The Veritas Forum

Meaning can be straightforward — a red octagon means “Stop!”, a hand wave with a smile means “Hello,” or adding two and two equals four. But meaning is often more complicated — a friend saying they’ll eat “whatever” for dinner or a significant other texting, “We need to talk.” In this episode, our speakers invite you into the messin...

The "group projects" of high school and college never fully go away. Even outside of the classroom, we still have to depend on people who may disappoint us, wade through tricky relational dynamics, and face goals that can’t be accomplished on our own. One of the speakers in today’s episode invites us to embrace these group projects. In fact, he suggests that they're what...

While the beginning of the year often inspires a hopefulness and expectancy for life, New Years isn’t all excitement and courage. For you personally, this year may be a continuation of past sickness, relational strife, or financial uncertainty. For listeners in the United States, 2024 is an election year — which may mean fractured friendships, families, and even communities of faith .....

This year has been another incredible one for The Veritas Forum podcast — all thanks to you, our amazing listeners. Thanks for making The Veritas Forum podcast be in the top 1% of all podcasts worldwide. In this episode, host Carley and special guest Seth share some top stats from the podcast in 2023 (300,000 listens!), discuss the recent changes to our format and release schedule, and count...

This time of year, fantasy is in the air — tales of a red-nosed reindeer, a jolly North Pole resident, a virgin birth of God incarnate, and more. In this episode, we explore the role of fantastic stories in our lives — and what believing in them can mean for us. You’ll hear from Madeleine L’Engle, the best-selling author of A Wrinkle in Time , in a Forum presentation at UC...

Sometimes belief can get you the job, secure the win, or help you make a difference. And, sometimes, belief doesn't seem to help at all. So, can we know which beliefs are worth believing in? And, when do we just need to take a leap of faith? In today’s episode, our speakers wrestle with these questions. Psychology professor Matthew Vess (Texas A&M) is in dialogue with Sean McDowell (...

In the US, more and more adults believe in “nothing in particular.” Recent surveys from Pew Research and the Associated Press suggest that around 30% of American adults are religiously unaffiliated, up 10% from a decade ago. Surveys like these are helpful for religious belief in the abstract . But, when it comes to the questions and doubts you hold about your faith — or lack ther...

Today, you may be wrestling with what "progress" means — whether it's in relation to your own journey, your family’s, or your community’s. What do you want? And how will you get there? In this episode, two Harvard professors explore these questions. In this 40-minute Forum excerpt, you’ll hear first from Tyler VanderWeele, the director of Harvard’s Human...

Much of our external circumstances differ from how they were 2,000 years ago — largely, to our benefit. However, our internal lives are surprisingly similar. Our desires for money, sex, and power — and the extreme lengths we’re willing to go to get them — remain. In this episode, you’ll hear from best-selling author and New Testament Scholar, N.T. Wright (Oxford). He...

What would your life be like if you knew everything? While it would be nice to remember everyone’s names and not have to study for tests, knowing everything has its drawbacks, too. You’d no longer feel surprised, curious, or filled with wonder. And, you'd miss out on getting to know people, asking hard and big questions, and the joy of learning new things. Our speaker today knows f...

Today’s guest has some unexpected news for you: being happy isn’t possible. Instead, he says, work towards being happy- er . You'll hear today from social scientist, happiness scholar, and best-selling author Arthur Brooks (Harvard). We talk with Arthur about this journey towards happier-ness and discuss his new book with Oprah Winfrey called Build the Life You Want: The Art and Sc...

Anthropologist Ernest Becker, in his Pulitzer Prize winning book, The Denial of Death , says that denying death is a necessary part of functioning in the world. It’s what inspires us to create culture, religion, and love, allowing us to avoid death and achieve immortality. But perhaps there is another way — besides denial — to relate to death. What should our relationship with de...

On November 8th, 2013, one of the most powerful tropical cyclones in recorded history hit the Philippines. Winds as high as 145 MPH tore through communities, causing $3B damage and killing over six thousand people. A few weeks later, the Forum in this episode took place. The world was still grappling with what happened, wondering what meaning could be found in such a tragedy — or if there wa...

