Intelligent Design the Future

Intelligent Design the Future

The ID The Future (IDTF) podcast carries on Discovery Institute's mission of exploring the issues central to evolution and intelligent design. IDTF is a short podcast providing you with the most current news and views on evolution and ID. IDTF delivers brief interviews with key scientists and scholars developing the theory of ID, as well as insightful commentary from Discovery Institute senior fellows and staff on the scientific, educational and legal aspects of the debate. Episode notes and archives available at idthefuture.com.

Episodes

February 2, 2026 56 mins
Why would the human mind sometimes appear strongest when the brain is weakest? On today's ID The Future, host Andrew McDiarmid welcomes to the show neurosurgeon Dr. Michael Egnor, co-author with Denyse O’Leary of the recent book The Immortal Mind: A Neurosurgeon’s Case for the Existence of the Soul, and Alexander Batthyany, a leading researcher on terminal lucidity and author of Threshold: Terminal Lucidity and the Border Between L...

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When left to their own devices, the laws of nature tend toward death, not life. So what does it take for life to exist? On this classic ID The Future out of the vault, host Eric Anderson begins a two-part conversation with physician Howard Glicksman about some of the remarkable engineering challenges that have to be solved to produce and maintain living organisms such as ourselves. Glicksman is co-author with systems engineer Steve...

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What is the ultimate origin of the information that powers life and the universe? For materialists, matter and energy are the fundamental stuff of life, but an even more crucial element is missing from that equation: information. And as our parents likely reminded us, you don't get anything in this life for free. On this ID The Future, host Andrew McDiarmid concludes his four-part conversation with mathematician and philosopher Dr....

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Nothing's free in life. It's a sobering reality we all come to realize in life. And this cold, hard truth also applies to the realm of biology. On today's ID The Future, host Andrew McDiarmid continues his four-part discussion with mathematician and philosopher Dr. William Dembski. The topic is Dembski's work on the law of conservation of information, a principle asserting that information within a search process is redistributed f...

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January 23, 2026 23 mins
In his landmark book Darwin's Black Box, biochemist Michael Behe wrote that "to appreciate complexity, you have to experience it." On today's ID The Future out of the vault, we conclude a three-part series with Dr. Jonathan McLatchie that dives into the complexity and design of sexual reproduction. In Part 3, Dr. McLatchie explains the design features of erectile function, the ejaculatory reflex, sperm chemotaxis, and the female eg...

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We already have a well-established law that shows us how order can decrease in a physical system. But is there a law that explains an increase in order? Scientists have been looking for "nature's missing law" for a while, and while they might be asking the right questions, their training in a bottom-up reductionist framework is leading them to the wrong answers. On this ID The Future, mathematician and philosopher Dr. William Dembs...

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Chances are you’re already familiar with specified complexity, one of the mathematical pillars of the theory of intelligent design. There’s another pillar that is much less well known but equally vital: the law of conservation of information. On this ID The Future, host Andrew McDiarmid begins a four-part conversation with mathematician and philosopher Dr. William Dembski. The conversation unpacks Dembski’s work on the law of...
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Sexual reproduction depends on an irreducibly complex core of components for its success. But can we really credit a gradual evolutionary process for this remarkable system? On this classic ID The Future from the archive, host Andrew McDiarmid continues his discussion with Dr. Jonathan McLatchie on why sex is the queen of problems for evolutionary theory and why instead it bears the hallmarks of a system governed by forethought and...

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On today's ID the Future, host Casey Luskin continues a deep dive into the mounting hurdles facing origin of life (OOL) research with prebiotic synthesis expert Dr. Edward Peltzer. Peltzer, a seasoned ocean chemist and researcher, breaks down the critical flaws in the RNA world hypothesis, revealing that many successful lab experiments actually rely on investigator interference—intelligently designed interventions that researchers ...

