Welcome to Inside the Hive. This is your host Nick Bilton. So three years ago this

week my wife and I rushed off to the emergency room because she was pregnant with our first child and was

about to give birth. I remember everything about this evening, but there's a moment

before the birth that actually stands out to me like crystal clear.

What happened was our doctor who had delivered

6,500 children before ours,

not on that evening of course, over the period of his incredible career.

He was sitting there, we had been up all night, I was about five in the morning, it was still dark out,

and I looked over to him as we were waiting for the

epidural to wear off my wife and I said do you believe in God do you believe in

some sort of higher power and he said you know it's funny that you ask that I

don't but when you see what you're about to see happen, the birth of your first child, it's hard not to.

So I tell this story because the person who is coming on my show today, Sean Carroll, does not believe

in God or any larger purpose. And Sean actually has a lot of merit in the

arguments he makes. He's definitely one of the smartest people we've had on this

podcast to date. He's a cosmologist, a physics professor, he specializes in dark

energy and general relativity, teaches at Caltech, he's written several books including the big picture on the origins of life

meaning and the universe itself. So he's going to join me today to talk about all

of those things and what the meaning of life is if there is no meaning at all.

He's going to explain how there is probably very likely not intelligent life anywhere else in the

universe because mathematically speaking it is really

really difficult to live where we do and the way we do. He's going to talk about how

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