Watching a few “how-to” videos on YouTube doesn’t make you an expert. To really know “how-to” change a tire, make puff pastry, or play the piano, you have to do it . Through experience, you discover new dimensions of your knowledge — from finding holes in your reasoning, to growing in flexibility and nuance, to even reassessing who you are and maybe even wh...

Do you remember your last biology class? Maybe it’s been decades since your junior year of high school. Or maybe you just went to lab last Thursday. But no matter what you do or don’t remember from biology, this episode is for you. Today, our speaker invites you to consider your biology — what you’re made of and why it matters. In this Forum excerpt from March 2023, you&rsq...

There’s a sort of spark to life — moments that stir up something inside of us that we can’t explain. Maybe you've experienced this while playing with your dog, or singing along at a concert, or seeing the Northern Lights. Perhaps these sparks are simply neurons firing, chemicals releasing, and muscles contracting. Or perhaps these sparks point to something like a soul, someth...

If new and improved A.I. tools can write your next essay, create Picasso-style art, or produce a believable deep-fake, it’s fair to ask: Are we manufacturing human brains? In this episode, we dive into the complexity of the human brain — and what this means for morality, meaning, and purpose. You’ll hear from Dr. Rosalind Picard (MIT Media Lab) and Dr. Shahram Khoshbin (Harvard M...

A.I. is no longer the stuff of science fiction. From Siri and Alexa to Chat GPT, our world is now inundated with artificial intelligence. One senses that it’s time to think more deeply about A.I. — its implications and its assumptions. In this episode, you'll hear an excerpt from a Forum event at Iowa State University from March 2023. Josh Swamidass (WashU), a medical doctor and co...

Do the stories we tell about ourselves have the power to change us? Our guest today says they can. To wrap up our season on meaning and purpose, we talk with author Daniel Nayeri. In his award-winning young adult novel, Everything Sad is Untrue , Daniel writes from the perspective of his twelve-year-old self, sharing the story of how he, his sister, and his mother immigrated from Iran to Edmond, O...

For the religious believer and the atheist alike, the problem of evil and suffering is troubling. If there is a God, why does he allow so much evil? And if there isn’t a God, how can we say that anything is evil? In this Forum event from 2014 at Harvard Medical School, Oxford mathematician John Lennox addresses one of the most challenging human questions: where is God in suffering?...

What matters isn't how much faith you have, but what you're putting your faith in. In this forum episode, University of San Diego mathematics professor, Satyan Devadoss, talks about how he trusts in Christianity for the same reasons that he trusts in quantum mechanics — not because he is has zero doubt about their veracity, but because he has faith that they are the best explanations...

Scholars, journalists, practitioners, and other thought leaders all agree — we’re facing a loneliness epidemic that’s as grave a threat to public health as obesity or substance abuse. Where do we go from here? In this Forum from 2019 at the University of Minnesota, psychiatrist Curt Thompson discusses human flourishing and community. When it comes to mental health, he says, don&r...

At every age, we ask questions of identity, community, and meaning — Who am I? Where do I belong? What is my purpose? But college students today are asking them with unique urgency and anxiety. In today's episode, we interview Kara Powell, a researcher at Fuller Youth Institute and co-author of 3 Big Questions that Change Every Teenager . We discuss how young people can better determine...

Want to be successful? You might need to get better at failing. In this episode, Charles Lee (Stanford) and Andy Van Schaack (Vanderbilt) explore what it takes to be failure-resilient. In this Forum from October 2022 at Vanderbilt, they discuss success, failure, and how we might find a resilient self-worth. Sign up for our newsletter here . Visit veritas.org to learn more about the mission of the...

With the average college student graduating with about $40,000 of student debt, you may be asking: Is college worth it? To answer that question, though, you have to ask another question first: What’s college for ? In this Forum from April 2022, you’ll hear two Harvard professors — Nancy Hill and Rakesh Khurana — discuss the purpose of college, and whether or not the classro...