Yearning for Understanding with Dr. Robert Lawrence Kuhn (Part 1 of 2)

What does it look like to live a life in pursuit of understanding? Our guest today exemplifies this quest across a wide range of domains. 

Dr. Robert Lawrence Kuhn is the creator, writer, host and executive producer of Closer To Truth, the long-running PBS/public television series and leading global resource on Cosmos (cosmology/physics, philosophy of science), Life (philosophy of biology), Mind (consciousness, brain/mind, philosophy of mind), and Meaning (theism/atheism/agnosticism, global philosophy of religion, critical thinking). 

Kuhn has written or edited over 30 books, including The Mystery of Existence: Why is there Anything At All? (with John Leslie); Closer To Truth: Challenging Current Belief; Closer To Truth: Science, Meaning and the Future; The Library of Investment Banking; How China’s Leaders Think (featuring President Xi Jinping); The Man Who Changed China: The Life and Legacy of Jiang Zemin (China’s best-selling book in 2005 and in December 2022); and "The Origin and Significance of Zero: An Interdisciplinary Perspective” (with Peter Gobets).

An international corporate strategist and investment banker, Dr. Kuhn is a recipient of the China Reform Friendship Medal and is a frequent commentator in the international media and Chinese media. 

Kuhn’s comprehensive review article on consciousness – “A Landscape of Consciousness: Toward a Taxonomy of Explanations and Implications” – is published in Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology (August 2024), and is considered the most comprehensive article written on the landscape of consciousness theories. 

Dr. Kuhn is chairman of The Kuhn Foundation. He has a BA in Human Biology (Johns Hopkins), PhD in Anatomy/Brain Research (UCLA), and SM (MBA) in Management (MIT).

In this first part of our conversation, we talk about:

• The beauty of understanding
• Robert's trajectory from neuroscience to business to China policy
• The drive to explore big existential questions
• The creation of Closer to Truth

To learn more about Robert, you can find him at:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robert-lawrence-kuhn-4b893221
Closer to Truth: https://closertotruth.com/
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@CloserToTruthTV/videos
Apple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/closer-to-truth/id411527781
A Landscape of Consciousness: Toward a taxonomy of explanations and implications: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38281544/
The Mystery of Existence: Why Is There Anything At All?: https://a.co/d/izIoY8I
Why anything? Why this? by Derek Parfit: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v20/n02/derek-parfit/why-anything-why-this

This episode is sponsored by:
John Templeton Foundation (https://www.templeton.org/)
Templeton Religion Trust (https://templetonreligiontrust.org/)

Transcript

(preview)

Robert: When I was literally 12 years old, I was away at sleepaway camp. One night, I had a thought that was so disturbing, so frightening to me, I've never been more scared in my life. I desperately tried to put it out of my mind, and I was successful. Over the decades, I remembered I had this fear, and I didn't remember what it was. I mean, I was so successful in eliminating it. Then before I started Closer to Truth, I finally remembered it was triggered perhaps. An article by Derek Parfit in the London Review of Books in 1999 or something, it was called Why anything? Why this? I mean, it was to a part magnificent about an approach to the question. I suddenly realized that was my fear as a child, that what if there were nothing?

(intro)

Brandon: I'm Brandon Vaidyanathan, and this is Beauty at Work — the podcast that seeks to expand our understanding of beauty, what it is, how it works, and why it matters for the work we do. This season of the podcast is sponsored by John Templeton Foundation and Templeton Religion Trust.

Why is there something rather than nothing? How did our universe begin? What is time? What is this consciousness that we experience, and where does it come from? What is God? Does God exist? Many of us can't help ask these existential questions. I think they're human universals. But too often, they are things that lead us to dismiss them as unimportant, or unanswerable, or things get in the way. My guest today has dedicated himself to pursuing these questions relentlessly. Dr. Robert Lawrence Kuhn is the creator, writer, host, and executive producer of Closer to Truth, the longest running TV series on science and philosophy. He has written or edited more than 30 books. An international corporate strategist and investment banker, Robert is also a recipient of the China Reformed Friendship Medal. Robert is a frequent commentator in the media and is also chairman of the Kuhn Foundation.

