Closer To Truth

Why do we need philosophy to understand evolution?

Robert Lawrence Kuhn explores the philosophy of evolutionary biology — not just how evolution works, but what its core concepts really mean. Through conversations with Elliott Sober, Richard Dawkins, Samir Okasha, John Dupré, Dennis Noble, and Michael Ruse, this episode examines natural selection, common ancestry, challenges to evolutionary theory, and the deeper implications of evolution for science, religion, and human identity.

Featuring interviews with Elliott Sober, Richard Dawkins, Samir Okasha, John Dupré, Dennis Noble, and Michael Ruse.

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What if the boundaries between you and every other conscious being are an illusion? Philosopher Arnold Zuboff makes the case for Universalism — the radical view that first-person immediacy, not any particular body or origin, is what makes an experience yours. And if that's right, then you exist wherever consciousness exists.

Arnold Zuboff is an American philosopher known for his work on personal identity, consciousness, and probability. He took his PhD at Princeton in 2009 under Thomas Nagel and spent most of his academic career at University College London.

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Philosopher Rebecca Newberger Goldstein introduces the idea of the “mattering instinct”—the deep human drive to see our lives as significant. In this conversation, she explores how our longing to matter may arise from the very material reality we often try to transcend.

Rebecca Newberger Goldstein is an award-winning philosopher, writer, and public intellectual. She is the author of 10 books of acclaimed fiction and non-fiction — including 36 Arguments for the Existence of God, Betraying Spinoza, and her landmark new work The Mattering Instinct: How Our Deepest Longing Drives Us and Divides Us. She holds a PhD in philosophy of science from Princeton University and has taught at Yale, Columbia, NYU, Dartmouth, and Harvard. She is a MacArthur Fellow and recipient of the 2014 National Humanities Medal, presented by President Obama in 2015.

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What might intelligence become—not just in centuries, but across millions or even billions of years?

Robert explores the deepest questions about the far future of intelligence in the universe. While we often think in terms of decades, extending our perspective to vast cosmic timescales challenges our assumptions about meaning, purpose, and what may ultimately be real. If the future holds clues, how far can we reasonably speculate, and what might we discover about intelligence itself?

Featuring interviews with Freeman Dyson, Lawrence Krauss, Raymond Kurzweil, Frank Tipler, Robin Collins, and Paul Davies.

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We may be creating something a million times smarter than all of humanity combined — and we have no plan for what happens next. AI safety pioneer Roman Yampolskiy lays out the risks, the arguments, and whether any solution exists.

Roman V. Yampolskiy is a tenured Associate Professor of Computer Science at the University of Louisville's Speed School of Engineering, where he founded and directs the Cyber Security Lab. Widely credited with coining the term "AI safety" in 2011, he is the author of AI: Unexplainable, Unpredictable, Uncontrollable.

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