The End of Everything, was recently listed in the New York Times as a notable book

of 2020. Katie Mack, welcome back to Inquiring Minds. Thanks. Thanks for having me.

So one of the first things I learned in your book is that I've

been referring to you incorrectly all these years. You are not an astrophysicist, much to my surprise.

Well, I am an astrophysicist. There are a lot of overlapping categories. So I am an astrophysicist,

but I'm also a physicist. I'm also a

cosmologist. Yeah. So tell me, like, what's the difference between a cosmologist and an astrophysicist?

...