If you've not yet watched Robert's show, Closer to Truth, please go check it out on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. On his show, he asks all the questions. But I wanted to get a chance to get him to talk about his story and what led him on his quest. So in our conversation, we're going to talk about his journey from neuroscience, to investment banking, to becoming an expert in China, and then building his TV series Closer to Truth. We're also going to talk a good bit about his latest article, which provides a landscape of consciousness studies, that reviews more than 200 theories of consciousness. And finally, we're going to talk about the joy of what Robert calls "luxuriating" in the questions, prioritizing a deep understanding of the questions much more than being in a hurry to arrive at answers. Let's get started.

(interview)

Brandon: Hi, Robert. It's such a pleasure to have you on the show. It's really such an honor to get to chat with you, to put you on the other end of the microphone. Thanks for doing this.

Robert: Poetic justice to turn the tables on me. I love it actually.

Brandon: Good, good, good. Well, listen. You've been a hero of mine. For many years, I would say you're one of the core motivations for this podcast. Because I think I started watching your show five or six years ago. I especially spent a lot of time during the pandemic binge watching many of your

episodes. I just loved everything I was learning from you and from your interviews, from your interviewing style, as well as the content of those videos. I wanted to do something similar, and so that's one of the core motivations for this podcast. It's such an honor to be able to talk to you.

Robert: Well, great. That's great to hear. You know, when I've done Closer to Truth, it's really with no lofty ambition of changing the world or inspiring great podcasts and great work that you've done with Beauty at Work, but just because of a fascination with the deep issues of what I call raw existence and human sentience and just want to luxuriate in those kinds of issues and questions. I'm kind of amazed that other people are interested too.

Brandon: Yeah, well, I think there's certainly something there to explore as to what about these questions resonates with people around the world. I'd love to unpack that a little bit later. Let me start by asking you about your childhood. Because that's one of the things we're doing, at least on this season, asking all of our guests to begin with a memory of profound beauty from your childhood that lingers with you till today. What comes to your mind?

Robert: It's a great question. That's the one question you gave me ahead of time, so you gave me a little chance to think about it. Right away, there was not an immediate memory that came to mind. But very quickly, something did. I wouldn't have characterized it as beauty until I looked at your work, where you characterized, I think, three kinds of beauty in a simple way — a simple beauty of shape, sizes, sounds, a beauty of elegance and simplicity and of pure mathematics and physics and then the beauty of understanding. That triggered a very distinct memory I had, which underlines what Closer to Truth would decades later become. It began when I was probably 14, 15. I'm not sure if that counts as childhood in your definition.

Brandon: That works.

Robert: To me, it was a formative, a very formative time. I had these very vague ideas of what is it all about kinds of questions. I wanted to understand how I could best approach those questions other than a naive point of view. I initially gravitated to three areas: cosmology, or astronomy at that time perhaps — I had a telescope, which was a great gift I got when I was 13 from my Bat Mitzvah. I got a big telescope, and I loved that. So astronomy was very strong — and then theoretical physics which underlined a lot of that, and then philosophy. I didn't really know what philosophy was, but I sort of had a general idea. These are different areas. It's hard to do all of it well. I was really debating about which way I should go and how should I think and how should I prepare myself.

Then I remember distinctly a realization that with all these different aspects of human knowledge and ways we can perceive and understand things, which were very different in style and not just the content but the methodology of how you go about it. Certainly, philosophy and physics, you do very, very different kinds of things. But suddenly, I had this realization. This was the beauty or the awe, which may be another kind of beauty. It sort of overlaps with understanding. But it's not just understanding, but it's just a sense of awe.

