I am super duper pumped to share my conversation with Robert Wright. For a long time I have enjoyed Bob’s podcast, books, and his new post-Trump newsletter. His return to the podcast follows my visit this past week on his own, which was a bunch of fun.
Here’s a number of topics we tackle:
- Why Buddhism is True
- The problem with getting rid of prayers of confession from worship
- Why everyone could use a class in evolutionary psychology
- Western love of secular buddhism
- Robert asks Tripp about confirmation and facilitating experiments in truth
- What is a “wet baptist”?
- The role and desire of religious rituals
- Can religions leave competition behind? Can Christianity become a wisdom tradition?
- The New Agnosticism
- The hard problem of consciousness
- “purpose” in the story of evolution
- the possibility of moral progress
- how a simple theist may end up being more accurate than the New Atheists
- how Process theology’s multiple ultimates gives a different way to connect eastern and western religious traditions
- the problem of religious pluralism and how to do solve it
- why I hope Bob talks with Simon Conway Morris
Want to check out more of Robert’s work? Here’s a few places to go.
- The video/podcasting network he started, BloggingHeads.TV
- The Mindful Resistance Newsletter (it is so good)
- His class on Buddhism and Modern Science
- Here’s his lecture from Union Theological Seminary on the New Agnosticism
- Here’s Robert’s previous visit to the podcast from 2009
Here’s the conversation I had with Robert the day before on his podcast Robert Wright is the New York Times bestselling author of The Evolution of God (a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize), Nonzero, The Moral Animal (named one of the ten best books of the year by The New York Times Book Review), Three Scientists and their Gods (a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award), and Why Buddhism Is True. He is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of the widely respected Bloggingheads.tv and has written for The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The New York Times, Time, Slate, and The New Republic. He has taught in the psychology department at the University of Pennsylvania and the religion department at Princeton University, where he also created the popular online course “Buddhism and Modern Psychology.” He is currently Visiting Professor of Science and Religion at Union Theological Seminary in New York.
The most zesty newsletter I hope you try out
Books by Robert Wright