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By now, you may have heard about some of the problems facing the field of origin-of-life research. Maybe you’ve come across Dr. James Tour making the argument that origin-of-life researchers are nowhere near their goal of creating life in a lab or proving a chemical evolutionary scenario for the origin of life. On today's ID The Future, we hear from another expert in origin-of-life chemistry and prebiotic synthesis: Dr. Edward Pelt...

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Sexual reproduction ought to be a recipe for evolutionary disaster. It's a waste of resources producing no short-term advantages. It demands an entirely different form of cell division and requires highly designed interconnected components to succeed. And yet, sex reigns supreme in the biological world. On this classic ID The Future episode, Dr. Jonathan McLatchie begins a series on why sex is the queen of problems for evolutionary...

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In this ID The Future, host Casey Luskin concludes a two-part conversation with University of Warwick professor and author Steve Fuller reflecting on the 20th anniversary of the Kitzmiller v. Dover trial, a case that examined the constitutionality of teaching intelligent design in public schools. Fuller discusses his experience serving as an expert witness for the defense. He defends his support of a policy that merely informed stu...

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On this episode of ID the Future, host Casey Luskin begins a two-part conversation with University of Warwick professor Steve Fuller to reflect on the historical and philosophical foundations of intelligent design (ID) and the 20th anniversary of the Kitzmiller v. Dover trial. Fuller, an expert witness in the Dover trial and a scholar in the history and philosophy of science, challenges the popular "conflict thesis" that suggests t...

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On this classic episode of ID The Future, we conclude a 2019 conversation between ID pioneer and biologist Dr. Jonathan Wells and distinguished Brazilian chemist Marcos Eberlin. The occasion for the chat was the publication of Dr. Eberlin’s book Foresight: How the Chemistry of Life Reveals Planning and Purpose. A member of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences, Eberlin is a world leader in the field of mass spectrometry. His book was e...

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Honesty, humility, respect. Just a few of the essential qualities scientists need to do good science. Today, host Andrew McDiarmid concludes a conversation with engineer, inventor, writer, and self-taught scientist Forrest Mims about the role of integrity and humility in science, as well as the importance of solid data and good old-fashioned persistence. Should scientists be required to hide their personal values or religious con...

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Science is a very human enterprise, so it can fall prey to very human problems. How a scientist conducts himself or herself professionally matters. On this ID The Future, host Andrew McDiarmid begins a two-part conversation on the importance of skepticism and integrity in science with engineer, inventor, writer, and self-taught scientist Forrest Mims. How important is skepticism to scientific research? How can scientists collaborat...

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On our latest visit into the ID The Future archive, we stumbled on this little gem: a 2019 conversation between ID pioneer and biologist Dr. Jonathan Wells and distinguished Brazilian chemist Marcos Eberlin. The occasion for the chat was the publication of Dr. Eberlin's book Foresight: How the Chemistry of Life Reveals Planning and Purpose. A member of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences, Eberlin is a world leader in the field of mas...

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Any scientific theory for the origin of life and the universe is only as strong as its research program. For intelligent design, this is good news. On today's ID The Future, Dr. Casey Luskin describes the current growth and scientific maturity of the Intelligent Design (ID) movement. Luskin describes the progress of ID across three main areas: successful scientific predictions, the unresolved failures of Neo-Darwinism to account fo...

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Bugs. Some of them we enjoy more than others! But there’s no denying they’re a part of life. And though they’re small, they’re examples of big engineering and design. Today, host Andrew McDiarmid welcomes Discovery Institute staffer Kate Kavanaugh to discuss ID Education Days, whole-day experiences hosted by the Center for Science and Culture and geared specifically for middle and high school students in home or private school sett...

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Today’s ID the Future out of our archive spotlights the book The Toxic War on Masculinity, by author and scholar Nancy Pearcey, professor and scholar in residence at Houston Christian University. In her conversation with host Andrew McDiarmid, Pearcey argues against the current fashion of seeing masculinity as inherently toxic. She traces the tendency back to Darwinism and explains how the industrial revolution, working hand in glo...

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