Closer To Truth

Can 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.

Vlatko Vedral on Portals to a New Reality

Oxford physicist Vlatko Vedral seeks to shatter complacency in modern physics and show why five revolutionary experiments in quantum physics promise to open the gates separating us from a true understanding of the universe. They may sound very strange—one essentially involves entangling a human with Schrödinger’s cat—but they lay bare elements of our theories that are particularly problematic, such as the widespread belief that nothing truly exists unless it is observed.
 
Vedral's book, Portals to a New Reality: Five Experiments to Unlock the Future of Physics, is available for purchase: https://amzn.to/3LGqd77
 
Vlatko Vedral is a Serbian-born British physicist. He is best known for his contributions to quantum information theory, quantum mechanics, and quantum entanglement. He earned his Bachelor of Science and Doctor of Philosophy degrees from Imperial College London, where he graduated with a PhD.

Can Art Affect Belief Systems?

Many belief systems, religions in particular, use art for promoting their messages and furthering their missions. What makes art so effective in building and solidifying religious traditions? Can art attract and motivate converts? Is affecting or changing belief systems a proper use of art?
 
Featuring interviews with Justin Barrett, Marlene Altenmüller, Mario Gollwitzer, Jamal Elias, Robin Jensen, and Stacie Friend.

Roger Penrose on Cosmology, Quantum Mechanics, and Deep Reality

Throughout his career, Penrose has challenged conventional wisdom in physics, mathematics, and the philosophy of science. He has tackled some of the most profound questions of the universe: How do quantum mechanics and cosmology shape our understanding of reality? Can human consciousness be fully explained by physical laws, or does it transcend computation? This wide-ranging conversation spans Penrose’s most influential ideas, from black holes and the Big Bang to Gödel’s incompleteness theorems, quantum gravity, and the role of mathematics in uncovering ultimate reality.

Toward a Cognitive Science of Transcendence

Understanding the nature of transcendence requires careful experimentation and innovative ways to reveal essence and tease out aspects of aesthetics. What are key characteristics of transcendence? Tracking imperceptible eye movements, or brain blood flow during mental activity, reflect neural activity, which is always ready to spring surprise.
 
Featuring interviews with Elisabeth Schellekens, Helen De Cruz, Kutter Callaway, Joshua Wilt, Bahador Bahrami, and Oludamini Ogunnaike.

Dean Radin on The Science of Magic and The Fabric of Reality

There is an idea that shakes the core of our scientific principles: That our consciousness participates in creating our physical reality. It’s an idea that runs counter to the materialist worldview we’re all taught in school. But the outer edges of scientific inquiry bleed into what can only be called ‘magic.’ With a uniquely science-backed approach, parapsychologist Dean Radin explores the "magical" elements of consciousness including telepathy, spell casting, conjuring spirits, and more.
 
Radin's book, The Science of Magic: How the Mind Weaves the Fabric of Reality, is on sale now.
 
Dean Radin is an American parapsychologist. Following a bachelor and master's degree in electrical engineering and a PhD in educational psychology Radin worked at Bell Labs, as a researcher at Princeton University and the University of Edinburgh, and was a faculty member at University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

Is Mathematics Invented or Discovered?

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? Whenever mathematics is will help define reality itself.
 
Featuring interviews with Roger Penrose, Stephen Wolfram, Max Tegmark, David Gross, and George Lakoff.

Global Philosophy: Why Inner Life Practices?

Compare inner-life practices among diverse religions/traditions. Islamic prayer as the core of Muslim belief. Buddhist meditation calms the mind. Hindu meditation can be theistic-devotional or non-dual inner exploration. Embodied practices in Chinese traditions.
 
 
Featuring interviews with Helen De Cruz, Venerable Dr. Yifa, Swami Sarvapriyananda, Franklin Perkins, Aaron Segal, and Hamza Yusuf.

Blaise Agüera y Arcas: What is Intelligence in an AI Future?

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What is intelligence, and how is AI emergence a natural consequence of evolution? In his book "What Is Intelligence?" and in this conversation, Google's Blaise Agüera y Arcas takes up the idea that prediction is fundamental not only to intelligence and the brain but to life itself, and explores the wide-ranging implications. These include radical new perspectives on the computational properties of living systems, the evolutionary and social origins of intelligence, the relationship between models and reality, entropy and the nature of time, the meaning of free will, the problem of consciousness, and the ethics of machine intelligence.
 
Blaise Agüera y Arcas is a VP/Fellow at Google, where he is the CTO of Technology & Society, and the founder of Paradigms of Intelligence, an organization dedicated to fundamental AI research. He is the author of Who Are We Now?, and his research has included work on privacy-preserving machine learning, on-device AI, large language models, and human identity.

Global Philosophy: What is the Person?

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How do diverse religions/traditions treat the “person,” present status and afterlife future? Buddhism’s no self. Hinduism’s soul illuminating the mind. Prior lives in Eastern and African traditions. Body and soul, resurrection and judgment, in Abrahamic traditions.
 
Featuring interviews with Jay Garfield, Yang Xiao, Oludamini Ogunnaike, Imran Aijaz, Andrew Loke, and Swami Medhananda.