About the Series
CLOSER TO TRUTH (CTT) is a new cross-media genre presenting
to broad public audiences "Knowledge Affairs" in which the
fundamental questions of our times are explored by creative and
thoughtful scientists, scholars and artists. CTT, as it is
disseminated nationally on public television, in a companion book,
on video and audio tapes, and through this unique Web site (
www.closertotruth.com)
affords the broad U.S., and soon the global community, the
opportunity to explore and contribute to the competitive marketplace
of fundamental ideas.
CTT was created and organized by Dr.
Robert Lawrence Kuhn as a
consequence of his long interest in fundamental ideas. He
hosts the CTT public television series, which is produced and funded
by the Kuhn
Foundation.
He is joined by
Dr. Bruce
Murray of
Caltech,
with a similar life-long interest in fundamental ideas, to lead the
development of an innovative Web site integrated into CTT featuring HyperForum,
a novel online discourse facility. We aim for CTT to become
one of the leading Web sites in the world for serious deliberate
discourse on fundamental issues about the human condition.
Kuhn's companion book – CLOSER TO TRUTH: Challenging Current
Belief – is published by McGraw-Hill (Trade Science). Our
video partner is Great
Plains National (GPN) and our audio partner is Hay
House. This Web site, funded by the Kuhn
Foundation, has been
developed by Mitch Aiken and
Matt Midura, formerly of KCET, the public television station in Los Angeles.
The HyperForum
has been developed at the California Institute of Technology in
Pasadena by Terry West, based on earlier developments at
Caltech sponsored by The
Markle Foundation and Caltech.
Valerie
Gifford-Elachi is
Associate Producer and Content Manager for the CTT Web site.
Linda Feferman is
co-Executive Producer and Director for season II.
Please join us regularly as we help make fundamental discourse easy
to access and relevant for assessing collective purpose and personal
meaning.
Robert Lawrence Kuhn
For Robert Lawrence Kuhn, Closer To Truth is a lifelong passion. With a doctorate in brain science and the author or editor of more than 25 books, Dr. Kuhn is a public intellectual who speaks and writes frequently. His article "Science as Democratizer," featured in American Scientist magazine, argues how the scientific way of thinking can influence global society; and "Why This Universe: A Taxonomy of Possible Explanations," featured in Skeptic Magazine, presents a universally exhaustive set of "ultimate reality generators."
Dr. Kuhn's books include Closer To Truth: Challenging Current Belief; Closer To Truth: Science, Meaning and the Future; Made In China: Voices From the New Revolution; Dealmaker; The Library of Investment Banking; Handbook for Creative and Innovative Managers; Frontiers in Creative and Innovative Management; New Directions in Creative and Innovative Management; and The Firm Bond: Linking Mission and Meaning in Business and Religion.Five of his books have been translated into Chinese, including two editions of Closer To Truth. His article "Does God Exist?", based on critical thinking, appeared in prominent publications in China.
Dr. Kuhn is recognized as an international investment banker and expert on China. Since 1989 he has been advising the Chinese government on economic policy, mergers and acquisitions, science and technology, media and culture, and international communications. He is Senior Advisor to Citigroup and was president and co-owner of The Geneva Companies, the leading mergers and acquisitions firm for middle market businesses, which he sold to Citigroup in 2001. Dr. Kuhn appears on CNBC / Bloomberg, writes commentaries in BusinessWeek, and has a featured column in Chief Executive magazine ("Uncommon Wisdom").
Dr. Kuhn is the author of The Man Who Changed China: The Life and Legacy of Jiang Zemin, a high-profile, 720 page biography of China's long-time leader -- based on special access and exclusive interviews - that Random House published worldwide in 2005 (English, Korean, Japanese). The Chinese edition was the number one bestselling book in China in 2005 with sales of over one million and substantial publicity. Dr. Kuhn has been featured on the front page of Chinese newspapers and as the cover story of Chinese magazines. His book is recognized as the first time that a biography of a living Chinese leader has been published on the Chinese mainland, and stories of its success in China have run in the international press.
Dr. Kuhn's current writings on China focus on its economic, social and political development, and on the philosophies and policies of President Hu Jintao and China's new political leadership. Since 2005, Dr. Kuhn has visited 22 provinces and 40 cities in China meeting leaders in government and business. He was said to be the first foreigner to lecture, in China and internationally, on President Hu's "Scientific Development Perspective," which seeks integrated solutions to complex economic, environmental, social and political problems. His forthcoming book on China's reform and opening up is entitled How China's Leaders Think: The Inside Story of China's 30 Years Reform and What It Means for the Future of the World (working title), Dr. Kuhn is Senior International Advisor of Global People magazine, published by People's Daily.
Dr. Kuhn was the creator and executive producer of the first documentary series, co-produced with China Central Television (CCTV), on China's economic reform produced for both Chinese and American audiences. The eight-part Chinese-language series, Capital Wave, was broadcast nationwide in China on CCTV in 1999. The English-language documentary, In Search of China, is a ninety-minute PBS special that gives fresh understanding of the new China through intimate access and character-driven stories (2000). The Washington Post awarded In Search of China its "Pick of the Week." Dr. Kuhn was also executive producer of Khachaturian, which was awarded Best Documentary at the Hollywood Film Festival in 2003.
Dr. Kuhn holds an A.B. in human biology from Johns Hopkins University (1964, Phi Beta Kappa); a Ph.D. in anatomy / brain research from the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA Brain Research Institute, 1968); and an M.S. in management from the MIT Sloan School of Management (Sloan Fellows program, 1980). He taught psychology at MIT and was adjunct full professor of business and financial strategy at New York University (NYU Stern School of Business, 1981-1989). He is Senior Fellow at the IC2 Institute of the University of Texas at Austin (1983- ); a trustee of Claremont Graduate University; and serves on the Committee on Scientific Freedom and Responsibility of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).
