Support Closer To Truth with a tax-deductible donation of any amount to help us continue exploring in the new year. Closer To Truth host Robert Lawrence Kuhn recently published an extensive new article titled "A Landscape of Consciousness: Toward a taxonomy of explanations and implications" . The paper covers the field of consciousness studies in its entirety as well as the consequences of consciousness including artificial intelligence (AI), life after death, and virtual immortality. Read Kuhn'...
Jan 08, 2025•55 min•Ep. 175
Support Closer To Truth this season with a tax-deductible donation. Your contributions directly fuels a new year of exploring life's biggest questions. If God exists, did God create everything? Did God create out of literally "nothing"? Suppose there was no beginning to the cosmos, just the universe going through endless cycles, what then? And what about "abstract objects" like logic and numbers, which seem to exist without any cause and no creator? Featuring interviews with William Craig, Rober...
Dec 25, 2024•27 min•Ep. 174
Support Closer To Truth this holiday season with a tax-deductible donation of any amount. Your contribution directly fuels our exploration of life's biggest questions with new contributors and differing perspectives. Give today. Time seems natural and absolute: the flow of moments one following another from the unknown past to the knife's edge present to the unknowable future. But this is not so. Einstein shocked the world by showing that time was "relative." What's the latest about time? Featur...
Dec 18, 2024•27 min•Ep. 173
Donate to Closer To Truth and help us continue producing thought-provoking interviews with experts across the globe. All who affirm that God does exist should examine the strong attacks of those who conclude that God does not exist, and then assess the sharp counterattacks of scholarly believers. Belief in God is too important to be determined by cultural circumstances. Featuring interviews with Susan Blackmore, Peter Atkins, Alvin Plantinga, and Steven Weinberg. You can watch the full episode o...
Dec 11, 2024•27 min•Ep. 168
Donate to Closer To Truth this holiday season to help us keep our content free and without paywalls. Galaxies and clusters of galaxies, untold billions of them, adorn the cosmos. How did such large-scale structure of the universe come about? Featuring interviews with John Richard Gott III, Abraham Loeb, George Smoot, and Saul Perlmutter.
Dec 04, 2024•27 min•Ep. 172
Donate to Closer To Truth and help us keep our content free and without paywalls: https://shorturl.at/OnyRq Are human beings purely physical? Evolved at random and destined to die, extinguished forever? Or are we something more? A spirit or a soul, with existence beyond? What's the relationship between our brains and our consciousness, between the stuff in our skulls and the essence in our minds? Featuring interviews with Ned Block, Dean Zimmerman, Colin McGinn, Charles Tart, and Henry Stapp....
Nov 27, 2024•27 min•Ep. 171
Make a donation of any amount to help us continue exploring the world's deepest questions with new and exciting thinkers. Astrobiologist and theoretical physicist Sara Imari Walker shares an intriguing new scientific theory that explains what life is and how it emerges. What is life? This is among the most difficult open problems in science, right up there with the nature of consciousness and the existence of matter. All the definitions we have fall short. None help us understand how life origin...
Nov 20, 2024•1 hr 23 min•Ep. 170
Support Closer To Truth and help us continue exploring the world's deepest questions with a donation of any amount. Renowned biologist Richard Dawkins discusses his views on topics including philosophy of biology, evolution, atheism and religion, extraterrestrial life, and human and animal culture. Richard Dawkins is a British evolutionary biologist, zoologist, science communicator, and author. He is one of the world’s most eminent writers and thinkers of our time, and a major contributor to the...
Nov 13, 2024•1 hr 7 min•Ep. 167
Make a donation of any amount to help support Closer To Truth: https://shorturl.at/OnyRq Whether extra-terrestrial intelligences exist has profound implications for human religion. We are either alone or not alone in the universe, but no matter the ultimate answer, theists and atheists will each mold that answer, alone or not alone, to fit their opposing worldviews. Featuring interviews with Steven Dick, Russell Stannard, Paul Davies, Robin Collins, and Douglas Vakoch. Closer to Truth presents t...
Nov 06, 2024•27 min•Ep. 169
Donate to Closer To Truth and help us keep our content free and without paywalls: https://shorturl.at/OnyRq Harvard and MIT's influential humanist chaplain Greg Epstein discusses his new book, Tech Agnostic: How Technology Became the World's Most Powerful Religion, and Why It Desperately Needs a Reformation . In our tumultuous era of religious extremism and rampant capitalism, Tech Agnostic offers a new path forward, where we maintain enough critical distance to remember that all that glitters i...
