Closer To Truth

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.

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.