Person
Sean Carroll's book recommendations
Key facts
- Sean Carroll has recommended or discussed 5 books on podcasts, as of April 22, 2024.
- Sean Carroll has talked about books on 3 podcasts, as of April 22, 2024.
- Those books came up in 4 episodes, as of April 22, 2024.
- The 3 books Sean Carroll has mentioned in the most episodes, not counting Sean Carroll's own, as of April 22, 2024: Aesop's Fables, Me, Myself, and Why and Relativity.
- The latest episode with a book mention from Sean Carroll aired on April 22, 2024.
Updated
Across 3 podcasts. Every show Sean Carroll appears on, in one place — not just one.
Sean Carroll discussed several books across multiple podcast appearances, including the Lex Fridman Podcast, StarTalk Radio, and The Joe Rogan Experience. On the Lex Fridman Podcast, he referenced Albert Einstein's work on general relativity, specifically citing the first book of Spacetime and Geometry to distinguish between classical black holes and quantum mechanics. Speaking on StarTalk Radio about his own work, Carroll discussed the first book in his trilogy, The Biggest Ideas in the Universe, explaining that the series was adapted from his collection of pandemic instructional videos. On The Joe Rogan Experience, he mentioned a book written by his wife, Jennifer Ouellette, titled Me, Myself, and Why, which explores the science of the self. During the same appearance, Carroll utilized literary comparisons, bringing up Aesop's fable of the fox and the grapes to illustrate how certain physicists react when they fail to understand quantum mechanics. Through these discussions, Carroll referenced texts spanning classical physics, popular science, and classic fables.
Books recommended by Sean Carroll
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Aesop's Fables
Aesop's Fables by Aesop is a classic collection of moral tales attributed to the ancient Greek storyteller, designed to impart practical lessons through animal allegories.
Discussed“they flip it they it's like Aesop's Fox and the grapes you know the parable where the Fox is trying to get the grapes”
Where to get it
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Biggest Ideas in the Universe
Biggest Ideas in the Universe by Sean M.
Discussed“the basic idea is that we took the series of videos I did which cover a lot of material and we chopped them up into three books so this is the first book of a Trilogy”
Where to get it
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Me, Myself, and Why
Discussed“my wife Jennifer will let - as a science writer wrote a book called me myself and why searching for the science of self”
Where to get it
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Relativity
Relativity by Albert Einstein encompasses foundational physics texts detailing the special and general theories of relativity that revolutionized our understanding of space, time, and gravity.
Discussed“So that's why I keep needing to distinguish between black holes according to Einstein's theory of general relativity, which is book one of 'Spacetime and Geometry,' which is perfectly classical.”
Where to get it
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The Secret
The Secret by Rhonda Byrne is a bestselling self-help book and film centered on the law of attraction, asserting that positive thinking and intentional visualization can directly manifest wealth, health, and happiness.
Discussed“I have a friend it was a really sad sort of story I have a friend who was really into the secret and she was actually a friend of a friend more than a friend and I ran into her at the comedy store and we were talking and she was explaining to me how she has sort of used”
Where to get it
Books by Sean Carroll
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From Eternity to Here
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The Particle at the End of the Universe
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Spacetime and geometry
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The Big Picture
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Something Deeply Hidden
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Biggest Ideas in the Universe
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God and Cosmology
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Quanta and Fields
Appearances
Other mentions (30: passing, ad reads, own books)
Plugged Something Deeply Hidden
“And this is literally the chapter I wrote for my book, Something Deeply Hidden, which is all about quantum mechanics.”
Plugged Quanta and Fields
“You can read about it in my book, Quanta and Fields, by the way.”
Plugged Quanta and Fields
“but the story you can read about in my new book Quant and Fields where I explained this”
Plugged Spacetime and geometry
“So that's why I keep needing to distinguish between black holes according to Einstein's theory general relativity, which is book one of "Spacetime and Geometry," which is perfectly classical.”
