
Show overview
Closer To Truth has been publishing since 2015, and across the 11 years since has built a catalogue of 308 episodes. That works out to roughly 190 hours of audio in total. Releases follow a fortnightly cadence.
Episodes typically run twenty to thirty-five minutes — most land between 27 min and 36 min — and the run-time is fairly consistent across the catalogue. None of the episodes are flagged explicit by the publisher. It is catalogued as a EN-language Education show.
The show is actively publishing — the most recent episode landed 5 days ago, with 23 episodes already out so far this year. The busiest year was 2025, with 54 episodes published.
From the publisher
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.
Latest Episodes
View all 308 episodesWendy Freedman on the Hubble Constant, Standard Candles, and Cosmology
Michael Ruse on Evolution, Human Exceptionalism, and Philosophy of Biology
Thomas Hertog on the Origin of Time
David Chalmers on Virtual Worlds and the Problems of Philosophy
Anil Seth on a New Science of Consciousness
Why Philosophy of Evolutionary Biology?
Arnold Zuboff on Why You Are Every Conscious Being
Rebecca Newberger Goldstein on The Mattering Instinct
What Is The Far Future Of Intelligence
Roman Yampolskiy on How Dangerous Is Artificial Intelligence
Michael James on What the World Is According to Sri Ramana
Ep 240Current Arguments for God
Make a donation to Closer To Truth to help us continue exploring the world's deepest questions without the need for paywalls. I like arguments about God, whether based on science, philosophy or personal experience. I like to push and to be pushed, explore the possible existence of a Creator. I must also consider defeaters of God. Featuring interviews with Rebecca Goldstein, Ian Barbour, John Polkinghorne, Robin Collins, Anthony Grayling, Yujin Nagasawa, and Alvin Plantinga.
Ep 239Can Brain Alone Explain Consciousness?
Support the show with a tax-deductible donation of any amount so we can continue exploring the world's biggest questions without the need for paywalls. Can physical facts about the brain account for mental experiences of the mind? Has philosophy of mind made progress? We take a 15-year journey with John Searle and David Chalmers.
Ep 238Asking Ultimate Questions
Contribute what you can to help Closer To Truth continue exploring the world's deepest questions without the need for paywalls. We like pushing boundaries, trying to discern existence, searching the foundations of reality, knowing all that can be known. Overly ambitious? Sophomoric? We don't care. We do it anyway. Here are ultimate questions. Featuring interviews with Lawrence Krauss, John Leslie, Max Tegmark and Paul Davies
Ep 237Why a Landscape of Consciousness?
Contribute what you can to help Closer To Truth continue exploring the world's deepest questions without the need for paywalls. Explore diverse theories of consciousness, like materialism, dualism, panpsychism, idealism, and diverse ways of thinking about consciousness, like neuroscience, philosophy, wisdom traditions. Compare theories of consciousness on a ‘Landscape of Consciousness'.
Ep 236What Life Might Come After Death?
Make a donation to Closer To Truth to help us continue exploring the world's deepest questions without the need for paywall What kinds of afterlives do the world’s religions offer? Soul/spirit in heaven or hell, with or apart from God? Reincarnation with innumerable rebirths, seeking liberation and nirvana? Resurrection of the body, reuniting with a soul/spirit?
Ep 235Could Theories of Consciousness Affect Life After Death?
Life after death is a haunting and deeply personal longing. Can we explore life after death in relation to theories of consciousness, ranging from strict materialism to imaginative philosophy to ancient wisdom traditions?
Ep 234Raymond Tallis on the Mystery of Human Beings
Explicitness is one of the fundamental mysteries in which our lives are wrapped. Our capacity, as conscious subjects, to make things explicit, so that what-is presents itself as “that-it-is” or “that-it-is-the-case” is at the heart of the mystery of human being. Philosopher Raymond Tallis explores how explicitness connects with fundamental ontological, metaphysical, and epistemological questions. Tallis' latest book, Circling Round Explicitness: The Heart of the Mystery of Human Being, is available for purchase now: https://amzn.to/3MUX5Ke
Ep 233What do Theories of Consciousness Mean?
What causes consciousness, our inner felt experience, like the smell of garlic cooking in olive oil? Explore diverse theories from quantum consciousness to consciousness as fundamental reality. We seek the edges of consciousness.
Ep 232Can Art Harmonize Diverse Religions?
Almost all religions use art in their sacred spaces and many use art forms in their worship rituals. Certainly, there is powerful social cohesion at work. Can cross-religion communications in art, largely nonverbal, work to enhance similarities and mitigate differences among religions that, at least superficially, have significant differences? Can art be a much-needed unifier? Featuring interviews with Oludamini Ogunnaike, Jamal Elias, Kutter Callaway, Garrick Allen, and Anjan Chatterjee.