About
Meet the Team
Closer To Truth is created, executive produced, written, and hosted by Dr. Robert Lawrence Kuhn
Robert Lawrence Kuhn
Dr. Robert Lawrence Kuhn is the creator, executive producer, writer, and host of Closer To Truth, widely recognized as the definitive global resource of the greatest thinkers exploring the deepest questions in science, philosophy, and religion/theology, questions shared by all human beings: Cosmos (cosmology, fundamental physics, philosophy of science); Life (philosophy of biology and evolution); Mind/Consciousness (brain/mind, landscape of consciousness, personal identity, free will, psi/parapsychology, altered states, AI consciousness, philosophy of mind); and Meaning (global philosophy of religion, science/religion, philosophical theology, critical thinking). Dr. Kuhn created and recorded Closer To Truth’s first season in 1999, and it was first broadcast in 2000. Over its almost 30 years, Closer To Truth has featured more than 500 leading scientists, philosophers, and diverse creative thinkers in more than 5,000 videos and more than 350 public television episodes on PBS stations. New conversations are produced regularly for the Closer To Truth website and the Closer To Truth YouTube channel (subscribers, >700,000).
Dr. Kuhn is an expert on consciousness, with a doctorate in brain research, more than 25 years of interviewing leading scientists and philosophers on Closer To Truth, and having written field-shaping papers and articles on consciousness. His 2024 landmark paper, “A landscape of consciousness: Toward a taxonomy of explanations and implications,” in Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology, set a new standard for classifying theories of consciousness (with over 200 scientific/scholarly citations). His expanded Landscape of Consciousness website features more than 500 theories and is widely cited. Subsequent work has appeared in New Scientist, Current Neurology and Neuroscience Reports, and the Journal of Consciousness Studies. He has a PhD in anatomy/neuroscience from UCLA’s Brain Research Institute and an SM in Management (MBA) from MIT’s Sloan School of Management.
Dr. Kuhn is the author or editor of over 30 books, including The Mystery of Existence: Why is there Anything At All? (with John Leslie); Closer To Truth: Challenging Current Belief; Closer To Truth: Science, Meaning and the Future; and The Origin and Significance of Zero (with Peter Gobets). His articles include “Why This Universe,” “Levels of Nothing,” and “Virtual Immortality” (Skeptic magazine) and “Science as Democratizer” (American Scientist).
Dr. Kuhn is a renowned China expert, international corporate strategist and investment banker, and public intellectual. For more than 35 years, Dr. Kuhn has worked with China’s leaders and advised the Chinese government. He was awarded the “China Reform Friendship Medal” by President Xi on the 40th anniversary of China’s historic reform and opening up. The Medal honors 10 foreigners who contributed to China over the four decades. Only five of the Medal winners are living; Dr. Kuhn is one of only two Americans. He is said to be “one of the Western world’s most prolific interpreters of Beijing’s policies.” He is the author of How China’s Leaders Think (featuring President Xi), and The Man Who Changed China: The Life and Legacy of Jiang Zemin (the first biography of a living Chinese leader published in China and China’s best-selling book of 2005, and again, briefly, after Jiang’s death in 2022). His forthcoming book is Xi Jinping’s New-Era China: The Inside Story. He is chairman of The Kuhn Foundation.
The Kuhn Foundation
The Kuhn Foundation operates educational, cultural, and science/philosophy projects: the pursuit and dissemination of new knowledge and understanding in science and philosophy, the production of classical music events, and informational exchanges between the United States and China. Currently, The Kuhn Foundation’s primary project is the production and broadcast of the public television/PBS stations series Closer To Truth along with its website and YouTube channel.
Previously, The Kuhn Foundation produced the critically acclaimed film Khachaturian on the life and music of the Armenian-Soviet composer, which won the Best Documentary award at the 2003 Hollywood Film Festival, and a series of award-winning China-related documentaries. The Kuhn Foundation was founded and funded by Dr. Robert Lawrence Kuhn, who is its chairman.
Peter Getzels
Peter Getzels is the Emmy Award-winning producer/director emeritus and co-creator of Closer To Truth. He comes to filmmaking as an anthropologist, explorer, and mountaineer. Getzels is noted for high-concept, cutting-edge films that have been distributed around the world. A seasoned filmmaker of observational narratives, he has worked in over 40 countries. Getzels conducted his fieldwork in the Peruvian Andes, spent a winter in the Himalayan villages of Ladakh, and kayaked from north to south along the coast of Vietnam. His films have taken him to war zones, to hill tribes in Southeast Asia, to ships in the South Pacific, and up some of the world’s highest peaks.
Recent award-winning feature length theatrical documentaries include The Penguin Counters, filmed in the Antarctic, as well as Harvest of Empire, which won Best of Independent documentaries from Cine Golden Eagle, Best Documentary from the Imagen Foundation, and the ABC News Video Source Award from the IDA, among other awards.
Getzels has worked in China on many projects, including as series director/producer of the Emmy Award-winning China’s Challenges. He has a BA in Anthropology & Comparative Religion (Bowdoin College), an M.Sc. in Anthropology (London School of Economics), and an MFA (National Film and TV School, England). He has worked as staff producer in the BBC Science Department, as well as staff director and series producer at National Geographic.
Getzels also ran the boutique production company Getzels Gordon Productions (G2), which produced Closer To Truth from 2006 to 2026. Based in Oxford, England for sixteen years and later in Washington, DC, G2 specialized in science, anthropology, adventure, and religion, pushing the boundaries of observational storytelling, with a long track record of award-winning documentaries made for British, American, European, and Chinese television.
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Closer To Truth is privileged to be supported / funded, in part, by the following foundations:
