Hey, it's Flora Lickman, and you're listening to Science Friday. Today in the podcast, a special holiday treat for you.

Ira is talking with physicist Sean Carroll at WNYC's Green Space in New York. There's space, there's time, and head-scratching questions from the audience.

Here's Ira.

Think back to your high school or college physics class. There were probably a lot of balls

rolling down ramps or maybe imaginary cannon balls being fired out of cannons in word

problems. But probably there wasn't a lot of thought given

to some of the really big head-scratching ideas in physics like, how does time work? Dr. Sean

Carroll argues that with a bit of math, it is possible for regular people to understand, to think

about, and even argue about some of the

biggest ideas in the universe. He's the Homewood Professor of Natural Philosophy at Johns Hopkins

University in Baltimore, and his book, The Biggest Ideas in the Universe, Space, Time, and Motion

is our SciFRI book club pick for this month. Sean, welcome back to Science Friday. Thanks very

much, Iris. You say in the introduction to the space, time, and motion book, my dream is to live

in a world where most people have informed ideas and passionate opinions about modern physics.

You think that's actually possible, or is that just a dream?

I think that it's possible. I'm a big believer that science is for everybody, and it's going to be

at different levels for different people. Let's put it this way. These books, the two that are

out and the one I'm supposed to be writing right now, are full of equations. I don't assume that you

know any equations. I don't assume that you know any equations. I don't assume

that you know anything about math, so I teach you what all the equations are. But nevertheless,

my advance was smaller for these books than for my other books. They appeal to a certain audience.

And I think that's great. If you go to Amazon and you search for quantum books, the best-selling book is

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