Closer To Truth

Donate to Closer To Truth and help us keep our content free and without paywalls.   Dualism claims reality has two parts, a physical and a nonphysical (mental or spiritual), both equally real. Dualism is believed by most people but rejected by most philosophers and scientists.   Featuring interviews with Yujin Nagasawa, Richard Swinburne, Jaron Lanier, Bede Rundle, and Peter Forrest.   Watch the e...

Innovative economist Robin Hanson discusses the age of artificial intelligence, decision making and predictive markets, astrobiology, and AI consciousness.   Robin Hanson is an author, economist, and associate professor of economics at George Mason University and a former research associate at the Future of Humanity Institute of Oxford University. His bestselling book, The Elephant in the Brain ,...

Contribute what you can to help Closer To Truth continue exploring the world's deepest questions without the need for paywalls.   Terry Sejnowski offers a nuanced exploration of large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT and what their future holds. How should we go about understanding LLMs? Do these language models truly understand what they are saying? Or is it possible that what appears to be in...

Help Closer To Truth continue exploring the world's deepest questions without the need for paywalls with a tax-deductible donation of any amount/     To explore scientific Breakthroughs is to find theories or discoveries that challenge conventional wisdom, change patterns of thought, provide novel frameworks for research. What is the deep essence or general nature of scientific breakthroughs?    ...

Consider supporting Closer To Truth in our quest to explore life's deepest questions by making a donation of any amount .   We offer distinctive approaches to consciousness including cognitive science, phenomenology, and even the implications of aesthetics like fiction and films. We observe the richness of consciousness studies.v   This episode features interviews with Judith Wolfe, Stacie Friend,...

Donate to Closer To Truth and help us keep our content free and without paywalls.   What is extended mind? How does the mind work? It’s not obvious. Where does the mind stop and the rest of the world begin? What is extended mind? What is embodied mind?   Featuring interviews with David Chalmers, Andy Clark, and Raymond Tallis.

Donate to Closer To Truth and help us keep our content free and without paywalls.   We human beings sit roughly midway between atoms and galaxies, and both must be so perfectly structured for us to exist. It's called "fine tuning" and it's all so breathtakingly precise that it cries out for explanation. To some, fine-tuning leads to God. To others, there are non-supernatural explanations.   Featur...

In a follow-up to her seminal book, "Conscious", Annaka Harris' new audio original documentary offers beginners and experts alike a chance to unravel some of humankind’s most enduring puzzles. Where "Conscious"presents new questions about felt experience, Lights On seeks to find the answers.   Lights On: How Understanding Consciousness Helps Us Understand the Universe is available for purchase now...

Donate to Closer To Truth and help us keep our content free and without paywalls.   Free will seems the simplest of notions. Why then is free will so vexing to philosophers? Here's why: no one knows how free will works! Science, seemingly, permits no "gaps" in which free will can operate.   This episode features interviews with John Searle, Rodolfo Llinas, Eran Zaidel, Roger Walsh, Mike Merzenich,...

Help Closer To Truth continue exploring the world's biggest questions with a donation of any amount.   Astrophysicist and science visionary Janna Levin discusses all things cosmology: black holes, gravitational waves, the James Webb Space Telescope discoveries, early galaxies, and more.   Janna J. Levin is a theoretical cosmologist and a professor of physics and astronomy at Barnard College. She r...

Donate to Closer To Truth and help us keep our content free and without paywalls.   The universe is strange and wondrous—dauntingly vast, menacingly violent, infinitely complex. The origin of the universe is equally fascinating. There are explanations, but is there a final explanation?   Featuring interviews with Alan H. Guth, Andrei Linde, George F. Smoot III, Robert Spitzer, Jill Tarter, and Dou...

Two notable Closer To Truth contributors—and two good friends—discuss their intellectual and spiritual journeys in what seems to be opposite directions: one toward a form of Christianity and the other away from it.   Philip Goff is a British author, idealist philosopher, and professor at Durham University whose research focuses on philosophy of mind and consciousness. Specifically, it focuses on h...

Donate to Closer To Truth and help us keep our content free and without paywalls.   Cosmos and consciousness seem utterly different, the former encompassing the vast universe, the latter emerging from tiny brains. Yet consciousness founds most religions, and some cosmologists speak quietly, profoundly, about consciousness.   Featuring interviews with David Chalmers, Alexander Vilenkin, David Brin,...

Make a tax-deductible donation of any amount to help us continue exploring the world's deepest questions: https://closertotruth.com/donate/   Evolutionary biologist Nathan Lents argues that many of our supposedly modern ideas about gender and human sexuality are, in fact, deeply rooted in our animal ancestors. In this Chat, Lents discusses his new book, "The Sexual Evolution: How 500 Million Years...

Donate to Closer To Truth and help us keep our content free and without paywalls: https://shorturl.at/OnyRq   We like pushing boundaries, trying to discern existence, searching the foundations of reality, knowing all that can be known. Overly ambitious? Sophomoric? WeI don't care. We do it anyway. Here are ultimate questions.   Featuring interviews with Lawrence Krauss, John Leslie, Max Tegmark, a...

Donate to Closer To Truth and help us keep our content free and without paywalls.   What is quantum theory and why is it so strange? To know reality, one must confront the quantum. It is how our world works at the deepest level. What's the quantum? It is bizarre, defying all common sense.   Featuring interviews with Wojciech Zurek, Nima Arkani-Hamed, Lee Smolin, and Seth Lloyd.

Make a donation of any amount to help support Closer To Truth reach new audiences and continue exploring deep questions: https://shorturl.at/OnyRq   Robert Lawrence Kuhn sits down with philosopher Richard Swinburne to embark on a retrospective of his views and arguments over his illustrious career. In this episode, they'll explore the problem of evil, atonement, resurrection, and more.   Richard G...

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 consc...

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...

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...

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 wi...

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.

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...

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 th...

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....