Dr. Kuhn is chairman of The Kuhn Foundation, which he founded and funded to disseminate new knowledge and understanding in science and philosophy, support cultural endeavors, and promote good relations between America and China. He is vice chairman of the new Beijing Institute for Frontier Science and on the editorial board of Frontier Science journal. Dr. Kuhn initiated a high-level conference between the AAAS and the Chinese Association for Science and Technology on "Scientific Ethics, Responsibility and Freedom" (2007).
The new production of Closer To Truth, scheduled for premiere release in mid/late 2008 and consisting of over 200 episodes for broadcast and web, will be structured in three series: Consciousness (brain, mind, free will, personal identity, alien intelligence, parapsychology), Cosmos (cosmology, fundamental physics, philosophy of cosmology and physics, emergence, science and religion), and God (philosophy of religion, philosophical theology, critical thinking). Featured are over 125 of the world's leading scientists, philosophers, scholars and thinkers.
Bruce Murray
Dr.
Bruce C. Murray,
is Professor of Planetary Science and Geology, Emeritus at the
California
Institute of Technology
in Pasadena, California. He has been at Caltech since 1960 and
currently teaches courses in Planetary Surfaces, and supervises
student research. He was Director of the NASA/Caltech
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
from 1976 to 1982, which included the Viking landings on Mars and
the Voyager mission through Jupiter and Saturn encounters. In 1979,
he, Dr. Louis Friedman, and the late Carl Sagan, founded The
Planetary Society, a
100,000 member international organization dedicated to exploring the
Solar System and to the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence (SETI).
Currently he serves as President of TPS. Dr. Murray has
participated in spacecraft exploration of the planets for nearly
four decades, beginning with Mariner 4, the first successful Mars
probe in 1965 and continuing through Mars
Global Surveyor which
continues to reveal exciting new features of the Martian surface
today.
Murray has had a long interest in visualizing alternative future
possibilities, beginning with his book Navigating the Future
(Harper Row, 1975). He was a consultant (1991-95) to the "2050
Project", a collaboration between WRI, The Brookings
Institution, and the Santa Fe Institute. From 1993 - 2000, he
was sponsored by the John
and Mary Markle Foundation
to explore how new information technology may impact future societal
outcomes. This research led to the development of the HyperForum
approach which is extended to a large-scale, cross-media application
on this site.
He has published over 130 scientific papers and authored or co-authored six
books. He received his college education at M.I.T., culminating in the Ph.D. in 1955.
Linda Feferman is a Guggenheim Fellow
and Sundance award-winning producer, director, and writer. Most
recently, she was Series Producer and Director for
the nationally broadcast Timothy Ferris PBS series,
"Life
Beyond Earth," a KCTS, PBS/Devillier Donegan
co-production. Feferman was nominated for
an Emmy for her episode of the PBS series, "The
Astronomers," and a Grammy
for a Sony Records music video. Her feature film,
"Seven Minutes in
Heaven" for Zoetrope and Warner Brothers Studios,
received an audience award at
the 1986 Sundance Film Festival.
For the past 10 years she has worked primarily in the field of
science and technology.
Feferman made "Simple Rules: Complex Behavior" the
introductory film on Complex
Adaptive Systems for the Santa Fe
Institute. She also produced and directed evolutionary
biologist Tom Ray's video,
"Tierra--Evolution in Another
Universe." Also in science, Feferman was in charge
of the US research for the Errol Morris/Stephen Hawking feature
length documentary film, "A Brief History of Time."
In l991-92, she worked as a
writer/director on the eight-part molecular biology series
"The Secret of Life," for WGBH television in Boston.
Feferman has been awarded 21 fellowships and grants including 1982
fellowship to live and work in Japan. Her most recent educational
short, "Missing: What to Do if Your Child Disappears"
was lauded by Billboard Magazine
as "an imperative video which succeeds
brilliantly." She is known
for the humor she instills in films
and for tackling challenging material and
making abstract subject matter accessible. Feferman works in
film and video all over the
world.
The Kuhn Foundation
The Kuhn Foundation, based in Irvine and Pasadena, California,
operates cultural, educational, scientific and humanitarian
projects, including the sponsorship of classical music performances
and productions in various countries, the pursuit and dissemination
of new knowledge in science and scholarship, and the conduct of
various activities to promote cultural exchanges, media education
and good relations between the United States of America and the
People's Republic of China.
Current projects include the Closer To Truth television
series and interactive Web site, www.closertotruth.com,
which brings together leading scientists, scholars and
artists to debate the fundamental issues of our times,
particularly using a sophisticated new mechanism for deliberate
discourse on the Web – HyperForum -- developed at Caltech and
supported by The Markle Foundation.
The Kuhn Foundation works with two leading international
conductors, Yoshikazu Fukumura of Japan and Loris Tjeknavorian of
Armenia, and is producing a documentary on the life and music of the
Russian-Armenian composer Aram Khachaturian, in association with
Peter Rosen Productions. In January 2000, in cooperation with the
Information Office of the State Council of China and the United
States Embassy in Beijing, the Kuhn Foundation organized and hosted
a special closed conference bringing together leaders of media from
China and America.
The Foundation's Chairman, Dr. Robert Lawrence Kuhn, is an
internationally known investment banker and corporate strategist,
author, editor, and public speaker, who has long-established
relationships in the People's Republic of China. He is president of The
Geneva Companies, a leading mergers and acquisitions firm for
private business in the United States, and managing director of
Salomon Smith Barney, a division of Citigroup.
The Kuhn Foundation is incorporated as an Operating Foundation
under IRS guidelines.
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