Within Reason

Justin Sledge is currently a part-time professor of philosophy and religion at several institutions in the Metro-Detroit area and a popular local educator. His YouTube channel is "Esoterica".

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Rory Stewart is a former UK Government minister, MP, and deputy governor in Iraq following the western invasion. He walked on foot for two years across Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan, India and Nepal in 2002. He was a private tutor to both Prince William and Prince Harry. He now co-hosts The Rest is Politics with Alastair Campbell, one of the UK's most popular shows.

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A.C. Grayling is a British philosopher and author. In 2011 he founded and became the first Master of New College of the Humanities, an independent undergraduate college in London. Buy "Who Owns the Moon?" here.

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Thank you all for 750,000 subscribers on YouTube!

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Sam Harris is a neuroscientist, philosopher, New York Times best-selling author, host of Making Sense, and creator of Waking Up.

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Carlo Rovelli, an Italian theoretical physicist, is known mainly for his contributions to research in the field of quantum gravity. He is the author of Seven Brief Lessons on Physics, The Order of Time, and White Holes, amongst other works.

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William Lane Craig is a Christian philosopher and public speaker, who today makes his third appearance on Within Reason. We discuss why Richard Dawkins refuses to debate him, and whether Old Testament slaughter can be justified.

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Michael Knowles is an American conservative Catholic political commentator and media host. He has worked for the Daily Wire since 2016.

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David Deutsch is a British physicist at the University of Oxford. He is a visiting professor in the Department of Atomic and Laser Physics at the Centre for Quantum Computation in the Clarendon Laboratory of the University of Oxford. (Wikipedia.)

Buy David Deutsch's book, The Beginning of Infinity

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Susan Neiman is an American moral philosopher, cultural commentator, and essayist. She is the author of "Left is Not Woke", available here.

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Robert Sapolsky is an American neuroendocrinology researcher and author. He is a professor of biology, neurology, neurological sciences, and neurosurgery at Stanford University.

He is the author of "Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will", which you can purchase here.

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Sheehan Quirke is known online as the Cultural Tutor. With over 1.6 million followers on X, he writes daily threads about art, architecture, and history.

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Jason Brennan is an American philosopher and business professo at the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University.

Brennan writes about democratic theory, the ethics of voting, competence and power, freedom, and the moral foundations of commercial society. (Wikipedia.) He speaks in this episode about the faults and flaws of democracy, and why people are often not as good as voting as they think they are.

Buy "Against Democracy" (affiliate link): https://amzn.to/3HBA5df

Buy "Democracy: A Guided Tour": https://amzn.to/3udeuF2

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Jonathan Pageau is a French Canadian icon carver, public speaker and YouTuber exploring the symbolic patterns that underlie our experience of the world, how these patterns emerge and come together, manifesting in religion, art and in popular culture. He's also the editor of the Orthodox Arts Journal and host of the Symbolic World blog and podcast.

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Richard Dawkins is an evolutionary biologist and author of books including The Selfish Gene and The God Delusion.

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Ben Thomas, better known online as Sisyphus 55, is a philosophy YouTuber with one million subscribers. His videos cover topics including nihilism, existentialism, love, relationships, and political philosophy.

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In this Christmas special of Within Reason, New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman explores the history and narrative of Jesus' birthday, and demonstrates where the accounts seem to contradict.

Get Bart Erhman's courses here.

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Edward Feser is an American Catholic philosopher, and Associate Professor of Philosophy at Pasadena City College in California.

He is the author of "Five Proofs of the Existence of God", and in this episode speaks about one of these: the Aristotelean argument from motion.

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Josh Rasmussen is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Azusa Pacific University, with an expertise in analytic metaphysics. He is author of several books, including Defending the Correspondence Theory of Truth, Necessary Existence, How Reason Can Lead to God, and Is God the Best Explanation of Things . He is also the founder of the Worldview Design YouTube channel, which helps people use reason to address the big questions of life.

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John Vervaeke is an award-winning professor of psychology, cognitive science, and Buddhist psychology at the University of Toronto. He is the creator of a fifty-hour series on YouTube called "Awakening From the Meaning Crisis".

Dr. Vervaeke joins me to discuss why people are struggling to find meaning, how we might solve this problem, and whether death poses a series problem for believing in meaning.

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Graham Oppy is Professor of Philosophy and Associate Dean of Research at Monash University, CEO of the Australasian Association of Philosophy, Chief Editor of the Australasian Philosophical Review, Associate Editor of the Australasian Journal of Philosophy, and serves on the editorial boards of Philo, Philosopher's Compass, Religious Studies, and Sophia.

He is one of the best known atheist thinkers in academia. You can buy "Atheism: the Basics" here.

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Just Stop Oil are one of the most well-known and thoroughly hated political groups in the UK. You may recognise them as the brand behind stunts such as throwing soup over Van Gogh's Sunflowers, covering the felt of a snooker table at a world championship with orange powder, blocking traffic on busy roads, and, most recently, climbing on stage during a production of Les Misérables in London's West End.

