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Closer To Truth presents the world’s greatest thinkers exploring humanity’s deepest questions in Cosmos, Life, Consciousness, and Meaning. Engage new and diverse ways of thinking. Appreciate intense debates. Seek your own answers.
227 Episodes
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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.
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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.
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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.
How do Buddhism, Chinese traditions and Hinduism address the essence
of human sentience? What is consciousness? What is the self? What is
qi? Do humans have souls or spirits? Are humans dualistic beings? Or
pure souls/spirits?
Featuring interviews with Swami Sarvapriyananda, Swami Medhananda, Jay Garfield, and Franklin Perkins.
Get early access to watch Season 24 by registering for a free membership on our website.
Why is matter solid? Why is there antimatter? Where do the sizes of atoms come from? Theoretical physicist and philosopher Sean Carroll cuts to the bare mathematical essence of our most profound theories, explaining every step in his new book, Quanta and Fields: The Biggest Ideas in the Universe. In this interview, Carroll uses the basics of quantum mechanics itself to explain measurement and entanglement before exploring how the world is really made of fields.
Carroll's book, Quanta and Fields, is available for purchase now.
Sean Carroll is Homewood Professor of Natural Philosophy at Johns Hopkins University, and Fractal Faculty at the Santa Fe Institute. He is host of the Mindscape podcast, and author of several bestselling books. He has been awarded prizes and fellowships by the National Science Foundation, NASA, the American Institute of Physics, the Royal Society of London, and many others.
What is the world fundamentally, deeply made of? What is life? We are always searching for Scientific Breakthroughs: those leaps in knowledge and jumps in understanding that change how we see the world. Now, we focus on Biology. What are Scientific Breakthroughs in Biology?
Featuring interviews with Geoffrey West, Stuart Kauffman, V.S. Ramachandran, Antonio Damasio, and Michio Kaku.
Watch all of Season 21 on the Closer To Truth website.
In honor of NASA's Black Hole Week (May 6-10, 2024), we're re-running our episode from Season 2 of Closer To Truth.
They warp space and time, squeeze matter to a vanishing point, and trap light so that it cannot escape. How can black holes perform such stupendous tricks, and what can we learn from them?
Featuring interviews with Robert Laughlin, Peter Atkins, Francisco Ayala, and Philip Clayton.
Professor Anna Abraham discusses her book, The Creative Brain: Myths and Truths, and provides a science-based understanding of the creative mind that dispels the pervasive myths we hold about the human brain—but also uncovers the truth at their cores. Drawing on cognitive psychology and neuroscience, Abraham offers an examination of human creativity that reveals the true complexity underlying our conventional beliefs about the brain.
Abraham's book, The Creative Brain, is available for purchase now.
Anna Abraham is the E. Paul Torrance Professor and Director of the Torrance Center for Creativity and Talent Development at the University of Georgia. She is the author of "The Neuroscience of Creativity" and the editor of the multidisciplinary volume "The Cambridge Handbook of the Imagination".
Watch all CTT Chats here: https://t.ly/jJI7e
Creative thinker and media visionary Robert Wright discusses a fascinating variety of topics including social media's effect on society, sexual psychology and monogamy, the concept of non-zero, biological and cultural evolution, and more.
Robert Wright is an author and journalist known for his wide-ranging interests in philosophy, society, science (especially evolutionary psychology), history, politics, international relations, and religion. He has published five books and is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of Bloggingheads.tv, the founder and editor-in-chief of Meaningoflife.tv, the founder and chief correspondent of the Nonzero Newsletter and Nonzero Podcast, and the creator of the Nonzero Foundation.
Watch Closer To Truth Chats here.
How do Buddhism, Chinese traditions, Hinduism and Shintoism address
causality, consciousness, energies, God, ultimate reality? What is non-
dualism? How is the world interconnected? How are metaphysics and
morality related?
Featuring interviews with Venerable Dr. Yifa, Jay Garfield, Yujin Nagasawa, Swami Sarvapriyananda, Swami Medhananda, Franklin Perkins, and Helen De Cruz.
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Philosopher Nick Bostrom discusses his new book, Deep Utopia: Life and Meaning in a Solved World, where he asks: In the face of incredible technological advances, what is the point of human existence? Will AI make our life and labor obsolete? In a "solved world," where would we find meaning and purpose?
Bostrom's book, Deep Utopia, is available for purchase now.
Nick Bostrom is a Professor at Oxford University, where he is the founding director of the Future of Humanity Institute. He is the world's most cited philosopher aged 50 or under.
How do animals and smart machines measure up to human intelligence? Can fish feel pain and do dogs get jealous? Paul Thagard—a philosopher and cognitive scientist—explores hotly debated issues about animal and artificial intelligence to conclude that current bots and beasts fall far short of human capabilities.
