752. Robert Lawrence Kuhn – Closer to Truth
Buddha at the Gas Pump
Rick Archer
4.7 • 737 Ratings
🗓️ 10 April 2026
⏱️ 132 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Robert Lawrence Kuhn is a public intellectual; he is the creator, writer, host of Closer To Truth, the long-running PBS/public television series and leading digital 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). Peter Getzels is Closer To Truth co-creator and producer/director. Kuhn is the author of the comprehensive review article on theories of consciousness – “A Landscape of Consciousness: Toward a Taxonomy of Explanations and Implications” – and editor-in-chief of the expanded, continuously updated Landscape of Consciousness website (with more than 400 theories of consciousness in ten categories), 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). 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).
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | A being that can conceive of eternity should be able to attain eternity. |
| 0:05.0 | Why would the universe create a being, unless it were overtly malevolent, |
| 0:10.0 | make beings that can conceive of eternity and deny them that? |
| 0:24.8 | Welcome to Buddha at the gas pump. My name is Rick Archer. |
| 0:33.8 | Buddha at the Gas Pump is an ongoing series of conversations with spiritually awakening people and about spiritual topics. |
| 0:38.9 | We've done over 750 of them now. And if this is new to you and you'd like to check out previous ones, you can explore it on YouTube. But if you go to backgap.com, we have better |
| 0:45.0 | systems of organizing all the interviews and search functions and so on. So you might find |
| 0:50.7 | that more useful. But if you are on YouTube, please like the show if you like it. |
| 0:56.2 | And, you know, subscribe. |
| 0:58.2 | If you would like to subscribe, that helps with YouTube's algorithm. |
| 1:03.1 | This whole thing is made possible through support of appreciative listeners and viewers. |
| 1:07.4 | So if you appreciate it and would like to help support it, their PayPal buttons on |
| 1:11.1 | every page of the website. |
| 1:12.9 | My guest today is Dr. Robert Lawrence Kuhn, and I'm really excited about this interview because |
| 1:19.5 | I've been a big fan of his for many years. |
| 1:23.7 | He is the creator, writer, and host of Closer to Truth, which was a long-running PBS television series and is now a podcast and YouTube channel. |
| 1:36.4 | Are you still on PBS, Robert, or no? |
| 1:38.9 | Sure. This will be our finishing our 26th season on PBS stations. |
| 1:44.0 | Wow, I'm going to see if I can find it on there. |
| 1:47.0 | So Robert's show, in case you're not familiar with it, |
| 1:49.6 | covers a lot of the topics that Backgap covers, |
| 1:52.2 | but many others, which also fascinate me. |
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