Big Think
Big Think
@bigthink·8.8M subscribers·10.1K videos

Sean Carroll: Einstein’s most radical thought

Posted

November 7, 2025

Views

1,216,633

Likes

27,812

Comments

992

Engagement

2.37%

Search the Record

Indexed

Every word spoken in this episode is indexed. Type any phrase to jump straight to the moment it was said.

Type any word or phrase that may have been spoken. Click a result to seek the player to that exact moment.

Try a name, a topic, or a quoted line

Chapters

YouTube Description

as posted by the channel

Become a Big Think member to unlock expert classes, premium print issues, exclusive events and more“The messy reality of it is that all of these very smart people, including Isaac Newton, were talking to other people.”

Subscribe to Big Think on YouTube ► Watch Sean Carroll's Full Interview with Big Think ►

Albert Einstein altered the way we think about reality itself, and we often think of him as the most important physicist. But even his breakthroughs were part of a larger, tangled conversation among scientists stretching from Aristotle to Maxwell to Minkowski.

Sean Carroll, physicist and philosopher at Johns Hopkins University, traces how the universe emerged not from solitary genius, but from centuries of dialogue, error, and correction.

Read the video transcript ►

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Go Deeper with Big Think:

►Become a Big Think Youtube Member

Get exclusive classes and early, adfree access to new releases without leaving Youtube.

►Become a Big Think Web Member

Get the entire Big Think Class library, premium print issues, live events, and more.

►Subscribe to Big Think on Substack

Get all of your favorite Big Think content delivered to your inbox.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

About Sean Carroll:

Dr. Sean Carroll is Homewood Professor of Natural Philosophy — in effect, a joint appointment between physics and philosophy — at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, and fractal faculty at the Santa Fe Institute. Most of his career has been spent doing 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. These days, his focus has shifted to more 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), bringing a more philosophical dimension to his work.

Guests & Subjects Covered

Sean CarrollIsaac NewtonAlbert EinsteinMinkowski Sean CarrollJohns Hopkins UniversityElectromagnetism TheSpacetime SpecialGo Deeper

Sentinel Indexing in Progress

Metadata and chapters are available. Claim extraction for this episode is pending.

All video content is delivered via YouTube embedded players in accordance with the YouTube Terms of Service. Sentinel provides research tools that promote discovery and accountability across political media.