Oct 30, 2024•1 hr 5 min•Ep. 163
Support Closer To Truth with a donation of any amount to help us continue exploring the world's deepest questions. The nature of scientific Breakthroughs is one approach; the process of scientific Breakthroughs is quite another. When physicists reflect on how they do physics, when physicists review the history of physics, what are the ways in which Breakthroughs occur? Featuring interviews with Robbert Dijkgraaf, Gregory Chaitin, Edward Witten, and Karen Uhlenbeck. Register for free for subscrib...
Oct 23, 2024•27 min•Ep. 166
Make a donation to Closer To Truth to help us continue exploring the world's deepest questions without the need for paid subscriptions or paywalls. Are there revolutionary discoveries yet to be made? Radical revelations and shocking secrets? Does physical reality go beyond what we know today? Far beyond? Featuring interviews with Lawrence Krauss, Michio Kaku, Rupert Sheldrake, Paul Davies, and David Chalmers.
Oct 16, 2024•27 min•Ep. 165
Race is obviously real—historically, socially, politically. What about biologically? We explore biological facts about race and their implications. What’s the relationship between color and race? Are human races subspecies of homo sapiens? Is race a “natural kind?” How to form a coherent theory of race? Featuring interviews with Quayshawn Spencer, Joshua Swamidass, Massimo Pigliucci, and Alexander Rosenberg. Explore all the videos in our new pillar of Life: https://closertotruth.com/topic/life/...
Oct 09, 2024•27 min•Ep. 164
To get subscriber-only exclusives, register for free at CTT.com today. How much can science discover? Are there boundaries to science? Are there truths—real truths—beyond science? Featuring interviews with Frank Wilczek, J. Gott, Stephen Wolfram, Bas van Fraassen, and Owen Gingerich.
Oct 02, 2024•27 min•Ep. 158
Donate to Closer To Truth to help us continue exploring the world's deepest questions. When we speak about the future of the universe, we mean when the sun burns out, when galaxies collide, when everything flies apart and ultimately evaporates. Do the untold billions and trillions of years from now make it irrelevant for us today? No. The far far future of the universe conveys meaning now. Featuring interviews with Martin Rees, Wendy Freedman, Abraham Loeb, Alexander Vilenkin, and Robert Russell...
Sep 25, 2024•27 min•Ep. 162
How do conscious states relate to the rest of reality? Do all animals deserve moral consideration? Can AI be conscious? Philosopher David Papineau discusses the nature of consciousness, the mind-body problem, physicalism versus materialism, and much more. Donate to Closer To Truth to help us keep our content free and without paywalls: https://shorturl.at/OnyRq David Papineau is a British academic philosopher, born in Como, Italy. He works as Professor of Philosophy of Science at King's College L...
Sep 18, 2024•1 hr 15 min•Ep. 161
Make a tax-deductible donation to Closer To Truth and help us continue exploring life's deepest questions. Nothing means anything without our brains: not science, not theology, not politics, not love. Everything we know and do-all the sense of human thought, all the feelings of human emotion-all are the product of the brains in our heads. Featuring interviews with Rodolfo Llinas, John Mazziotta, Joseph LeDoux, Mike Merzenich, and Eran Zaidel....
Sep 11, 2024•28 min•Ep. 160
Get free access to Closer to Truth's library of more than 5,000 videos. Some say that consciousness is the only true reality—that everything else, including the universe, comes from consciousness. If so, how would consciousness relate to the world? Featuring interviews with Deepak Chopra, Donald Hoffman, Neil Theise, Fred Alan Wolf, Frank J. Tipler, and Charles T. Tart.
Aug 28, 2024•27 min•Ep. 157
Register for a free Closer To Truth membership to receive special exclusives, event discounts, and more. We know the age of the universe, how stars were born, how galaxies were formed. But does the cosmos have meaning? Not make-believe, feel-good meaning. But real meaning. Featuring interviews with Saul Perlmutter, Roger Penrose, Paul Steinhardt, Martin Rees, and Frank Drake. Show your support for the show with a tax-deductible donation of any amount to help keep our content free from paywalls: ...
Aug 21, 2024•27 min•Ep. 156
Are you a Closer To Truth member? Register for a free account to get special exclusives, event discounts, and more. How can I assess whether God exists without exploring what kind of God is supposed to exist? So I examine God's essence and nature. Featuring interviews with John Polkinghorne, John Behr, John Hick, J.L. Schellenberg, and Timothy O'Connor. Show your support for the show with a tax-deductible donation of any amount to help keep our content free from paywalls: https://shorturl.at/SOe...
