Podcasts

Discovery Institute Podcast

Eric Esau on Directing The Story of Everything

_{Andrew McDiarmid
April 13, 2026}

NASA’s recent Artemis II mission pushed the limits of human possibility with a record-breaking crewed trip to the moon. Movies like Project Hail Mary and Disclosure Day are exploring the intriguing idea of extraterrestrial life. The U.S. government promises to release a trove of UFO data in the near future. It’s a great time to be asking the big questions about the universe! On this ID The Future, host Andrew McDiarmid welcomes Eric Esau to the show to discuss his latest film, The Story of Everything, a cinematic exploration of the scientific evidence for a mind behind the universe. The film brings the arguments of Dr. Stephen Meyer’s book Return of the God Hypothesis to life through stunning footage and cutting-edge animation, as well as engaging interviews with over 20 …

Did First Life Come From Space? Not Likely, Says Astrobiologist

_{Guillermo Gonzalez
April 10, 2026}

Evolving Rights? Darwinism’s Impact on American Life and Government

_{John G. West
April 8, 2026}

The Declaration of Independence is our nation’s founding creed, reminding us time and again that “we are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights.” But for too long now, science has been misused to overturn the ideas found in our nation’s founding principles. Is there hope for recovering these truths anew? On this ID The Future, host Andrew McDiarmid is joined again by Dr. John West to conclude a discussion about West’s latest book Endowed By Our Creator: The Bible, Science, and the Battle for America’s Soul. First, Dr. West unpacks the bad news: how science has been misused to attack the truths enshrined in the Declaration of Independence. This shift began with pre-Darwinian scientific racism and intensified with Darwin’s theory of evolution, used to …

Mind Matters

Science, God, and Truth: Michael Shermer and Michael Egnor

_{385
Michael Egnor
April 1, 2026}

On this episode of the Mind Matters News podcast, host and neurosurgeon Dr. Michael Egnor welcomes Michael Shermer, historian of science and founder of Skeptic magazine, to discuss Shermer’s new book Truth: What It Is, How to Find It, and Why It Still Matters. The conversation quickly evolves into a deep philosophical debate between Egnor and Shermer over whether truths about morality and the universe are created by humans or discovered as objective features of reality.

Why Logic and Cognition Set Us Apart from Machines

_{384
Robert J. Marks
March 20, 2026}

Is consciousness the exclusive domain of human beings? Proponents of a view known as integrative information theory argue that AI will eventually achieve that same level of consciousness as systems build up and integrate more knowledge in the future. On this archive episode of Mind Matters News, guest host Pat Flynn welcomes Dr. Selmer Bringsjord to discuss some of the flaws in this theory as well as a possible alternative.

Beyond Imitation: Testing for True Artificial General Intelligence

_{383
Robert J. Marks
March 4, 2026}

On this episode of the Mind Matters News podcast, join host Robert J. Marks as he sits down with Dr. Giorgios Mappouras for a deep dive into the philosophical and technical boundaries that define the gap between human minds and silicon machines. The pair look at why the classic Turing Test is no longer a sufficient measure of machine intelligence in the age of large language models. They explore Giorgio’s proposal for a more rigorous framework that can better evaluate AI’s abilities.

ID the Future

Physicist Brian Miller on The Story of Everything

_{2200
Brian Miller
April 15, 2026}

By now you might have heard about The Story of Everything, the new movie based on Dr. Stephen Meyer’s book Return of the God Hypothesis. It’s a cinematic exploration of the cosmos that reveals the hidden hand behind our universe. We’re pretty excited about it, and we want you to be able to share in the excitement too! On this ID The Future, CSC Education & Outreach Director Daniel Reeves chats with physicist Dr. Brian Miller about his participation in the movie and why the film is such a powerful presentation of the evidence for intelligent design.

Eric Esau on Directing The Story of Everything

_{2199
Eric Esau
April 13, 2026}

Did First Life Come From Space? Not Likely, Says Astrobiologist

_{2198
Guillermo Gonzalez
April 10, 2026}

On today’s classic ID the Future out of the vault, astrobiologist Guillermo Gonzalez and host Casey Luskin discuss the idea of undirected panspermia. Gonzalez explains the basic idea and what the best current evidence says about its plausibility. The occasion is his chapter on panspermia in the anthology The Comprehensive Guide to Science and Faith, co-edited by Casey Luskin, associate director of Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture. Undirected panspermia is the idea that the first life on our planet came from outer space, carried by chance processes from a faraway living planet on space dust, asteroids, or comets either from within our solar system, or from another star system to here. The idea of panspermia was inspired by the extreme difficulty of satisfactorily explaining the chance origin of life on planet Earth. Two of the idea’s earliest proponents, Gonzalez notes, were the scientists Lord Kelvin and Svante Arrhenius, each with a different take. Gonzalez argues that our increasing knowledge about the conditions of interstellar space renders the idea of life successfully hitchhiking around trillions of miles and millions of years from a faraway star system to our big blue marble unlikely in the extreme.

Humanize

Jan Jekielek on China’s Forced Organ Harvesting Atrocity

_{Jan Jekielek
March 23, 2026}

In one of the great atrocities in human history, Chinese political prisoners are tissue-typed and later murdered and harvested to supply the country’s thriving organ transplant black market. How long have regime enemies been so targeted and how does the system work? For years, that has been difficult to discern fully. China is one of the world’s most secretive societies and unequivocal answers have proved elusive. Until now. Wesley’s guest Jan Jekielek has written a crucial book — Killed to Order: China’s Organ Harvesting Industry and the True Nature of America’s Biggest Adversary — in which he explains in detail how the organ harvesting system operates, who benefits, why the government permits such cruelty, and what can be done about it. Jekielek …

The Trouble with Transhumanism: Wesley J. Smith’s Guest Appearance on Bioethics Babe

_{Wesley J. Smith
March 9, 2026}

Turnabout is fair play, they say. So on this episode of Humanize, Wesley is the guest, interviewed by the “Bioethics Babe,” the podcast of Center on Human Exceptionalism Fellow Arina Grossu Agnew. Arina and Wesley discuss the nature of transhumanism, its philosophical, moral, and political implications, its role as a substitute for religion, its threat to human equality, and whether we are quietly waging a war on human equality in the name of progress. Is transhumanism the next frontier of progress or a revival of eugenics in a biotech age? In this episode of Bioethics Babe, I sit down with attorney, award-winning author, and Humanize podcast host Wesley J. Smith to unpack the growing transhumanist movement, the push to engineer a “post-human” future …

Melissa Ortiz on the Disability Rights Movement

_{Melissa Ortiz
February 23, 2026}

Disability rights is a global social and civil rights movement that advocates for equal opportunities, accessibility, and freedom from discrimination. The goal is to ensure that people with disabilities participate fully and equally in society free from barriers in employment, healthcare, architecture, and education. It has been more than thirty-five years since President George H.W. Bush signed the Americans with Disabilities Act. Yet, despite many years of advocacy, the scope, breadth, and goals of the movement are less known than activism for racial and sex equality. So, Wesley thought he would look into the movement to recount its successes and goals yet to be achieved. His guest is Melissa Ortiz, founder and principal of Capability Consulting, an award-winning speaker, and a …