Thagard's book, Bots and Beasts: What Makes Machines, Animals, and People Smart?, is available for purchase now.
Paul Thagard is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Waterloo. He is the author of many books and writes a popular blog for Psychology Today.
Philosopher Helen De Cruz discusses her new book, Wonderstruck: How Wonder and Awe Shape the Way We Think. De Cruz explores the transformative role of wonder and awe in an uncertain world and reveals how they are catalysts that can help us reclaim what makes life worth living and preserve the things we find wonderful and valuable in our lives.
Helen De Cruz is a Belgian philosopher and Danforth Chair in the Humanities at Saint Louis University who specializes in philosophy of religion, experimental philosophy, and philosophy of cognitive science.
Watch more Closer To Truth Chats here.
Get 20% off tickets to this year's HowtheLightGetsIn Hay Festival with code CTT24 at checkout.
Philosophy of biology has two sides: the process of science and the content of biology. We address key questions. What is the nature of life? How does evolution work and what are its challenges? How to consider race, sex/gender, cognition, culture, morality, healthcare, religion, alien life, and alien intelligences.
Featuring interviews with Michael Ruse, Elliot Sober, Elisabeth Lloyd, Peter Godfrey-Smith, John Dupré, Paul Griffiths, Richard Dawkins, Josh Swamidass, Quayshawn Nigel Julian Spencer, Denis Noble, Alexander Rosenberg, Samir Okasha, Massimo Pigliucci, Alan Love, and Philip Kitcher.
Theoretical physicist and astronomer Marcelo Glesier offers compelling argument for including the human perspective within science, and for how human experience makes science possible. He discusses his new book, The Blind Spot: Why Science Cannot Ignore Human Experience, which urges us to create a new scientific culture that views ourselves both as an expression of nature and as a source of nature's self-understanding, so that humanity can flourish in the new millennium.
The Blind Spot is available for purchase now: https://shorturl.at/ghu34
Marcelo Gleiser is the Appleton Professor of Natural Philosophy at Dartmouth, the 2019 Templeton Prize laureate, and author of seven widely translated books.
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Does consciousness require a radical explanation? What causes consciousness? Our inner sense of awareness is at once most mundane and most bizarre. No explanation makes sense. Here are three novel candidates for explaining consciousness.
Featuring interviews with Giulio Tononi, David Chalmers, Sean Carroll, Max Tegmark, David Wallace, Bernard Carr, and Paul Davies.
For early access to episodes in our new season, login or register for free today: https://closertotruth.com/playlist/season-23/
The astonishing effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences, especially in physics, borders on the mysterious—and there seems no rational explanation. Our bafflement stimulates novel thinking. How to assess the meaning of math’s “unreasonable effectiveness"?
Featuring interviews with Michio Kaku, David Wallace, Michael Hopkins, Stuart Kauffman, Jim Holt, and Paul Davies.
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Theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli discusses his book, White Holes, which traces the ongoing adventure of his own cutting-edge research and outlines some of the most astounding ideas in astrophysics and cosmology. Rovelli investigates whether all black holes could eventually turn into white holes, equally compact objects in which the arrow of time is reversed.
Carlo Rovelli is a physicist and writer. He is currently a Distinguished Visiting Research Chair at the Perimeter Institute and core member of the Rotman Institute of Philosophy of Western University.
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Innovative theologian and neuroscientist Ilia Delio discusses Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, technology and AI, the pursuit of extraterrestrial life, and the roles of evolution, quantum physics, and neuroscience in theology.
Dr. Ilia Delio is a Franciscan Sister and a theologian from the Catholic tradition specializing in science and religion. She holds the Josephine Connelly Endowed Chair in Theology at Villanova University and is the founder of the Center for Christogenesis. She has earned two PhDs in neuropharmacology and historical theology, and is the author of twenty books including The Hours of the Universe and The Primacy of Love.
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If life is a vast space of possibilities, then mathematics can engage with biology. Statistics analyze biological data, and mathematical models improve biological theories and reveal hidden commonalties. But could the mathematics of biology touch fundamental realities?
Featuring interviews with Leon Glass, Martin Nowak, Geoffrey West, Paul Davies, and Robbert Dijkgraaf.
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This podcast has nothing to do with good-faith truth-seeking and everything to do with performative bewilderment. It is to philosophy (in the Greek sense) what The History Channel is to the study of history.
Sounds like a bunch of people thoroughly confused about teleology and causality. They describe systems' functions as intended outcomes rather than as affordances en passant in evolution. Their dismissals of competing (more popular) theories sound flippant, not insightful. Maybe this is just what we should expect from a podcast that showcases mystifying conjectures rather than intriguing explanations.
That was spectacularly awful. I kept waiting for an intelligent statement, and then the episode ended.
wassup man I just went on your podcast and when I first saw the first question it made me think forward and that's crazy . I will be looking forward to thinking about more of your title questions. great job