Everybody, just a little bit of a somber note as we start the podcast, something that's never happened before. But I have to report on the passing of today's guest, Daniel Dennett, who I spoke to just a few weeks ago. I think this was his final interview on a podcast. He passed away today, I'm informed. This is Friday, April 19, 2024. And as you hear, I had such a great conversation with him. I already recorded an intro, both the video and an audio intro. And, I was just so delighted and touched by him and had so much fun with him.

He influenced me greatly even though I really only got to delve into his work in the last few, months before leading up to the interview before, of course, I knew about him. He's a world famous intellectual and contributor to many fields of philosophy and many other things.

And so it's a great shock to me.

I wanted to release this, as a, you know, token of my gratitude to him for this wonderful interview. You'll see he, you know, he just come back from a dentist experiment and, you know, we're talking and, you know, part of me feels guilty to have spent, you know, an hour and a half, 2 hours, whatever it turned out to be with, you know, the final, you know, weeks of his life. But on the other hand, it's a great gift. And hopefully, his family will see this and share in the, in the delightful conversation that we had together. I view it as a great honor and privilege to have hosted him and especially now made more experiment by his passing. It's, truly affected me, and I hope the interview will be meaningful to you as much as it was to me as well. So with that, I'll start with the intro that we had planned before theorists sad, announcement came a few days ago before the release of this episode. And, and, I hope that Bang is is happy and resting in peace wherever he is.

Thanks, Dan.

Today, on Into the Impossible, we welcome a renowned philosopher of the human mind, a man who's a legend, a cognitive scientist, professor. He's also a vocal theorists, and yet he makes common cause with people like me who call themselves practicing agnostics. Daniel Dennett is a legend, and he's known as one of the 4 horsemen of new atheism, not the apocalypse.

Free will isn't a metaphysical condition that you're blessed with or not. It's an achievement.

He's been at the forefront of discussions on consciousness, free will, and the impact of Darwinian evolution on religious belief. His incisive wit, good humor, and keen intellect made him a must get guest on the Into the Impossible podcast. He's been a major figure for decades in debates, conversations, and writings about the existence of God and the nature of belief and free will. His works are tremendously influential and they include Brains the Spell, Consciousness Explained, and many more that have provoked admiration, controversy, and challenged readers to reconsider their most deeply held beliefs about the mind and its relationship to the physical world.

It's a user illusion. It's not a bad illusion. It's a good illusion. We are not the victims. Theory the beneficiaries of this illusion.

Today, I have the opportunity to explore these topics along with your questions for this phenomenal renowned professor. So without further ado, let's jump right in and discuss this magnificent new memoir from one of the heroes of the new atheist movement. How are you doing, Dan?

I'm doing just fine. How are you?

It's a great pleasure to, connect to you. I listen to your latest book in audio format, and, it's not your voice. And so it's good to hear your actual voice. And as you know, Dan, we love to judge books by their covers because what else do you have to go on on a Bayesian reasoning sense? So I want you to take us through the book, and it is unique in terms of all the 2 or 300 books I've had the pleasure of authors appearing on theorists the Impossible podcast. This is the, probably, the first one that doesn't have a subtitle. So tell me tell me the origin of the title, the cover illustration art, and the absence of the subtitle. Take it away, Dan.

Okay. Here's the book. I take it everybody can see it. Yeah. I've been thinking. I didn't want a subtitle because I thought that's enough. I wanna talk about my thinking and how I got there, and it's not about the nonacademic, non research parts of my life. I deliberately didn't want to go on and on about adventures I've had outside of academia.