The Big Picture: From the Big Bang to the Meaning of Life - with Sean Carroll 

Important announcement : we've dropped the audio levels on our deafening intro! On a scale of mouse whisper to jet plane, how's it sound?

I can't get enough of Sean Carroll. I think he's the best science communicator that we currently have - he is simply brilliant, has a subtle sense of humor, a great communicator, great voice, patient, well-intentioned, genuine, and very logically consistent. And yes, I did read "The Big Picture".

What's most underrated in Sean Carrol's lecture is the absence of annoying umm or so, resulting in an orderly and clean (high entropy) learning experience.

i think this may be one of the most efficient or important 1-hour lectures a layperson could listen to

Always pleased to hear Sean Carroll talk.

Sean has a particularly poetic way to convey extremely complex ideas. His last words in the lecture made realize that there are plenty of subjects that are worth to be involved with. Thanks for posting.

this man's persona/character/showmanship, vibes just like Richard Feynman's. that's a compliment.

So grateful to the RI for producing and publishing these online. Great stuff.

It is always such a pleasure to listen to Carroll's lectures.

We feel a rare beauty in his speeches. Always aesthetically satisfying, intellectually edifying, and morally ennobling.

My favourite public communicator of science, doing his thing. Great talk, thanks for sharing.

I have watched this video more than 1000 times online. I downloaded it and listen to it before I sleep and while sleeping to an extent I dreamt meeting Sean Carroll here in Kenya when he came for a science conference in Nairobi and we met on the streets and I asked him questions about entropy. When my morning alarm went off I felt like crying because that was one of my most beautiful dreams in 2023. This video and the book the Big Picture made me view life differently. Especially the 3 billion heartbeats we experience. Humility 💯

This is one of the best lectures from Sean and one of the best from RI overall. Thank you.

Listening to Sean Carroll talk about science is always such a treat. His ability to communicate complex ideas in a way that is very accessible yet doesn't feel oversimplified or dumbed down is a rare treasure which the scientifically (and philosophically) curious public can be immensely grateful for. Not everyone can become a theoretical physicist and comprehensively understand humanity's best theories about the fundamental nature of reality, but thanks to people like Sean, us non-physicists can at least get a taste of the marvels and puzzles which physical theory has in store for us. I'd also like to express my gratitude to The Royal Institution for making these ideas available to a wide audience. I think it's a real shame how relatively small the audience for these accessible yet scientifically rigorous ideas still is and how large the market for pseudoscience and pop science that has been oversimplified to the point of meaninglessness remains. What you public communicators of science are doing is a very noble thing indeed and it seems to me that you don't receive nearly the amount of praise you deserve for this. Please rest assured that what you're doing has had and continues to have a great impact on the mindset of many (young) people such as myself. Let's hope that this is just the beginning.

I was in the audience - I was in the middle of a lot of pain because of my back injury and I still travelled to London and sat there the entire time on a cramped seat to see this and I wasn't disappointed. I remember the rainy evening so well.

I'm always on the lookout for Sean Carroll lectures. He is an amazing speaker with a pleasant voice that is calming. This one is fantastic. My only problem is that I wish I would have found this one earlier. It's in my saved videos now. I'd like to add that I love the RI channel, thank you.

The beauty of the internet! For a Ugandan to have access to such a lecture!

That suit...is the Big Bang! I mean...The Bomb!. Love Sean Carroll. A very well spoken physicist, who has an uncanny knack for explaining his craft to the lay person...i.e...me. Very well done.

Dr. Carroll's delivery of complex ideas is razor sharp and refreshingly uncluttered. Outstanding presentation.

You speak and explain physics so beautifully, professor.

Ever since i saw the series "Dark Energy Dark Matter", Sean Carroll has been the person i recommend to anyone as the most well-spoken physicist ever. Cheers!

It's a blessing to even watch Carroll's Lecture

If John Mulaney knew physics.

My favourite communicator of science! A brilliant man with a gift for teaching.

I saw Sean Carroll in the name I pressed the play button at the speed of light

I've read some comments and it seems like everyone loves this guy and that all his lectures are like this. Well, this was my first of him. Thanks Sean and thanks RI, my mind is in very high-entropy state after this. Not a very good thing to watch this before sleeping, cause now all I can do is to think about meaning of life and stuff

Sean Carroll (the physicist) is one of the best science communicators out there. He understands his subject matter so well that he can explain it in simple terms to his audience. A rare talent among senior academics in my experience. (B.t.w. Sean Carroll the evolutionary biologist is also another of my favorite speakers) Can we have the two Sean Carroll’s on the same stage talking about cosmic and biological evolution from their perspectives. The two should meet somewhere in the middle around abiogenesis.

