Exploring the Questions of Space, Time and Our Universe and with Sean Carroll

Air Dates December 30, 2024-January 5, 2025  

So many of us are curious about the stuff of space and time and the forces that bind us all together.  Author and physicist Sean Carroll wants to encourage that curiosity, and believes physics can be accessible to everyone.  

Carroll is the Homewood Professor of Natural Philosophy, a joint appointment between physics and philosophy at Johns Hopkins University and fractal faculty at the Santa Fe Institute.  He has focused his research on cosmology, field theory, and gravitation, looking at topics such as dark matter and dark energy, modified gravity, topological defects, extra dimensions, and violations of fundamental symmetries. He has shifted his focus to foundational questions, both in quantum mechanics—origin of probability, emergence of space and time—and statistical mechanics—entropy and the arrow of time, emergence and causation, dynamics of complexity, all while bringing a more philosophical dimension to this work. Carroll is the author of several books, including, “The Biggest Ideas in the Universe: Space, Time, and Motion,” “Something Deeply Hidden: Quantum Worlds and the Emergence of Spacetime,” and its second volume, “Quanta and Fields: The Biggest Ideas in the Universe.”  He hosts the “Mindscape” podcast, featuring conversations with accomplished guests on new ideas in science, philosophy, culture, and the arts.  Carroll was named a Guggenheim Fellow in 2015. 

Carroll’s work in physics is driven by his passion for making science applicable and understandable to the common man. He explains how the natural curiosity of humans fosters a desire for knowledge; however, people are often intimidated by science and its complexities. Carroll expresses his hope to share this knowledge through his work. “People want to know how their universe works, how the atmosphere works, how chemicals work, how biology works, and we have to sort of restore that wonder and awe in the universe. And it happens at different levels. Maybe some people just want to hear the occasional headline. Some people want to dig more deeply. I think that we have a rich enough ecosystem of ways to talk about science these days that we can keep everybody happy.” 

“Story in the Public Square” broadcasts each week on public television stations across the United States. In Rhode Island and southeastern New England, the show is broadcast on Rhode Island PBS on Sundays at 11:00 a.m. and is rebroadcast Thursdays at 7:30 p.m. Check your local public television listings for air times near you! An audio version of the program airs Saturdays at 8:30 a.m. and 7:30 p.m. ET, Sundays at 4:30 a.m. and 9:30 p.m. and Mondays at 2:30 a.m. ET on SiriusXM’s popular P.O.T.U.S. (Politics of the United States), channel 124. “Story in the Public Square” is a project of the Pell Center at Salve Regina University. The initiative aims to study, celebrate and tell stories that matter.