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Peter Hitchens is an author, broadcaster, journalist, and commentator. He writes for The Mail on Sunday. He has published numerous books, including The Abolition of Britain, The Rage Against God, The War We Never Fought and The Phoney Victory.

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Drew McCoy is the creator and host of the YouTube channel Genetically Modified Skeptic. His videos cover topics including atheism, cults, satanism, and Biblical scholarship. In this episode we talk about his recent trip to SatanCon in Boston, Massachusetts, and about what the modern satanism movement is all about.

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Justin Brierley was, for 17 years, the host of "Unbelievable?" on Premier Christian Radio. He is a broadcaster, author, and Christian apologist whose latest book is "The Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God: Why new atheism grew old and secular thinkers are considering Christianity again".

Get Justin's book here.

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Slavoj Žižek is a Slovenian-born political philosopher and cultural critic. He was described by British literary theorist, Terry Eagleton, as the “most formidably brilliant” recent theorist to have emerged from Continental Europe. (Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy) To support Within Reason on Patreon, please visit https://www.patreon.com/cosmicskeptic

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Andrew Doyle is a playwright, journalist, and political satirist. He has written for the fictional character Jonathan Pie and created the character Titania McGrath. Doyle joined GB News in 2021, and hosts a weekly show titled Free Speech Nation.

He is the author of The New Puritans: How the Religion of Social Justice Captured the Western World

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Carl Robichaud co-leads Longview Philanthropy’s programme on nuclear weapons and existential risk. For over a decade, Carl led grant-making in nuclear security at the Carnegie Corporation of New York, a philanthropic fund which grants over $30 million annually to strengthen international peace and security. Carl previously worked with The Century Foundation and the Global Security Institute, where his extensive research spanned arms control, international security policy, and nonproliferation.

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Tanya Marie Luhrmann is an American psychological anthropologist known for her studies of modern-day witches, charismatic Christians, and studies of how culture shapes psychotic, dissociative, and related experiences.

She is the author of How God Becomes Real, which asks what it means to say that a person 'believes' in gods, how and why this kind of belief is so different from mundane beliefs about the normal world, and how these gods become vividly real to some people.

Find Within Reason on YouTube.

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Peter Boghossian is an American philosopher, a founding faculty member at the University of Austin, and coined the term "street epistemology" as a method of helping people to change their minds.

Peter Boghossian's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@drpeterboghossian

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Get Bart Ehrman's course, "Did Jesus Call Himself God?": https://www.bartehrman.com/godman View all of Bart Ehrman's courses: https://www.bartehrman.com/alex To support me on Patreon (thank you): http://www.patreon.com/cosmicskeptic To donate to my PayPal (thank you): http://www.paypal.me/cosmicskeptic

Bart Ehrman is an American New Testament scholar focusing on textual criticism of the New Testament, the historical Jesus, and the origins and development of early Christianity. He has written and edited 30 books, including three college textbooks. He has also authored six New York Times bestsellers. (Wikipedia)

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Anil Seth is a professor of Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience at the University of Sussex. He is the author of "Being You: A New Science of Consciousness".

Purchase "Being You: A New Science of Consciousness": https://amzn.to/3NgKD53

Anil Seth's website: https://www.anilseth.com/

The Perception Census: https://perceptioncensus.dreamachine.world/

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Michael Jones is the founder and director of the Christian YouTube channel "Inspiring Philosophy". He has previously debated Alex twice.

Inspiring Philosophy on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5qDet6sa6rODi7t6wfpg8g

Inspiring Philosophy, "Does God Send People to Hell?": https://youtu.be/tiYf6ITgWbk

Michael's debate with Alex on the problem of evil: https://www.youtube.com/live/hNF9bTESZwE?feature=share

Michael's debate with Alex on the moral argument for God: https://youtu.be/9Ulnmb-4v2M

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Steven Kenneth Bonnell II, known online as Destiny, is an American internet personality and political commentator.

Find Destiny on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/DESTINY

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Peter Singer is an Australian moral philosopher often credited as the father of the modern animal rights movement.

Purchase Animal Liberation Now: https://amzn.to/450BB3e

Peter Singer's upcoming speaking tour: New York: https://events.humanitix.com/peter-singer-ny Washington DC: https://events.humanitix.com/peter-singer-washington-dc LA: https://www.ticketmaster.com/event/09005E68DC24308C San Fransisco: https://events.humanitix.com/peter-singer-san-francisco London: https://hackneyempire.co.uk/whats-on/peter-singer-animal-liberation-now/ Virtual Event: https://events.humanitix.com/peter-singer-live-stream

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Joshua Bowen is an Assyriologist, YouTuber, and author of the book, "Did the Old Testament Endorse Slavery?"