Helen De Cruz called it wonderstruck in her book. The thought was, how do we know all of these things? The only way we know it is through our sentience, our brain. And so it was this sudden realization, that rather than focusing on all of these individual fields of science and philosophy which I was thinking about, that if I would understand the brain, that that would be a mechanism for kind of subsuming all of it. Because everything we perceive comes through our brain and through our senses, the manipulation of senses. We have false perceptions that we know. We have dreams, all different kinds of things. But everything comes through our brain. We think it's accurate and it's a veracity understanding of the world, but there are times when it's not. And so all of the things that we learn. And so from that time on, I wanted to understand the brain and its various things. And as you see in my background, that has lasted me throughout more than six decades, that I have focused on the brain as sort of an organizing principle to understand all the aspects of science and indeed philosophy and everything else. It's not saying it's the only way, but it was the way that led to my studies in graduate studies and PhD in neurophysiology. Then it was sort of a defining foundation of Closer to Truth, which is obviously a much longer story of life and all the exigencies of what we have to do supporting a family and all that. But when Closer to Truth would later emerge, the brain was a very core idea, a foundational principle that I used. So that was the beauty that I had, which really had not just a formative impression but really had an impact for my entire life.

Brandon: Wow. With these questions of philosophy, or religion, or existential questions more broadly discussed in your household when you were growing up, what nurtured your curiosity in these areas?

Robert: That's a good question. I have no idea. It was not an issue in my family. My parents were from a very, very poor background. Their parents were all immigrants from Eastern Europe and were living in what would be called ghettos or slums. Because they're very poor, their parents couldn't go to college because they had to work. When my father met my mother, he was earning $8 a week, and she was earning $12. That was a disparity between them. That's dollars per week. My father had been very intelligent and near top of his high school but couldn't afford to go to college. He worked. He happened to be a very good athlete. He was all-city baseball player, center fielder, at that time. And so the garment unions in New York — he was working in jewelry business or whatever burning $8 a week. The garment industry had a baseball team. They wanted him to play for their baseball team. So they said, "We'll give you a job in the garment industry. We'll pay you $15 a week, and you don't even have to go to work. All you have to do is play ball for us." I call it the Depression's version of an athletic scholarship. And he did, but he went to work and learned the business and later built a business. So he was successful as a businessman after coming back from World War II in starting a small business. But there was no real intellectual or curiosity thing. So children, they were both born here, but they were children of immigrants. Their great focus was achieving middle class and then above, working hard and really blending in and becoming true Americans. Because their parents were from the old country, they didn't really speak English well. And so my parents were very focused on being successful and being Americans. The existential questions that I had, I don't know, maybe some codons and genes from previous generations kind of emerged. My recessive genes finally came out or something. But I certainly give my parents credit for giving me the opportunity to think more broadly and not have to worry as they did about earning a living at an early age.

Brandon: You started out with a doctorate in brain sciences, and then you went on to business for a while. You've founded a company, and then you became a global expert on China. I think you were honored by the Chinese government. Could you talk a little bit about that trajectory?

Robert: Yeah, I call it the capriciousness of the world. It was certainly after I did my doctorate. I was young when I got married and had a family. I had three children by the time I was 24, and so I had responsibilities. My father's business actually, which was very successful for several decades, hit some severe troubles with the changing industrial structure, with foreign imports in the garment industry. And so there were severe problems that suddenly I had to deal with that I had never dealt with in my life. So there were the pressures of that. I always had an interest in achieving things and doing things. I had some talent in that area. Actually, at a critical time, I went to MIT and got an MBA. Equivalent of the MBA at that time was a Master of Science in Management at the Sloan School. At the same time, I was a teaching assistant in the Brain Science department. So it's kind of a transitional year for me. Coming out of that, I began to think more philosophically about the brain, as well as Sloan School in doing business. After that, I was able to do some consulting, advisory work in investment banking. Later, I, actually, with some partners, bought a company that was in the mergers and acquisition business and was at that point doing poorly. We're able to turn around the tide. I like to say, the best adage in investment banking is, it's better to be lucky than smart. But if you are a little bit smart, you'll probably get a little bit lucky. But I have no illusions that there was anything great on our part. But it was good timing, and we were able to do extremely well.

