Wednesdays, March 26 - April 9, 2025 at 11 p.m. on KPBS TV / Stream now with the PBS app
In SEARCHING: OUR QUEST FOR MEANING IN THE AGE OF SCIENCE, physicist and best-selling author Alan Lightman investigates how key findings of modern science help us find our bearings in the cosmos. What do these new discoveries tell us about ourselves, and how do we find meaning in them?
Throughout the highly cinematic three-part series, Alan takes viewers along on his journey of exploration from prehistoric paintings in a French cave to a giant subatomic particle accelerator in Switzerland; from a Harvard laboratory where biologists are attempting to create living cells from scratch to the gravitational wave observatories that first detected the collisions of black holes; and to the quiet of a Buddhist temple.
We travel from the infinity of the small to the infinity of the large, meeting with the co-discoverer of one of the most distant galaxies yet known.
EPISODE GUIDE:
Part 1, "The Stars & The Osprey" Wednesday, March 26 at 11 p.m. on KPBS TV - This episode 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" Wednesday, April 1 at 11 p.m. on KPBS TV - This episode 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 an advanced android and then a rabbi, a bio-ethicist, and the Dalai Lama about whether such a being could achieve consciousness and whether we could unplug her without asking permission.
Part 3, "Homo Techno" Wednesday, April 9 at 11 p.m. on KPBS TV - This episode features stories—including that of a paralyzed former gang member who received brain implants allowing him to move a robotic arm by pure thought—that prompt Lightman to think about how advances in science and technology are causing us to evolve into a new species, Homo Techno, part human and part machine. What essential qualities will we want to preserve? Curiosity? Anger? Love?
Watch On Your Schedule: This series is available to stream with the PBS app. Watch the best of PBS anytime, anywhere on the free PBS app. Stream your favorite PBS shows on-demand and livestream shows from your local station, all from your favorite device.
Distributed by American Public Television