I recently watched a YT video from Dr. Paul Sutter. He amazed me because he was able to explain what a particle was, particularly an electron. He described it as a disturbance in a field. He held out his hands and made a large swath of motion to simulate a field of something smooth in front of him. Then, in front of this smooth something of a field, he made a small wiggle with his hand. That wiggle of his hand in the field he previously painted in front of him was an "electron". So I said to myself, "wow". That funny moment reminded me of a joke by the American 1980s comedian, Steven Wright. He told a story about when he came home one evening and noticed that all of his living room furniture was suddenly replaced with an exact replica of all his preexisting furniture. After pondering the moment he looked at his living room and said "Wow". That's the feeling he also got when he suddenly sat on his chair and accidentally tipped back too far, but caught himself before he fell backward. He said, you know that feeling? Well I feel that way all the time. Well, Steven Wright and Sean Carroll have a lot in common. They both make me feel the same way when I listen to them.

This is one of my favorite lecture of his.

I think this is one of the best "physics" lectures I have ever heard. It is the most comprehensive and covers all the most challenging subjects, such as consciousness, free will, time, life, etc.--and all with the most recent experimental evidence. Absolutely brilliant big picture. Everyone human should watch this.

Sean Carroll is truly a public science speaker with clarity and purpose in his talk.

I like how he doesn't apologise for the use of an equation

Sean Carroll is a great explainer! I love hearing his lectures

Thanks for posting this incredibly, eye opening lecture. We need more scientist in the world to help humans understand the universe and how little we are in the great order of things. Thank you science people!!!

Sooo Goood!!! Sean Carroll must win the Noble Price of having the great capacity to elaborate the Universe and its nature. Thank you Dr. Sean Carroll for such beautiful lecture.

Sean needs to have a 24/7 live feed to the world, so that humanity can have a shot at survival and...well, humanity.

Simply brilliant, thank you so much!

Numerous variations after the original Corona virus and 4 doses later, listening to Dr Carroll s lecture make surviving the pandemic more meaningful. Thanks for the effort and keep up the good work. From Hker worldwide

Been a fan of the RI lectures for many many years and this was one of the best presented, most lucid and informative of them all. Thank you ever so much!

Hello Dr. Carrol, I was going to write something totally different after hearing about all the 'bad news'. However, I changed my mind after hearing you in the last 2 minutes of your presentation. That gives me hope to survive as a human being and look forward for the 'good news' tomorrow will bring! Good job! Bravo!!

What a great speaker. I don't have a science background and much of the quantum stuff I can barely wrap my head around but I find it absolutely fascinating. Going to hunt out more of Sean's lectures now.

Thanks to the crew at Royal Institute for another superbly produced video. I also very much liked the lecture.

Wonderful lecture. Very pleasant and informative. Well done R.I. and of course a big thank you to Mr. Sean Carroll.

One of the most brilliant scientific presenters of our time. What a lecture.

This talk is a joy to listen to. Professor Carroll places exceptionally complex topics into bite-sized palatable morsels that even peeps like me can explore, so as to better understand how some of the things in the universe work. Thank you for sharing this talk.

Amazing video. I’m buying the book now. Thank you for all that you do.

What a great communicator.

This is an awesome channel and I can't but be grateful to all those who make it possible. It's a real privilege to be able to enjoy this level of curated lectures online. And for me, among all this incredible material this particular talk really stands out. Hat off to you! 🎩

omg omg Sean Carroll .. Clicked immediately when I saw the title, he's one of favorite cosmologists

We should listen to this speech more than once to understand at least part of the knowledge he has imparted. 👍👍👍

Sean Carroll's voice is very soothing when contemplating such tremoundously awesome theories

Sean Carroll is my fav theoretical physicist.

What a great talk man!

I see Sean is stepping his suit game up . Very excited for this lecture. I'm pretty much finished with every other one of his on you tube. This is like an early Christmas for me.

Seen, and listened to, quite a lot of Sean Carrol for the last few years and I'm extremely impressed of all his knowledge on physics, science and much more.. Plus superb communication skills.

I’ll just say “this lecture was awesome!”. Thank you so much for stimulating the particles in my head. 😃👍🏻👍🏻

Excellent presentation! Speaking to the audience!

Great teacher.

I chose to buy your book after listening to you, Mr. Carroll.

1:00:00 "Every one of those heart beats is precious."

I’ve watched hours and hours of videos of RI these days and by far Sean Carroll is the one I like the most how interesting he makes everything without letting it be boring 🙌🏼

Superb lecture!