China came about completely out of the blue. I had a mentor, George Kozmetsky, a very wonderful individual who was co-founder of Teledyne with Henry Singleton. George was kind of a renegade academic. He had a PhD in operational research. He was a long-term dean and really almost the founder of the business school at the University of Texas at Austin. I had an introduction to him. For some reason, he sort of liked me, and we got to get to know each other. This is after I finished the MIT program, which was 15 years after my PhD, just to give you the chronology. So 15 years after my PhD, I was at MIT as a total brain science. I learned business and management. Then very soon after that, I met Dr. George Kozmetsky. We had a lot in common. He liked the idea that I was a scientist and was in business. The critical factor was, when he retired as Dean of the Business School in 1983, perhaps 1984, he recommended that I be his successor, which was shocking to me. I went through a nine-month search process, in which I finished in the top three. They told me I was the second, but there was really no person who won, legitimately won. He was the acting dean and very close to the administration. But the process got me very close to George Kozmetsky. And as a result of that, I got a booby prize or a second prize that I became a research fellow at his institute called the IC² Institute, Innovation and Creativity Institute, at the University of Texas. We began to do some things together, various seminars in creative and innovative management. During the 1980s, I had a series of books that I had written on creative and innovative management, he being the founder of that. But I then took the mantle and pursued it. And so we had three or four books in creative and innovative management based on conferences.

We were doing things. Again, China has nothing to do with any of this. But one day, he said, in addition to the five or six other projects we're working on, he said, "By the way, I have a friend who happens to be the minister of science of China." At that time, he was the chairman of the State Science and Technology Commission, which is, in China commission is higher than a ministry. Kind of a half step. He said they're interested. This was in the late 1980s. He said reform has started, which started in 1978 with Deng Xiaoping to Mao Zedong's death in 1976. But Deng Xiaoping took over soon thereafter in 1978. He had a very famous speech which sort of kicked off formally reform and opening up. So during the '80s, reform and opening up started in the rural areas and industrial areas. There were problems with inflation, all sorts of things. But things were moving along. But the one area that had zero reform at all was the science industry or the science establishment. Zero. What that meant was that everything I'm going to do with science was in one institution. So it was a university, a research lab, a manufacturing company, and then it was a hospital, a kindergarten, and a mortuary, and a cemetery, all in one organization. That was the state system. They wanted to break that up. George was very famous in terms of entrepreneurship. And so China said, do you know any people who are familiar with business and investment bankers who have a science background? We don't want lawyers. We don't even understand what lawyers are, so we don't want investment bankers who are lawyers. But we want somebody who knows something about science. So George asked me to come with him to went to a trip to China. I said sure. I mean, it’d be great.

When I got there was in January of 1989. Just to give you the politics, June of 1989 would lead to Tiananmen Square. That was triggered very particularly in March when a former leader who was a quasi-reform leader died. That began to trigger the Tiananmen Square. But in January, there was this building up of political excitement among the students. When I was there, I got caught up in it. I met some. Everybody I met was from the science industry, so they all had PhDs and from the academic. And so I related to these people. Then I was fascinated by it and really liked it. We had our conference. I gave my speech on entrepreneurship and science and business and all of that and then went back and other things. Then in June, Tiananmen Square happened. And I, like everyone else, said I will never have anything to do with China. They could do this to their own people, you know, just horrendous. It wasn't important to me anyway, so I just forgot about it.

Then 15 months later, George and I were doing another conference. It was on creative and innovative management at UCLA. Creative and innovative management was in large bureaucracies. How do you engender creativity in a bureaucracy? We were talking about huge enterprises like Bell Labs at the time or the National Laboratories. How do you motivate people to be very creative in big, bureaucratic environments? I had the idea that I had met some people in China in the science ministry. And maybe we should invite one because they were a big bureaucracy, and it's another kind of system that we could learn from. And so we did. We invited a very fine, [unidentified] is his name. He later became science counselor at the United Nations for China. He was right below a vice minister. So it was like we'd call a director general level. He came over, and we paid his way at that point. And as soon as he came there — remember, this was 15 months after Tiananmen Square. As soon as he came there, I and three or four other academics or whatever gathered around him and started blaming him for Tiananmen Square. The reason that we did, which was very rude — I mean, he was coming over. We invited him, and now we're criticizing him for what happened in Tiananmen Square 15 months prior. The reason is he was the only person having anything to do with the Chinese government that any of us had any association with. And so he was the person we wanted to take out our frustration and anger on.