Links: The Atheist Handbook to the Old Testament: Volume 1: https://t.co/SrcMTKcxS6 Volume 2: https://t.co/RuPDimaomv Did the Old Testament Endorse Slavery?: https://tinyurl.com/3m6prd3h Digital Hammurabi: www.youtube.com/digitalhammurabi Misquoting Jesus Podcast (Bart Ehrman and Megan Lewis): https://www.bartehrman.com/podcast/ Digital Hammurabi: Website: www.digitalhammurabi.com YouTube: www.youtube.com/digitalhammurabi Twitter: www.twitter.com/digi_hammurabi Patreon: www.patreon.com/digitalhammurabi

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Richard Swinburne is an Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Oxford, and author of a number of books on the philosophy of religion, the soul, and Christianity, amongst other subjects.

To support the podcast, please visit support.withinreasonpodcast.com

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Neil deGrasse Tyson is an astrophysicist, director of the Hayden Planetarium, and one of the most recognisable communicators of science in the world.

His most recent book is Starry Messenger: Cosmic Perspectives on Civilisation: https://amzn.to/40Cdkgi (affiliate link)

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Philip Goff is an Associate Professor at Durham University whose research focuses on philosophy of mind and consciousness. He is one of the world's most prominent proponents of "panpsychism", the view that consciousness is a fundamental and ubiquitous property of the universe.

Buy Galileo's Error: Foundations for a New Science of Consciousness (affiliate link, which supports my work): https://amzn.to/3MTfKnu

To support the Within Reason Podcast financially, please visit support.withinreasonpodcast.com

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David Renton is a barrister and historian. He is the author of "No Free Speech for Fascists", discussing the history of, and the case for, "no-platforming" fascist speakers (and only fascist speakers).

To support the Within Reason Podcast and get early access to episodes, please visit support.withinreasonpodcast.com

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Andrew Mark Henry is a scholar of religion specialising in early Christianity and the religions of the late Roman Empire. He is also the host of "Religion for Breakfast", a YouTube channel with over 600,000 subscribers producing informative videos on a variety of topics related to religion.

Dr. Henry joins host Alex O'Connor to discuss a number of questions: what is religion? Where does it come from? Why is it so ubiquitous?

To support Within Reason, please consider signing up at support.withinreasonpodcast.com

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William Lane Craig is a Christian philosopher, author, and debater. He speaks to host Alex O'Connor about secularism in the US and UK, argument vs emotion in coming to faith in God, and the historical case for the resurrection of Jesus.

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Konstantin Kisin is a satirist, comedian, journalist, and co-host of the Triggernometry Podcast. He recently went viral for a speech delivered at the Oxford Union arguing that "wokeness has gone too far", which has since been viewed over 100,000,000 times across various social media platforms.

Konstantin talks to host Alex O'Connor about the limits of free speech, whether he considers himself to be a conservative or right-wing, and whether there can be a sensible case made for reparations for historical injustices such as slavery.

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Bishop Robert Barron is the bishop of the Diocese of Winona-Rochester and the founder of Word on Fire Catholic Ministries. His website, WordOnFire.org, reaches millions of people each year, and he is one of the world’s most followed Catholics on social media. Bishop Barron joins host Alex O'Connor to discuss the "crisis of meaning" we might be living through, the reducibility of purpose to evolutionary drives, the conditions for salvation on Christianity, and whether God can be accurately described as analogous to a tyrannical dictator.

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In this episode of the Cosmic Skeptic Podcast, Alex is joined by Joe Schmid, an agnostic, Cameron Bertuzzi, a (then) protestant, and Trent Horn, a catholic, to discuss the problem in detail, and analyse various responses to it.

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Joe Schmid is the owner of the Majesty of Reason YouTube channel, a platform dedicated to the analysis of a variety of philosophical topics. He is the author of "The Majesty of Reason: A Short Guide to Critical Thinking in Philosophy", and in this episode joins Alex to rank eight arguments for the existence of God, and discuss them in depth.

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Drew McCoy is the host of the Genetically Modified Skeptic YouTube channel, which is, with now over 500,000 subscribers, perhaps the largest atheist YouTube channel in the world right now. The last time we collaborated was in 2017, arguing that as well as being false, religion is also mostly harmful. In this podcast we discuss our current views on that subject, and examine how they have changed.

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Ed Winters ("Earthling Ed") is a vegan educator, best-selling author, public speaker and content creator, widely known for his viral debates, speeches, and video essays. Ed was on the Cosmic Skeptic Podcast in 2019, making him the first guest to appear for a second time. He and Alex discuss the definition and nature of veganism, the limits of "practicability", the ethics of unnecessary vegan food, and much more.

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Released on April 1st, this podcast details Alex's conversion to Christianity, a position he defends against the criticisms of Stephen Woodford (Rationality Rules).

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Dr. Alex Hershaft is a Holocaust survivor, animal rights activist, and co-founder and president of the Farm Animal Rights Movement (FARM). He has previously had a 30-year career in materials science, and holds a PHD in inorganic chemistry. Dr. Hershaft speaks to Alex about his experiences in the Holocaust, and how they inspired the work he does today.

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