Everything about this man, this lecture, and this institution is deeply pleasing.

Always a fantastic way to explain easily complex topics. A great lecturer and professor indeed.

Great insight on complexity vs entropy

this is highly informative and inspiring to me in so many ways... so glad to find this channel!

Thankyou for this !

One of, if not the, best lecture I've ever heard on the fundamentals of life the universe and everything

Simply Great!

It was an incredible lecture ! Thank you Royal Institution for this pearl of a conference, so interesting. You made my day - and probably a big chunk of my whole life would never be the same thanks to some of the great ideas featured in this video. What a gift !

i enjoy these lectures as a lay man non eductated in physics person the info is actually understood by me and i can grasp the understanding ;wish this guy was my science teacher i would have studdied physics more

Carroll has to be one of the best speakers out there. Such a pleasure to listen to.

I am in awe of the way Prof Carroll presents and engages his audience. He is knowledgable and charismatic. He uses humour effortlessly and in context. He eschews disfluencies like no other. He is an absolutely brilliant communicator and educator.

New favorite YT Channel.

I am a physicist and I will provide solid arguments that prove that consciousness cannot be generated by the brain (in my youtube channel you can find a video with more detailed explanations). Many argue that consciousness is an emergent property of the brain, but it is possible to show that such hypothesis is inconsistent with our scientific knowledges. In fact, it is possible to show that all the examples of emergent properties consists of concepts used to describe how an external object appear to our conscious mind, and not how it is in itself, which means how the object is independently from our observation. In other words, emergent properties are ideas conceived to describe or classify, according to arbitrary criteria and from an arbitrary point of view, certain processes or systems. In summary, emergent properties are intrinsically subjective, since they are based on the arbitrary choice to focus on certain aspects of a system and neglet other aspects, such as microscopic structures and processes; emergent properties consist of ideas through which we describe how the external reality appears to our conscious mind: without a conscious mind, these ideas (= emergent properties) would not exist at all. Here comes my first argument: arbitrariness, subjectivity, classifications and approximate descriptions, imply the existence of a conscious mind, which can arbitrarily choose a specific point of view and focus on certain aspects while neglecting others. It is obvious that consciousness cannot be considered an emergent property of the physical reality, because consciousenss is a preliminary necessary condition for the existence of any emergent property. We have then a logical contradiction. Nothing which presupposes the existence of consciousness can be used to try to explain the existence of consciousness. Here comes my second argument: our scientific knowledge shows that brain processes consist of sequences of ordinary elementary physical processes; since consciousness is not a property of ordinary elementary physical processes, then a succession of such processes cannot have cosciousness as a property. In fact we can break down the process and analyze it step by step, and in every step consciousness would be absent, so there would never be any consciousness during the entire sequence of elementary processes. It must be also understood that considering a group of elementary processes together as a whole is an arbitrary choice. In fact, according to the laws of physics, any number of elementary processes is totally equivalent. We could consider a group of one hundred elementary processes or ten thousand elementary processes, or any other number; this choice is arbitrary and not reducible to the laws of physics. However, consciousness is a necessary preliminary condition for the existence of arbitrary choices; therefore consciousness cannot be a property of a sequence of elementary processes as a whole, because such sequence as a whole is only an arbitrary and abstract concept that cannot exist independently of a conscious mind. Here comes my third argument: It should also be considered that brain processes consist of billions of sequences of elementary processes that take place in different points of the brain; if we attributed to these processes the property of consciousness, we would have to associate with the brain billions of different consciousnesses, that is billions of minds and personalities, each with its own self-awareness and will; this contradicts our direct experience, that is, our awareness of being a single person who is able to control the voluntary movements of his own body with his own will. If cerebral processes are analyzed taking into account the laws of physics, these processes do not identify any unity; this missing unit is the necessarily non-physical element (precisely because it is missing in the brain), the element that interprets the brain processes and generates a unitary conscious state, that is the human mind. Here comes my forth argument: Consciousness is characterized by the fact that self-awareness is an immediate intuition that cannot be broken down or fragmented into simpler elements. This characteristic of consciousness of presenting itself as a unitary and non-decomposable state, not fragmented into billions of personalities, does not correspond to the quantum description of brain processes, which instead consist of billions of sequences of elementary incoherent quantum processes. When someone claims that consciousness is a property of the brain, they are implicitly considering the brain as a whole, an entity with its own specific properties, other than the properties of the components. From the physical point of view, the brain is not a whole, because its quantum state is not a coherent state, as in the case of entangled systems; the very fact of speaking of "brain" rather than many cells that have different quantum states, is an arbitrary choice. This is an important aspect, because, as I have said, consciousness is a necessary preliminary condition for the existence of arbitrariness. So, if a system can be considered decomposable and considering it as a whole is an arbitrary choice, then it is inconsistent to assume that such a system can have or generate consciousness, since consciousness is a necessary precondition for the existence of any arbitrary choice. In other words, to regard consciousness as a property ofthe brain, we must first define what the brain is, and to do so we must rely only on the laws of physics, without introducing arbitrary notions extraneous to them; if this cannot be done, then it means that every property we attribute to the brain is not reducible to the laws of physics, and therefore such property would be nonphysical. Since the interactions between the quantum particles that make up the brain are ordinary interactions, it is not actually possible to define the brain based solely on the laws of physics. The only way to define the brain is to arbitrarily establish that a certain number of particles belong to it and others do not belong to it, but such arbitrariness is not admissible. In fact, the brain is not physically separated from the other organs of the body, with which it interacts, nor is it physically isolated from the external environment, just as it is not isolated from other brains, since we can communicate with other people, and to do so we use physical means, for example acoustic waves or electromagnetic waves (light). This necessary arbitrariness in defining what the brain is, is sufficient to demonstrate that consciousness is not reducible to the laws of physics. Besides, since the brain is an arbitrary concept, and consciousness is the necessary preliminary condition for the existence of arbitrariness, consciousness cannot be a property of the brain. Based on these considerations, we can exclude that consciousness is generated by the brain or is an emergent property of the brain. Marco Biagini

