New Public Television Series "Closer to Truth"
Harnesses Intellectual Energy of Today's Most Influential Minds

What would happen if you brought together the world's most important thinkers to discuss the world's most important topics? Strategist, scientist and author Robert Lawrence Kuhn believes that if you could harness the intellectual energy of today's most influential minds, new truths to some of the greatest questions facing mankind could emerge. This was the premise from which Kuhn created Closer to Truth, a television series so different that it goes by a new classification of television programming, called "knowledge affairs."

Closer to Truth, is a new multi-media television series that brings viewers face-to-face with more than fifty of the greatest contemporary thinkers in America. Over the course of 28 lively roundtable discussions, these leading scientists and creative personalities share their insights into timely and compelling issues such as the workings of the brain and mind, genetic engineering, artificial intelligence, longevity, sex and gender, creative and innovative thinking, the beginnings and endings of the universe, the nature of consciousness, and the beauty of quantum physics. No other television program brings viewers inside the major debates now raging within lecture halls and research labs around the world with such immediacy and candor.

In orchestrating Closer to Truth, Kuhn has assembled a veritable "Who's Who" in the world of ideas -- from mainstream to avant-garde -- all brought together in electric combinations that spark with light and heat. They reflect a diversity of age, gender, culture and philosophy, and each brings to the debate his or her own unique perspective, knowledge and opinion. For viewers at home, it's an unparalleled opportunity to watch these intellectual all-stars in action and discover where they stand on the most fundamental and controversial issues of our time. 
Kuhn, an investment banker who was trained in brain science, presides over the series. Kuhn believes that by listening in on the conversations among these great thinkers, viewers can access the advancing knowledge and experience the state-of-the-art ideas that are impacting more and more of our business and personal lives. "That's why we call Closer to Truth 'knowledge affairs' television," adds Kuhn. "It's TV designed to excite viewers' minds with the energy of new ideas that would otherwise be unavailable to them." 

The episodes of Closer to Truth's first season fall into five categories: mind and brain; health and sex; creativity and thinking; technology and society; and universe and meaning. The topic for each episode's discussion is set forth as a question in the program's title. In the premiere episode, "What are the Grand Questions of Science?", five top scientists and thinkers join Kuhn to rank today's biggest scientific questions and discuss the mega-revolutions about to happen in areas that range from consciousness to cosmology. Guests are astrophysicist and Hayden Planetarium director Neil deGrasse Tyson; author and astronomer Timothy Ferris; evolutionary geneticist Francisco Ayala; neuroscience philosopher Patricia Smith Churchland; and California Institute of Technology's provost and theoretical physicist Steve Koonin.

Future episodes include appearances by Dr. Leon Lederman, Nobel Laureate in Physics; John Searle, philosopher; Dr. Marvin Minsky, co-founder of MIT's Artificial Intelligence Lab; Francis Fukuyama, political scientist; Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, creativity expert; Dr. Wendy Freedman, Hubble Telescope researcher; Edward de Bono, creativity educator; Stephen J. Cannell, television producer and novelist; W. French Anderson, considered the "father of gene therapy"; Dr. Sherwin Nuland, Yale surgeon and author of How We Die, and Marilyn Schlitz, parapsychologist.

A companion book to the series will be published in Summer 2000 by McGraw-Hill, which has selected Closer to Truth to be one of its first trade science books. McGraw-Hill writes: "There is considerable hunger out there for scientific ideas, and we see our relationship as a partnership, building the franchise that is Closer To Truth." An idea-centered website, created by frequent series guest, planetary scientist and futurist Dr. Bruce C. Murray of Caltech, is accessible (May 2000) at www.closertotruth.com. 

Robert Lawrence Kuhn holds a Ph.D. in anatomy/brain research from UCLA, an MS in management from MIT's Sloan School, and a BA in human biology from Johns Hopkins. He is president of The Geneva Companies, the largest mergers and acquisitions firm in America representing private, middle market companies. He has written more than 25 books on business strategy, creativity and innovation, and other topics. Kuhn's 90-minute public television special, "In Search of China," will be broadcast nationally on PBS in Summer 2000.

Closer to Truth is a co-production of public television station KOCE/Huntington Beach and K2 Media Productions. The program is distributed by the American Public Television (formerly American Program Service), a major source of programming for the nation's public television stations. Executive Producer: Niki Vettel; Producer: Lionel Schaen; Directors: George Merliss and Tedd Tramaloni; Editor: Tedd Tramaloni. Executive Producer for KOCE: Mel Rogers; Executive in Charge of Production: Roberta K. Smith; Producer Ed. Miskevich.