Today we have award-winning scientist, author, educator, and film producer Sean B. Carroll with us to talk about the role of chance in biological life with his newest book, A Series of Fortunate Events: Chance and the Making of the Planet, Life, and You.

Randomness and chance of course play a role in just about everything, and especially investments. But there’s wide debate about just how much of life and market results are defined by randomness and how much of those are truly within our control. The greatest scientists and philosophers of our age continue to wrestle with that issue (they always will, of course), and while we won’t solve those deep life mysteries for you here, Sean’s perspective on chance at the foundational level of biology—how randomness affects our very DNA—will make you think differently. This is a wide-ranging discussion about dinosaurs, viruses, DNA mutation, and so much else. Investors should pay close attention—while imperfect, analogies of markets to biological systems are well worth considering.