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 originates or the full range of possibilities for what life on other planets might look like.   Walker's latest book Life As No One Knows It: The Physics of Life's Emergence, is available for purchase now.   Sara Imari Walker is an astrobiologist and theoretical physicist interested in the origin of life and discovering alien life on other worlds. She is deputy director of the Beyond Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science and a professor in the School of Earth and Space Exploration at Arizona State University. She is also a fellow of the Berggruen Institute and a member of the external faculty at the Santa Fe Institute. She is the recipient of the Stanley L. Miller Early-Career Award for her research on the origin of life, and her research team at ASU is internationally regarded as being among the leading labs aiming to build a fundamental theory for understanding what life is.   Watch more Closer To Truth Chats here.

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 public understanding of the science of evolution. He is currently an emeritus fellow of New College, Oxford, and a Fellow of the Royal Society and of the Royal Society of Literature.

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 the world’s greatest thinkers exploring humanity’s deepest questions. Discover fundamental issues of existence. Engage new and diverse ways of thinking. Appreciate intense debates. Share your own opinions. Seek your own answers.

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 is not gold—nor is it God.   Greg M. Epstein serves as Humanist Chaplain at Harvard & MIT, where he advises students, faculty, and staff members on ethical and existential concerns from a humanist perspective. He was TechCrunch's first “ethicist in residence” and has been called “a symbol of the transition in how Americans relate to organized religion” (The Conversation). He is also the author of the New York Times-bestselling book Good Without God.

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 subscriber-only exclusives.

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.

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/

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.

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.

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 London and the City University of New York Graduate Center, and previously taught for several years at Cambridge University, where he was a fellow of Robinson College.   Papineau's latest book, The Metaphysics of Sensory Experience, is on sale now.

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.

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.

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: https://shorturl.at/SOeum

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/SOeum

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 to discover and study the mysterious phenomena of dark matter and dark energy; and how scientists think galaxies formed shortly after the Big Bang and evolved to their present forms.   Watch more Closer To Truth Chats: https://t.ly/jJI7e   Or Graur is Associate Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Portsmouth's Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation, as well as Research Associate at the American Museum of Natural History. He is the author of "Supernova" and his latest book, "Galaxies" from MIT Press.

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.

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.    

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 humanity’s deepest questions. Discover fundamental issues of existence. Engage new and diverse ways of thinking. Appreciate intense debates. Share your own opinions. Seek your own answers.

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 subscriber-only benefits with a free Closer To Truth account today.

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 Negev in Beer-Sheva, Israel.

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.

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.

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 Truth account.

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.   Get subscriber-only benefits like early access to episodes by registering for a free membership at closertotruth.com.

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.   Get free subscriber-only exclusives with a Closer To Truth membership: https://closertotruth.com/register/

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.   Register for free on our website to receive subscriber-only exclusives: https://closertotruth.com/register/

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.   For subscriber-only benefits, register for a free membership at closertotruth.com.

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.   For subscriber-only benefits like discounts and bonus content, register for a free membership at closertotruth.com.

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.   For free subscriber-only exclusives, register today at closertotruth.com.

Roger Penrose—mathematician, physicist, philosopher—was awarded the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics. We speak with Roger about our favorite, fundamental questions. What things exist? What is math and why does it work? What’s fundamental in the cosmos?   All episodes of Season 22 are available now on our website: https://bit.ly/3QwMzIA   For subscriber-only exclusives, register for free today: https://closertotruth.com/register/

Mathematics describes the real world of atoms and acorns, stars and stairs, with remarkable precision. So is mathematics invented by humans-like chisels and hammers and pieces of music? Or is mathematics discovered-always out there, somewhere, like mysterious islands waiting to be found?   Featuring interviews with Roger Penrose, Mark Balaguer, Gregory Chaitin, Stephen Wolfram, and Frank Wilczek.   Register for free to get subscriber-only exclusives like early access to episodes and more.

Consider three powers of probability: refining data, assessing theories, probing ultimate reality. Watch how these work in cosmology: confidence in precise measurements; assessing competing models; revealing how quantum fluctuations became galactic structures.   Featuring interviews with Ivan Corwin, Licia Verde, Sabine Hossenfelder, David Wallace, and Aaron Clauset.   For access to subscriber-only exclusives, register for a free membership at closertotruth.com.

Robert Lawrence Kuhn speaks with Martin Rees—Astronomer Royal and co-founder of Centre for the Study of Existential Risk—about the James Webb Space Telescope, black holes, existential risk, and more.   Martin Rees is an astrophysicist and cosmologist, and the UK's Astronomer Royal. He is based at the University of Cambridge where he has been Professor of Astronomy and Director of the Institute of Astronomy. Martin is a Fellow, and was the former Master, of Trinity College, Cambridge.   For subscriber-only exclusives, register for free today: https://t.ly/Bk9Vd

What does brain damage do to people? By observing strange behaviors in brain-impaired patients, scientists discern how normal brains work. For example, what happens to “the self”?   Featuring interviews with Barry Smith, Donald Hoffman, Susan Greenfield, and Christopher Evans.   For subscriber-only exclusives, register for a free membership today: https://rb.gy/5japji

Why the astonishing claim that Jesus is God? Not like God. Not representing God. But literally God? One need not be a Christian, or even a theist, to appreciate the arguments.   Featuring interviews with Sarah Coakley, N.T. Wright, Oliver Crisp, Eleonore Stump, C. Stephen Evans, and Ian McFarland.   For subscriber-only exclusives, register for a free membership at closertotruth.com.

Freeman Dyson, visionary extraordinaire, was one of the most inventive thinkers of our age: discovering new mathematics, challenging fundamental physics, colonizing space, searching for signatures of alien civilizations, imagining the far future of intelligence.   For subscriber-only exclusives, register for a free membership today: www.closertotruth.com.