Within Reason

Within Reason

For the curious. A philosophy podcast that sometimes flirts with other disciplines, Within Reason has featured guests including Richard Dawkins, Douglas Murray, William Lane Craig, Peter Singer, Konstantin Kisin, and Neil deGrasse Tyson.

Episodes

October 19, 2025 71 mins

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Andrew Mark Henry is a scholar of religious studies. His research focus is early Christianity and late Roman religion. He earned his PhD at Boston University.His YouTube channel is "Religion for Breakfast", find it here.


Timestamps:

0:00 - Was Jesus a Magician?

3:35 - The Origins of ‘Magic’

10:02 - Celsus...

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Dr. Qureshi-Hurst is a Philosopher of Religion and Science at the University of Cambridge. Her work focuses on the relationship between physics—and time in particular—and theology. Her forthcoming book, Decoding the Cosmos: God, Physics, and the Search for Deeper Explanation, explores this relationship in depth.


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TIMESTAMPS:

0:00 - Does the Bible Pre...

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Ben Thomas is @Sisyphus55, a YouTuber creating videos about philosophy, existentialism, nihilism, absurdism, and meaning. His new book, So You're Having an Existential Crisis: a Roadmap for Lost Souls, is available now.

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Candida Moss is a historian of Christianity and author of The Myth of Persecution: How Early Christians Invented a Story of Martyrdom.

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Robert Greene is an American author of books on strategy, power, and seduction. He has written seven international bestsellers, including The 48 Laws of Power. He is working on a book about the concept of the sublime, and speaks today about its relation to near-death experiences, d...

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John Cottingham (born 1943) is an English philosopher. The focus of his research has been early-modern philosophy (especially Descartes), the philosophy of religion and moral philosophy. He is a Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Reading, Professorial Research Fellow at Heythrop College, University of London, and Honorary Fellow of St John's College, Oxford. He is also a current Visiting Professor to the Philosop...

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September 10, 2025 119 mins

Brant Pitre is an American New Testament scholar and Distinguished Research Professor of Scripture at the Augustine Institute. He has written extensively on the historical Jesus, the Virgin Mary, Paul the Apostle, the origin of the Eucharist, and the canonical Gospels. His book, Jesus and Divine Christology, is available here.

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Jim Al-Khalili is an Iraqi-British theoretical physicist and science populariser. He is professor of theoretical physics and chair in the public engagement in science at the University of Surrey.

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Joe Folley runs the YouTube channel Unsolicited Advice. He graduated from Cambridge University in 202with an MPhil in Philosophy, specialising in logic.


TIMESTAMPS:

0:00 - What is Logic?
5:04 - Aristotelian vs Stoic Logic
12:47 - How Logic Provides Clarity
18:42 Ambiguities in Logical Language
29:0...

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Dan McClellan is an American biblical scholar and author of The Bible Says So: What We Get Right (and Wrong) About Scripture’s Most Controversial Issues.


Timestamps:

0:00 Why Does God Say “We”?
14:36 Does God Create the Universe From Nothing?
28:43 Is This Explained By The Trinity?
34:32 Is There Only One God?
47:39 Fake Idols or Gods?
1:02:50 How English Translations Mislead Us Into Monotheism
01:11:02 The E...

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Peter Godfrey-Smith is an Australian philosopher of science and writer, who is currently Professor of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Sydney. Buy his books here.


Timestamps:

0:00 How Many Times Has the Brain Independently Evolved? 4:36 What is a Nervous System? 7:12 The Differences Between the Human and Animal Brains 13:40 What Does an Octopus Brain Look Like? 25:21 What is it Like to be an Octopus? 35:4...

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Niayesh Afshordi is a professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Waterloo. Phil Halper is a science communicator and YouTuber. Together, they have authored a book called "Battle of the Big Bang: The New Tales of Our Cosmic Origins", an overview of the state of modern cosmology on the nature of the big bang.

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Simon Blackburn is well-known both as a writer of popular philosophy introductions (like Think), and also a significant figure in non-cognitivist meta-ethics, having invented the term “quasi-realism” to describe his moral philosophy.

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Sabine Hossenfelder is a German theoretical physicist, author, science communicator, and YouTuber. She is the author of Existential Physics: A Scientist’s Guide to Life’s Biggest Questions.

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Rick Alan Ross is an American deprogrammer, cult specialist, and founder and executive director of the non-profit Cult Education Institute. Frequently appearing in the news and other media, discussing groups some consider cults. Ross has intervened in more than 500 deprogramming cases in various countries. (Wikipedia) Get Rick's book, "Cults Inside Out: How People Get In and Can Get Out" here.

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Helen Bond is Professor of Christian Origins at the New College, University of Edinburgh, and former head of the School of Divinity there. She is also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

In 2023, she co-authored a book with Joan Taylor called Women Remembered: Jesus’ Female Disciples. Watch the documentary version here.

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Sheehan Quirke is The Cultural Tutor. A writer on history, art, and architecture with millions of followers, he is also the author of the forthcoming The Cultural Tutor: Forty-Nine Lessons You Wish You’d Learned at School, which is currently available for preorder here.

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David Pakman is an American progressive political commentator and host of  @thedavidpakmanshow .


Buy David's book, The Echo Machine here

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Marcus du Sautoy is a British mathematician, Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science at the University of Oxford, Fellow of New College, Oxford and author of popular mathematics and popular science books. Buy Blueprints: How Mathematics Shapes Creativity here.

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Dale Allison is an American historian and Christian theologian. His areas of expertise include the historical Jesus, the Gospel of Matthew, Second Temple Jewish literature, and the history of the interpretation and reception of the Bible. Allison is the Richard J. Dearborn Professor of New Testament at Princeton Theological Seminary (2013- ). (Wikipedia) By Dale Allison's book, The Resurrection of Jesus, here.

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