Then he made a very short statement that changed my life. He said, and I can still remember it in my mind's eye exactly where I was standing. He was standing next to me. He said, "You're right. China is in serious problem." This was the summer of 1990 or early fall. "You're right. China is going backwards. The conservatives have taken over, and reform has been reversed. It's terrible." He said, "But the problem, the real problem is more your fault pointing to me than my fault pointing to himself." I said, that's ridiculous. I mean, we must have a translation problem because I'm not even there. What does that mean? He said no. There's no translation problem. The fact that you're not there and the thousands of others like you are not there are allowing the conservators to take over and reverse reform so that people like me, meaning him, who would foster reform are being more and more sidelined. And it was just like Paul on the road to Damascus. It was an aha phenomena. I said, I'm sorry. You're right, I'll come back.

Then two or three months later, I did go back. That leads to a very long story of a very serious involvement with China, which I do take seriously. If my life in the last several decades was like a barbell, those are the two ends of the barbell. One is closer to truth, consciousness, the brain, mind cosmology, philosophy of religion, all the things we do on Closer to Truth and China. But I always say that there is a difference. Even though at times I've been more, in the public eye, on the China side and I'm closer to truth because the audience of Closer to Truth is limited, I'm happy you're one of the audiences. I think that increases it. But in general, the larger publicity has been on China. But I always say that China is a grafted-on passion. It's a passion, but it's a grafted-on. It was not of my own doing. Whereas brain, mind, cosmology, philosophy, religion, those are intrinsic life-long passions that are very deeply structured. That is what I'm about. The capriciousness of the world or whatever we want to say has brought about this new passion, which is indeed a passion but it's of a different character.

Brandon: So how did you start Closer to Truth? How did that desire come about? I mean, a TV show is a totally different animal from running a business. How did that become about?

Robert: Yeah, I mean, again, it's a story that if I knew at the beginning what I would take, I would be so petrified of all the steps and all the things we have to do that you'd be frozen in place. It's hard to even describe the effort that goes into one show. Closer to Truth has, in essence, two main products. One are video interviews which are short segments on very specific ideas within these big categories. There have been historically three big categories, what we call COSMOS, which is cosmology primarily, fundamental physics, foundations of quantum physics, mathematics, philosophy of mathematics, philosophy of science, science related to all of that in the cosmos category. Then we have what we've called consciousness in the past, which is mind, mind-brain, not just the mind-body problem which I primarily focus on in terms of the fundamental nature of consciousness but related questions. Free will, personal identity, alien intelligences, even some parapsychology with a very critical eye but nonetheless an open mind, and all of the related mind-body problems. There are actually many of them. Then the third category, we originally had it as philosophy of religion or God. We changed it to meaning to make it broader. But it is a non-sectarian approach to non-physical realities if such exists from a deep philosophical and a bias towards analytic philosophy, which I have had very strongly.

Because in addition to brain, mind and the nature of consciousness as a lifelong yearning or passion, I've had another one which also has engendered Closer to Truth, apparel one, on the nature of existence. You know, why is there something rather than nothing were called mystery of existence? Why is there anything at all? This has been a lifelong passion. Because just to circle around to your first question again, a second event at an early age — maybe this is even more emblematic of the point — was when I was literally 12 years old, I was away at sleepaway camp. One night, I had a thought that was so disturbing, so frightening to me. I've never been more scared in my life. I desperately tried to put it out of my mind, and I was successful. Over the decades, I remembered I had this fear, and I didn't remember what it was. I mean, I was so successful in eliminating it. Then before I start the Closer to Truth, I finally remembered it was triggered perhaps. An article by Derek Parfit in the London Review of Books in 1999 or something, it was called Why anything? Why this? I mean, it was too part of the magnificent about an approach to the question. I suddenly realized that was my fear as a child, that what if there were nothing? Because it seemed so difficult to explain why all these some things that we have would seem the simplest thing, that there would be nothing, that you don't have to explain nothing. There are a lot of philosophical arguments that disagree with this. But I had the perception, you don't have to explain nothing. But anything that you have, you have to explain. And so that nothing became more simplistic and more parsimonious than any other possibility, yet it doesn't obtain. I mean, we don't have nothing. We have some things. And so that became another foundation for Closer to Truth.

