Not 42, The REAL Meaning of Life the Universe, and Everything Peter D Fisher

This episode will introduce the podcasts and try to define Truth. 

Knowing what is true is a topical and much debated question, but I will show that there is an absolute truth, which I am going to call the Omnitruth, but how much we can know about it? 

Even if there isn't much about the Omnitruth that we can know to be absolutely true, I will argue that we can still know the most likely explanation for what Truth might be if we use current scientific knowledge. When we do this, in later episodes, we will be able to better understand what it means to be human, what matters in the universe, and what really should matter.

Artwork by Conner Griffin: The Plain Creative Agency.
Music: Land of Destiny, from Premium Beat.

The natural world around us is highly organised. You can see evidence for this around you all the time. The scientific community seem to be settled on the thought that this is because life on earth evolved under the influence of Darwinian natural selection. But what is the evidence that evolution happened? Can anyone plausibly deny that it happened and, if so, how? 

And, more importantly, if we did evolve alongside other animals, does this mean that we need to fundamentally refine the way we think about what it is to be human?

Artwork by Conner Griffin: The Plain Creative Agency.
Music: Land of Destiny, from Premium Beat.

Time for the Big One?

What was special about the intriguing and mysterious creature I've called Nova? When did she live? What was she like? And could she really have fundamentally changed our universe?

This episode makes the claim that Nova was the first living thing to cross a vitally important threshold in our evolutionary history: the Awareness Horizon, and suggests that an awareness horizon view of the universe profoundly changes the way we must think  about what it is to be an animal, and ultimately what it means to be human. 

Artwork by Conner Griffin: The Plain Creative Agency.
Music: Land of Destiny, from Premium Beat.

What happened when Nova crossed the Awareness Horizon? What is awareness, and how does it relate to consciousness?

The enormous complexity of advanced brains, like ours, makes understanding consciousness an incredibly difficult task. This episode will provide a brief overview of how the human brain works and consider some of the proposals scientists have made about what consciousness might be.

Artwork by Conner Griffin: The Plain Creative Agency.
Music: Land of Destiny, from Premium Beat.

This episode contains the deeply moving story of a special meeting: a meeting between David and Jane.

This was a hugely important event that happened in Africa in the 1960s and it began the process of developing a new way of thinking about what it is to be a feeling creature like a human being. Could there be such a thing as a non-human person, and if so why, and what does it mean for us?

Artwork by Conner Griffin: The Plain Creative Agency.
Music: Land of Destiny, from Premium Beat.

If we evolved, we must be animals. But what kind of animal?

All animal species have their own genetically predisposed pattern of behaviour. In other words, each species has its own "Deep Nature". In this episode we look at the behaviour of a small number of animal species to work out how and why each animal behaves as it does, so that we can go on, in future episodes to discover what kind of deep nature our own species might have.

This episode includes adult content.

Artwork by Conner Griffin: The Plain Creative Agency.
Music: Land of Destiny, from Premium Beat.