Sean Carroll

The pope has been pushing back.

on various aspects of modern technology and governance.

You know, he has noticed that you should be nice to immigrants as part of what Jesus preaches in the New Testament, in the Gospels.

And yet, there are people who claim to be following Jesus' teachings who are not really very kind to immigrants.

So he says those things, and that riles people up.

Most recently, he put out an encyclical that questions some aspects of artificial intelligence and the possible worries about dehumanization and not taking the soul seriously enough.

And I haven't read the encyclical, I have to say, but it seems that there's a lot of good stuff in there, a lot of thoughtful things.

You know, the Pope and I are not going to agree on everything, but I can still respect—I have people on the podcast who I don't agree with, but I still respect as thinkers.

And as far as I can tell—

The Pope seems like someone who is a respectable thinker, who actually is not just going through the motions, but really taking things seriously and trying to do some good in various ways.

So that gave me the idea.

Why don't we have the Pope on the Mindscape podcast?

I think that Pope Leo would make a good podcast guest.

After all, we are both alumni of Villanova University.

You know, he's an Augustinian.

The Augustinians are the order that is in charge of Villanova.

And he was a math and statistics major back when he was an undergraduate, as well as being from the U.S.

And I think that there would be a wonderful conversation to be had about science and religion and AI and the human spirit and things like that.

Sadly, and I never do this, so I'm leaving this for a very offhanded intro to the AMA, I have no way of getting in touch with the pope.

I was talking with a fellow Villanovan just earlier today, which is what gave me the idea, but they don't have any connection to the Pope either.