Plugged Biggest Ideas in the Universe
“I will recommend that people who think it's clergy and making things up buy a book that I recently wrote that explains how general relativity Works among other things”
Plugged Something Deeply Hidden
“in fact this is more or less the straightforward prediction of the equations that we've been lovingly describing here and I wrote a whole other book my previous book was called something deeply hidden describing and defending exactly that point of view”
Plugged Biggest Ideas in the Universe
“first multimedia the book uh that uh is out fall 2022 the biggest ideas in the universe”
Plugged The Big Picture
“so you know my previous book the big picture was very broad a lot of philosophy a lot of biology was in there”
Plugged Something Deeply Hidden
“tell the story in my book you know I do a bunch of different things some fine ocean foundations of quantum mechanics some gravity and particle physics and stuff like that”
Plugged Something Deeply Hidden
“yeah I tell the story in the book like he wrote a bunch of influential papers as a graduate student”
Plugged Something Deeply Hidden
“so Einstein is one of the secret heroes of the book because he has this reputation as someone who just couldn't quite accept quantum mechanics the title something deeply hidden is a quote from Einstein”
Plugged Something Deeply Hidden
“so Einstein is one of the secret heroes of the book because he has this reputation as someone who just couldn't quite accept quantum mechanics the title something deeply hidden is a quote from Einstein when he was talking about when he was a kid and he had a compass”
Plugged Something Deeply Hidden
“you know I have a chapter in the book which my editor resisted at first but then he let me get away with it which is a dialogue between a young philosopher and her father who was a physicist”
Plugged The Big Picture
“I talked about this in the last book in the big picture think about this when we when we talk about the earth going around the Sun”
Plugged Something Deeply Hidden
“there's also what I try to squelch in the book one of the misunderstandings about quantum mechanics is the idea of quantum fluctuations”
“you know the structure of scientific revolutions is the famous book that everyone reads people like Thomas Kuhn and Paula abend and so forth”
Plugged Something Deeply Hidden
“and that was in fact I think that you got a copy of my book that didn't have any figures in it right didn't you get the”
“the I'll tell you that the motivation was when I wrote my previous book the big picture it was a sprawling book”
Plugged Something Deeply Hidden
“the I'll tell you that the motivation was when I wrote my previous book the big picture it was a sprawling book so it's not only physics but also philosophy and neuroscience”
Plugged The Big Picture
“the I'll tell you that the motivation was when I wrote my previous book the big picture it was a sprawling book so it's not only physics but also philosophy and neuroscience”
Passing 2001, a Space Odyssey
“and it would be like from our point of view be like 2001 or there's an you know an monolith monolith”
Plugged Something Deeply Hidden
“this is the book that I'm writing right now that's gonna be out a year from now called something deeply hidden it'll be about quantum mechanics”
“read that in my other book the particle came to the universe”
Plugged Something Deeply Hidden
“that's good it's not well so the title of the book is something deeply hidden this is a phrase from Einstein and the ideas that there is something real that we can get a handle on”
Plugged Something Deeply Hidden
“Well so the title of the book is something deeply hidden This is a phrase from Einstein and the ideas that there is something real that we can get a handle on It's just different than what we see”
“and I think that it's so in my last book the big picture I actually devoted even though it's mostly about physics and philosophy and cosmology and biology I devoted a little bit to the fundamental principles of reasoning and especially Bayesian reasoning”
Plugged The Big Picture
“so in my last book the big picture I actually devoted even though it's mostly about physics and philosophy and cosmology and biology I devoted a little bit to the fundamental principles of reasoning”
Plugged Biggest Ideas in the Universe
“so in my last book the big picture I actually devoted even though it's mostly about physics and philosophy and cosmology and biology I devoted a little bit to the fundamental principles of reasoning”
Plugged The Big Picture
“what we should do about it is there an audiobook available as well is I recorded it not far from here”
Plugged Biggest Ideas in the Universe
“what we should do about it is there an audiobook available as well is I recorded it not far from here”