Will Carroll
Will Carroll
Will Carroll is a sportswriter specializing in the coverage of medical issues, including injuries and performance-enhancing drugs. Carroll's "Under the Knife" column appeared on Baseball Prospectus for eight years during his stint there as a senior writer, and he also contributed to the site's radio efforts as well as the Puck Prospectus spin-off site. He is the author of two books on sports-related medical topics. Carroll has no formal medical training...
aspects huge lots time trying
I'm trying to understand how time works. And that's a huge question that has lots of different aspects to it.
account bit cool everyday full given happened happens lives needs understanding
A full understanding of what happens in our everyday lives needs to take into account what happened at the Big Bang. And not only is that intrinsically interesting and just kind of cool to think about, but it's also a mystery that is not given much attention by working scientists; it's a little bit underappreciated.
larger science
I'm a big believer that science is part of a larger cultural thing. Science is not all by itself.
call conditions embedded larger local similar
If our local, observable universe is embedded in a larger structure, a multiverse, then there's other places in this larger structure that have denizens in them that call their local environs the universe. And conditions in those other places could be very different. Or they could be pretty similar to what we have here.
advice against bet explain figure god moon moved natural needed people power religious science smart thousand
I don't want to give advice to people about their religious beliefs, but I do think that it's not smart to bet against the power of science to figure out the natural world. It used to be, a thousand years ago, that if you wanted to explain why the moon moved through the sky, you needed to invoke God.
arrow aspect egg fact future interested omelet particular past remember time turn
The particular aspect of time that I'm interested in is the arrow of time: the fact that the past is different from the future. We remember the past but we don't remember the future. There are irreversible processes. There are things that happen, like you turn an egg into an omelet, but you can't turn an omelet into an egg.
bang born causes connects directly entropy grow kitchens precede properties time trying understand
I'm trying to understand cosmology, why the Big Bang had the properties it did. And it's interesting to think that connects directly to our kitchens and how we can make eggs, how we can remember one direction of time, why causes precede effects, why we are born young and grow older. It's all because of entropy increasing.
given horrific human ourselves
As an actor, I've given up judgement of evil, as long as it's human evil - we have to see ourselves for what we really are, and we're capable of horrific things.
actions evil human insofar stop
Evil is important for us to look at, in my opinion, only insofar as it makes us look at our own actions and make us wonder, 'Am I participating in some kind of human evil that I really should stop doing?'
anyone bigger forget god guess huge movies seen
I never think of myself as lumbering, but I guess I am. I forget how huge I am sometimes. I've seen movies where I'm with a group of people, and I'm like, 'God, I'm just so gargantuanly bigger than anyone else there.'
afraid capable darkness fear glad hope horror people
The fear that you come to a show called 'American Horror Story' with is yours. That being said, I'm glad people are afraid, and I hope that I'm contributing to their fear. I'm really not afraid of my own darkness anymore. I'm not afraid of what I'm capable of.
law understanding want
We seek an understanding of the laws of nature and of our particular universe in which everything makes sense to us. We do not want to be reduced to accepting the strange features of our universe as brute facts.
firsts facts moments
Nothing in the fact that there was a first moment in time necessitates that an external something is required to bring the universe about at that moment.
matter speed hours
The speed of time is 1 hour per hour, no matter what else is going on in the universe.