So I gotten away from real focus on brain, mind almost immediately after my PhD. Obviously, all the other things I was doing in business: running an M&A company, getting involved in China and writing many, many books in finance, in corporate strategy, creative management and then China. But I had this yearning that the real part of me was not being achieved. There was no expression. I followed the science, tracking all the magazines, and I didn't have any sense of when I could do Closer to Truth. None. So during the 1980s, while I was involved with business and all complexities of life, I had this yearning that I wanted to explore these questions. I had this idea to create something when truth may change. Look at different areas of human knowledge and look at inflection points when there's a challenge to the current belief. Even if that challenge just turns out to be wrong, if it's a rational, intelligent challenge, then that would be sort of a nodal point for change. And so I had this idea. I wrote to a small New York television station. They got very, very interested at that point. I started to talk together about how we might try something like that on a local New York station. But then I had financial issues, as I told you, with my father's business at that time. Then I had the opportunity with partners to buy a division of Chemical Bank, which was an M&A for smaller businesses. It was losing a lot of money. That's how we're able to buy it. But we had to turn it around. That was starting or focused in 1990, 1991. We were able to buy it. It took four or five years. We were able to turn around in two years. But it sort of went along until the middle '90s and then started to do well and then extremely well. As I said, it was good timing. During that period of time, I suddenly realized — because I was so engaged with all of these different things, and China was kind of exploding in terms of calls on my time — I had envisioned that I didn't know it was going to be called Closer to Truth. But I had for a long period of time assumed that I would do Closer to Truth, what would become Closer to Truth — I didn't have that name yet — when I retired. In other words, if I sold my business and had financial enough to keep me in a modest lifestyle, not a huge lifestyle but a very modest lifestyle, my children were taken care of and everything, I can focus on Closer to Truth, the questions that I wanted answer.

By the middle '90s, I realized that I was never going to retire. So I had a choice. I had a choice to either start Closer to Truth or start exploring my interests in the media or not. And if I didn't want to start it, even with all the pressures, then I would never do it for my life. I started to do it. It was very difficult. There's very different ways of thinking. It was a long process. It took from when I decided I want to try to do something to the first filming was like four years. It only came about because of one individual. I'll give my shout out. Mel Rogers of KOCE, small PBS station at that time in Southern California. Now it's become PBS SoCal. So it's a major station. So it gave me a chance, as known in that field. I was known in China field and finance and other things, but not in these areas. We had a tryout. We had a little effort. It seemed to be okay, and then we gave it a go. We filmed in 1999. We filmed it as a round table. I reached out to some people who I admired over the years, and I was shocked that many of them wanted to come. I'll give a couple of examples. Marvin Minsky, who is the founder of artificial intelligence in the Media Lab at MIT, one of the great individuals. He was on my A+ list. I sent to about five, and I didn't expect to even hear back from these people. Marvin answered in 10 minutes and said, "I'll be delighted to come." He then became — he was so important because he became a credibility confirmer for the early years of Closer to Truth. Even though his philosophy was very, I mean, he knew I was entertaining philosophy of religion and other kinds of things which he disparaged then and was a very big. But he and I, I mean, I loved his way of thinking. Even if I disagree with some of his conclusions, I really enjoyed it. He said he enjoyed the whole process, and he really gave us a lot of support. Then there were many people. We had a show in those early years in 1999 with Dave Chalmers and John Searle on the same panel. These are two individuals who are really considered in modern times foundational philosophers of mind-body problem, consciousness. That was a great treat. So everybody was, it was a real great opportunity.