Aug 14, 2024•27 min•Ep. 155
Help us continue exploring the greatest questions of the universe with a tax-deductible donation to Closer To Truth: https://shorturl.at/OnyRq Astrophysicist Or Graur offers a brief and fascinating overview of the history, physics, and astrophysical uses of galaxies. Starting with the history of the last two thousand years of galaxy studies, Graur discusses the types of galaxies we observe and the physics that drive them; the myths and physical structure of the Milky Way; how galaxies were used ...
Aug 07, 2024•1 hr 4 min•Ep. 159
Register for a free CTT membership today to get exclusive benefits. Do I disappear at death? My body? Sure, it's gone. But my awareness? Does my consciousness end forever? What could be more frightening! Is there any hope here? Featuring interviews with Charles Tart, Richard Swinburne, Robert Park, James Tabor, and Keith Ward.
Jul 31, 2024•27 min•Ep. 154
What constitutes good science? Are there limits to science? If so, what are the boundaries? How deep can science dig into the foundations of the world? Featuring interviews with Steven Weinberg, Paul Davies, Colin Blakemore, and Scott Aaronson. Keep Closer To Truth's content free from paywalls! Make a tax-deductible donation of any amount today.
Jul 24, 2024•27 min•Ep. 153
Help us continue exploring the greatest questions of the universe with a tax-deductible donation to Closer To Truth. Scientists say my consciousness is just my brain. Theologians believe my consciousness reflects the God who created it. Mystics hold my consciousness is a drop in the ocean of cosmic consciousness. Who's right? Featuring interviews with Marvin Minsky, Marilyn Schlitz, J. van Huyssteen, Colin McGinn, and Roger Walsh. Closer to Truth presents the world’s greatest thinkers exploring ...
Jul 17, 2024•27 min•Ep. 152
Distinguished Philosopher Ned Block discusses perception, cognition, and consciousness as well as his latest book, The Border Between Seeing and Thinking , a model for bringing philosophy and the mind sciences into dialogue. Ned Block is an American philosopher working in philosophy of mind who has made important contributions to the understanding of consciousness and the philosophy of cognitive science. He has been professor of philosophy and psychology at New York University since 1996. Get su...
Jul 10, 2024•1 hr 18 min•Ep. 151
Help Closer To Truth keep our content free from paywalls with a tax-deductible donation . To inquire whether plants are “sentient” sounds like pseudoscience but has become real science. What does a plant know? Plants can react to their environments, but can plants sense or feel? Can they remember long-term? Can they adapt and learn? Are plants intelligent? And are they in any sense aware? Daniel Chamovitz is an American-born plant geneticist and the 7th President of Ben-Gurion University of the ...
Jul 03, 2024•48 min•Ep. 150
How do Buddhism, Chinese traditions, and Hinduism address the perennial problems of suffering, ethics, ritual and contemplative practices? Why is suffering so important in Buddhism? Why karma in Hinduism? Why systems of nature in Chinese traditions? Featuring interviews with Helen De Cruz Jay Garfield, Swami Sarvapriyananda, Swami Medhananda, Franklin Perkins, and Yang Xioa. Explore all CTT videos on Eastern Traditions ....
Jun 26, 2024•27 min•Ep. 149
Why are we here? Why is there a world, a cosmos, something-instead of absolutely nothing at all? Of all the big questions, this is the biggest. Why? What can we learn from "nothing"? Featuring interviews with John Leslie, Bede Rundle, Max Tegmark, Simon Blackburn, Quentin Smith, Victor Stenger, Peter van Inwagen, John Polkinghorne, Richard Swinburne, and Paul Davies. Are you a Closer To Truth member? Register for free today to get event discounts, early access to episodes, and more....
Jun 19, 2024•27 min•Ep. 148
Professor Brian Swimme discusses cosmogenesis, our cultural evolution, human consciousness, the Noosphere, and more. Brian Thomas Swimme is a professor at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco where he teaches evolutionary cosmology to graduate students in the philosophy, cosmology, and consciousness program. His upcoming book, The Story of the Noosphere , will be published in October. Register for members-only perks like early access to episodes with a free Closer To Tru...
Jun 12, 2024•42 min•Ep. 147
Two big ideas in biology: the evolution of species via mutation, fitness and natural selection; and the embryological development of individuals, from fertilized egg to whole organisms. How do these two big ideas—“evo-devo,” as it’s called—relate? What novel ideas emerge? Featuring interviews with Alex Rosenberg, Alan Love, Rachell Powell, and Terrence Deacon. You can watch all episodes in Season 23 on our website ....
Jun 05, 2024•27 min•Ep. 146