2nd time i see this conference (google's one first), and it look so fresh like a new one.

And....this is why boom mics are horrible. When they slip, they strike the face and ruin the talk. A properly mounted lavalier mic won’t do this. I don’t know why boom mics have become so popular. They are visually distracting as well. Tech is supposed to get smaller and LESS obtrusive, not more.

I think this might be the best version of this lecture. I've watched several versions of it. Sean seems to take emergent properties more seriously in this one (not mere epiphenomena but real).

"Erroneously supposed to do no harm". Great statement.

One of the most beautiful and meaningful lectures I have ever heard.

Love Sean Carroll! Thanks for uploading :)

I’m a little confused. Why did he use the Higgs (@25:50) as an example when he was trying to convey that we’ve discovered all particles that affect us in our ordinary lives? He says it decays in a zepto second and if there are other undiscovered particles that decay similarly fast or faster then they wouldn’t affect us. But my understanding is that the Higgs, even though it decays very quickly, does profoundly affect us since it gives mass to all the particles that make up our world.

Over an hour of this guy talking about things he will never know....like he knows. Amazing.

Superb! Amongst the best science communicators of our time. Up there with Jim Al Khalili, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Lawrence Krauss.

Brilliant man and an excellent speaker! 👌👌

as always, thank you for sharing such information, I'm from Indonesia and great talks like this are really hard to find (also expensive)

I'm going to CERN to soak up in the field particle collider. this show and other, from RI in particular charge me up further closer to the speed of light. Delightfully enlightening. Thank you.

Totally enthralling speaker, very enjoyable and entertaining as well as informative and thought provoking.

Sean Carroll rightfully sits at Feynmans desk. From one great physicist and teacher to the next...

Was just looking for more of Sean a few hours ago and couldn't find any new ones then... this :D Did something mysterious happen? Of course not. Was it just a coincidence? Of course it was. Hopefully he has something to say about the many worlds theory, I heard him talking about it on sixty symbols and the way he goes into it had me captivated and my jaw on the floor.

BRAVO, Sean!!! Very well articulated and truly enlightening!!! Encore... Encore!!!

My brain hurts after this but I am very grateful to learn something new and very appreciative of the knowledge and perspective Sean Carroll brings to his lectures. Thanks for posting.

That was wonderful, thank you RI

my brain is drooling

Wow!! What a gifted teacher and speaker!!

Loved the lecture. Would only add that "to have the choice to make what we like of our existence" only means that we will make A choice. There will never be right or wrong choices. Only hopes and regrets.

the meaning of life is to give meaning to life.

“The purpose of life is to hydrogenate carbon dioxide”. That’s so simple and beautiful that it made me happy (of course that doesn’t mean the hypothesis is correct). Also: “Don’t worry, God probably doesn’t exist, you’re only here to produce methane”.

This is the best presentation I have seen from The Royal Institution. Sean Carroll is an intellectual treasure. Cheers!

As an American, I'm pleased to hear Sean include Wile E. Coyote in the lecture. Very pleased indeed!