Closer To Truth

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