"How does it feel being autistic? Can science fiction warn of risks to humankind? Is 'alternative medicine' of benefit, or music, or mood-altering pills? Will alien life be found soon? Are more universes being born? Does immortality await us in heaven or inside immensely powerful computers? Forty-eight experts discuss the cosmos and what makes life interesting. Robert Lawrence Kuhn's our guide, host, editor. An intellectual feast for a mental gourmet!" -- John Leslie, Fellow, Royal Society of Canada, University Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, University of Guelph, Author of Immortality Defended, Infinite Minds, Universes, and The End of the World

Explore the latest scientific research, philosophical thinking, and expressions of human creativity. Some of the world's most esteemed experts—Nobel laureates, best-selling authors, and renowned scholars—engage in spontaneous and intimate conversations that combine hard facts with an inspiring, and breathtaking, look into our future. Based on the public television program of the same name, Closer To Truth features distinguished specialists who forcefully debate provocative subjects that have broad ramifications for the population at large: Who gets to validate alternative medicine? How does basic science support national security? Can we believe in both religion and science? At the heart is the question: how will scientific advances and the philosophical issues they create affect the individual as well as humanity as a whole?

Closer To Truth: Science, Meaning, and the Future explores the latest scientific research, philosophical thinking, and expressions of human creativity. Some of the world's most esteemed experts—Nobel laureates, best-selling authors, and renowned scholars—engage in spontaneous and intimate conversations that combine hard facts with an inspiring—and breathtaking—look into our future. Based on the public television program of the same name, Closer To Truth features distinguished specialists who forcefully debate provocative subjects that have broad ramifications for the population at large: Who gets to validate alternative medicine? How does basic science support national security? Can we believe in both religion and science? At the heart is the question: how will scientific advances and the philosophical issues they create affect the individual as well as humanity as a whole?

Whether the subject is the meaning of human consciousness, the ethics of testing experimental drugs on sick people, scientific thinking versus religious beliefs, or how music may help mental development, Closer To Truth uncovers exciting new lines of inquiry and offers fresh perspectives. Participants include Nobel laureates Murray Gell-Mann and David Baltimore; authors Michael Crichton, Octavia Butler, and David Brin; astrophysicists Alan Guth and Neil deGrasse Tyson; planetary scientist Bruce Murray; physicist Steven Koonin; quantum theorist Seth Lloyd; molecular biologist Lucy Shapiro; neuroscientists Nancy Andreasen, Terry Sejnowski, and Christof Koch; psychiatrist Leslie Brothers; Psychology Today's Robert Epstein; musicologists Jeanne Bamberger and Robert Freeman; ethicist Alexander Capron; skeptic Michael Shermer; theologian Nancey Murphy; and Islamic scientist Muzaffar Iqbal.