Closer To Truth

What is “nothing”?

What does it mean for nothing to exist—or for nothing to have ever existed? In this episode, Robert Lawrence Kuhn explores one of philosophy’s deepest questions: Why is there something rather than nothing? Through conversations with philosophers and physicists, the discussion examines the nature of nothingness, whether absolute nothing is possible, and how different philosophical and scientific perspectives attempt to explain the existence of the universe.

Featuring Richard Swinburne, Simon Blackburn, Robert Spitzer, Peter van Inwagen, Steven Weinberg, John Leslie, Timothy O’Connor, Victor Stenger, John Hawthorne, and Peter Forrest.

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How do natural laws shape human societies?

In this conversation, Saleem Ali discusses Earthly Order: How Natural Laws Define Human Life, exploring connections between natural systems, social organization, economics, and political order. Ali examines how concepts such as order, chaos, emergence, hierarchy, and complexity operate across scales—from physics and ecology to governance and global sustainability.

Saleem H. Ali is the Blue and Gold Distinguished Professor of Energy and the Environment at the University of Delaware. His research focuses on environmental conflicts, sustainability, natural resources, and ecological cooperation in international relations.

 

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What can Galileo still teach us about science, truth, and discovery?

In this conversation, Mario Livio discusses Galileo’s scientific legacy, the Hubble Space Telescope, science denial, exoplanets, cosmology, and the future of life in the universe. Drawing from his book Galileo: And the Science Deniers, Livio explores Galileo’s role in the development of the scientific method and examines how scientific understanding evolves through observation, experimentation, and self-correction.

Mario Livio is an astrophysicist and author who worked for 24 years at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which operates the Hubble Space Telescope.

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Do we really have free will?

In this conversation, Gregg Caruso explores the philosophy of free will, moral responsibility, determinism, compatibilism, libertarian free will, and free will skepticism. Discussing themes from Just Deserts: Debating Free Will, co-authored with Daniel Dennett, Caruso examines whether human beings possess the kind of control required for moral responsibility and how neuroscience and philosophy shape the debate.

Gregg D. Caruso is Professor of Philosophy at SUNY Corning and Honorary Professor of Philosophy at Macquarie University.

 

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How do we measure the expansion of the universe?

In this conversation, Wendy Freedman discusses the Hubble constant, standard candles, redshift, and the ongoing effort to determine the age, size, and evolution of the universe. Exploring Cepheid variables, supernovae, cosmic expansion, and the tension between competing cosmological measurements, Freedman explains how increasingly precise observations are reshaping modern cosmology.

Wendy Freedman is an astronomer known for her measurements of the Hubble constant and for her leadership of the Carnegie Observatories in Pasadena, California, and Las Campanas, Chile.

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