Part 1, "The Stars & The Osprey," begins with Lightman's late-night experience alone on the ocean when he felt connected to the stars, and ends with a memorable eye-to-eye encounter with a wild creature. Lightman attempts to reconcile these transcendent experiences with the material world of atoms and molecules.
Part 2, "The Big & The Small," dramatizes the fact that humans are almost exactly the same distance - in terms of "Powers of Ten" - between an atom and a star. But where do we fit in the moral universe? Alan speaks with the Dalai Lama, a rabbi and a bio-ethicist about the nature of consciousness, and the status of future Artificial Intelligences.
Part 3, "Homo Techno," features stories - including that of a paralyzed former gang member who risked his brain to advance medical science - that prompt Lightman to think deeply about how advances in science and technology will impact our future evolution into what will perhaps be a new species: "Homo Techno" - part human and part machine. What essential human qualities will we want to preserve? As both a physicist and an essayist, Lightman is a rare talent. After years on the faculties of Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Lightman's first novel, Einstein's Dreams, became an international best-seller. Co-written and directed by award-winning public television science producer Geoff Haines-Stiles (Carl Sagan's COSMOS, NOVA's "Is Anybody Out there," and Childhood), SEARCHING is filmed in Ultra HD format worldwide, and features state-of-the-art astronomical computer graphics along with a wide range of innovative story-telling techniques.
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