FEATURED EXPERTS

HOST/NARRATOR - JONATHAN MILLER

COLIN MCGINN
Colin McGinn was educated at Oxford University. He has written widely on philosophy and philosophers in such publications as the New York Review of Books, the London Review of Books, the New Republic, and the New York Times Book Review. McGinn has written sixteen previous books, including The Mysterious Flame; The Character of the Mind; Ethics, Evil, and Fiction; the novel Space Trap; a memoir, The Making of a Philosopher; and, most recently, The Power of Movies, and Mindsight: Image, Dream, Meaning. He has taught philosophy at University College of London, Oxford, and Rutgers University, and is currently distinguished professor of philosophy at the University of Miami.

STEVEN WEINBERG
Steven Weinberg was educated at Cornell, Copenhagen, and Princeton, and taught at Columbia, Berkeley, M.I.T., and Harvard, where from 1973 to 1982 he was Higgins Professor of Physics. In 1982 he moved to The University of Texas at Austin and founded its Theory Group. At Texas he holds the Josey Regental Chair of Science and is a member of the Physics and Astronomy Departments. His research has spanned a broad range of topics in quantum field theory, elementary particle physics, and cosmology, and has been honored with numerous awards, including the Nobel Prize in Physics, the National Medal of Science, the Heinemann Prize in Mathematical Physics, the Cresson Medal of the Franklin Institute, the Madison Medal of Princeton University, and the Oppenheimer Prize.

ARTHUR MILLER
In the period immediately following the end of World War II, American theater was transformed by the work of playwright Arthur Miller. Profoundly influenced by the Depression and the war that immediately followed it, Miller tapped into a sense of dissatisfaction and unrest within the greater American psyche. His probing dramas, including “All My Sons,” “Death of a Salesman” and “The Crucible,” proved to be both the conscience and redemption of the times, allowing people an honest view of the direction the country had taken. More than any other playwright working today, Arthur Miller has dedicated himself to the investigation of the moral plight of the white American working class. With a sense of realism and a strong ear for the American vernacular, Miller has created characters whose voices are an important part of the American landscape. His insight into the psychology of desperation and his ability to create stories that express the deepest meanings of struggle, have made him one of the most highly regarded and widely performed American playwrights. In his eighty-fifth year, Miller remains an active and important part of American theater.

RICHARD DAWKINS
Richard Dawkins holds the Charles Simonyi Chair of Public Understanding of Science in Oxford, and as such he takes a high profile role in the exposition and elucidation of scientific ideas in our culture. He’s eminently well placed to do so, being himself one of science’s most innovative thinkers. His first book, The Selfish Gene, made a huge impact back in 1976, with its message of the central role of genes in evolution. There followed a stream of more books, all with highly poetic titles - The Blind Watchmaker, River Out of Eden, Climbing Mount Improbable, Unweaving The Rainbow, and most recently A Devil’s Chaplain, each offering further development and commentary upon Darwin’s concept of Natural Selection. There is one book whose title is not poetic - The Extended Phenotype - which Dawkins himself believes marks his biggest claim to scientific innovation. The many honors he’s received include both a fellowship of the Royal Society, and a fellowship of the Royal Society of Literature.

DENYS TURNER
Denys Turner (DPhil Oxford University;BA and MA in Philosophy at University College, Dublin) was appointed Horace Tracy Pitkin Professor of Historical Theology in 2005. He taught political and moral philosophy at University College, Dublin from 1967-1976, when he moved to the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at the University of Bristol, in 1995 taking up the HG Wood Chair of Theology at the University of Birmingham. In 1999 he was elected to the Norris-Hulse Chair of Divinity at the University of Cambridge. He is the author of Marxism and Christianity, Oxford: Blackwell, 1983, Eros and Allegory, Medieval Exegesis of the Song of Songs, Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1995, The Darkness of God, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995, Faith Seeking, London: SCM Press, 2002, and Faith, Reason and the Existence of God, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004, as well as many articles and papers on political and social theory in relation to Christian theology, and on medieval thought, especially the traditions of ‘mystical theology’.

DANIEL C. DENNETT
Daniel C. Dennett, the author of Breaking the Spell (Viking, 2006), Freedom Evolves (Viking Penguin, 2003) and Darwin’s Dangerous Idea (Simon &Schuster, 1995), is University Professor and Austin B. Fletcher Professor of Philosophy, and Co-Director of the Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University. He lives with his wife in North Andover, Massachusetts, and has a daughter, a son, and a grandson. He was born in Boston in 1942, the son of a historian by the same name, and received his B.A. in philosophy from Harvard in 1963. He then went to Oxford to work with Gilbert Ryle, under whose supervision he completed the D.Phil. in philosophy in 1965. He taught at U.C. Irvine from 1965 to 1971, when he moved to Tufts, where he has taught ever since, aside from periods visiting at Harvard, Pittsburgh, Oxford, and the École Normale Supérieure in Paris. He was the Co-founder (in 1985) and Co-director of the Curricular Software Studio at Tufts, and has helped to design museum exhibits on computers for the Smithsonian Institution, the Museum of Science in Boston, and the Computer Museum in Boston.