Then I was still engaged in stuff. So we did a short. We did a season. We did 28 shows and 2 short seasons then. I had other issues I had to deal with. I couldn't do something until 2003. We did another 15 shows. But it was sort of still a round tail but a different format. Still struggling until 2006 when I met Peter Getzels, who is a very well-known science producer, worked with the BBC for many years, very engaged with these ideas and a terrific producer. So Peter and I became partners in developing sort of a new Closer to Truth, which was on location. And so what we see and we spend from the middle of 2006. The trigger was Stephen Weinberg. Because Stephen Weinberg also was on my A+ list. He didn't do it when I did it first in 1999. Now it's 2006. I've written to him over the years. He's always expressed some interest but, I mean, not really strong and not willing to make a special trip just for this whole television show. And so I kept in touch with Stephen. Then in the summer of 2006 — we were planning to start this anyway. We weren't sure when — he said, "Look, I'm going to be in Southern California for this and this time. If you want to do it, that's the time to do it. I'm not going to make a special trip." So I said, "Okay. Now we're going to start." He was the first interviewee. We built then our first shooting week around his schedule. Built other people and people from Southern California and then spent from the summer of 2006 about a year and a half of just doing interviews around, you know. We did in the UK, at Oxford, Cambridge, all over the country and accumulated by then maybe almost 2,000 of these short segments, each segment seven to ten minutes, on all these different topics. 

Then finally, we began putting it together. We had our first broadcast of Closer to Truth in 2008, June 2008. And since then, we've been on the air on PBS stations continuously without interruption. We now have in our archives 5,000, more than 5,000 video interviews, again, split pretty evenly between cosmos, physics, mathematics, brain-mind, personal identity, free will, consciousness, on the consciousness and what we call meaning, philosophy of religion, analytic philosophy of God, and other kinds of things. I should mention the third category. Starting about three years ago, actually starting during the pandemic. Because during the pandemic, our web activities exploded and obviously grew for the reasons that, you know. That's all people had to do. Not just time-wise and being isolated at home, but existential questions became more. And so everybody was focused on living and dying and what it means and all of that. So we had a great, great increase. It was particularly strong internationally. It began to impress me how people from different religions and traditions, from the Muslim world and from India and from all over, we're all focusing on these same questions with no sectarian rancor but just to focus on that great interest in these questions. India was particularly since suddenly grew to from zero to our third largest market on the web. We realized that our philosophy of religion really had a very high Christological kind of focus. And that's because of two reasons. One, nature of geography, where we are. But more equally important, that there's really good analytic philosophy being done in the Christian tradition from Alvin Feininger and Richard Swinburne and Peter Van Inwagen, and many others. I mean, these are really world-class philosophers dealing with the most sophisticated ideas. I was transfixed by it. That doesn't mean I was believing in Christianity, but it meant that I loved these ideas.

My mother famously said, who'd watched it. She died a few years ago at 102. So, you know, later years she watched Closer to Truth. She doesn't understand a word, but she wanted to see what I looked like. Was I happy or was not happy? And so she gave me always comment. One time, she said, she says of all these Christians, why don't you have a few Jews? I said, mom, we have a lot of Jews. They're just the atheist physicists. But the point was that we had this Christological focus. And so we wanted to expand. I give credit to Professor Yuji Nagazawa, who built a global philosophy of religion project at the University of Birmingham in the UK. Remarkable fellow. Born in Japan, educated in mind-body problem in Australia, and then became a professor focusing on philosophy of religion. Remarkable, great friend. We joined, Peter Getzels and I. Peter is co-creator and produce director of the current Closer to Truth season. And so Peter and I joined with Yuji to really create a global philosophy of religion approach. So for the last three or four years, we have really focused intensely on global philosophy of religion and have changed our philosophy of religion, focused to make it truly global. We did a series on Eastern traditions and the big questions where we focused primarily on Hinduism and Buddhism. Some Chinese philosophy, a little bit Japanese philosophy, but mostly Hinduism and Buddhism. We're expanding that very much so. It's a broadening way of thinking about these same big questions. So it is an emergent process, and it's been remarkably rewarding on a personal basis. I just give credit to all the people who have supported us by being interviewed and giving their intellectual souls.

(outro)

Brandon: All right, everyone. That's a good place to stop the first half of our conversation. We're gonna pick up next week, where Robert talks about his comprehensive survey of the landscape of consciousness. To make sure you don't miss it. Subscribe to our podcast if you haven't already and please leave us a review. We'd love to hear what you think about the show.