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/)

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