Sean Carroll

You know, so people are always suggesting podcast guests to me, and I do think that I'm always open to that.

I've had many guests on the podcast who were first suggested by random people emailing me or leaving comments on the podcast.

the podcast page etc or on patreon saying oh you should invite this person so that can work i get many too many of them to be honest so i can't even accept a good fraction of them but i welcome them because i want to be nudged out of the usual circles that i would tend to move in and so forth but just to reiterate because it's been a while since i have you know what i'm looking for is intellectually respectable people who have something interesting to say

And I think that the two failure modes that I get most often from people making suggestions are either they pick someone who is just very diametrically opposed to me who I wouldn't respect and you want to have a debate.

And we're just not about having debates here on Mindscape.

I want to have someone on the podcast who I want to let you listen to.

I don't want to debate them.

I don't think that each individual podcast episode, well, for my podcast, everyone should have their own podcast.

But on my podcast, each individual episode is not a clash of views.

It's an articulation of one view.

I'll ask questions and I'll register my skepticism from point to point.

But mostly I want to hear the arguments so that I can understand them better.

And it's the sum of all podcasts and also of all other things that you're listening to in life that should give you a balanced view, not each individual episode.

So I don't want to have debates with people and smack them down or anything like that.

The other and even more common failure mode is that people suggest guests who are not actually – I don't know how to say this exactly right because it's a broad world out there and there are many different ways to be –

useful and productive in society, but I want people who are really developing ideas, okay, in a really useful, rigorous way in some sense.

That doesn't necessarily mean you're a professor.

We've had artists and writers of various sorts, but these are people who are like really doing the creative work in a way that is making an impact on other people who are really doing the creative work.

And the failure mode that I have in mind is a lot of people suggest guests who are basically other podcasters.

Or pundits of various sorts, right?