What am I? What is This?

It only took ten minutes for Candice Sanderson’s life to change completely. As a clinically trained psychologist, she was entirely unprepared to understand the nature of an energetic message she would receive one August morning on her drive to work. This event would mark the beginning of her journey as a channeler and medium, the results of which she has published in her latest book, “The Reluctant Messenger - Tales From Beyond Belief”. Her teachers have become ours, as we move behind the veil of the physical to uncover the subtle nature of intention, thought, and the domain from which we emerge.

How could it be that selves, complete with aims, striving to remain alive have emerged from cause-and-effect physics? What was the origin of "mattering" and how might it have appeared on Earth? In his book, "Neither Ghost Nor Machine", Jeremy Sherman along with collaborator Terrence Deacon, outline a testable hypothesis which may soon prove that life is indeed possible under simple chemical circumstances.

In Michael Graziano's latest book, "Consciousness and the Social Brain", we're introduced to a theory wherein the mechanism responsible for interpreting the attentional state of others may be responsible for our sense of self-awareness.

How have deeply held, Western paradigms of the mind-body dualism been reinforced by the technology of computing? What purchase, if any, do such approaches have on the intelligences of the arts? In his vastly interdisciplinary book, "Making Sense" professor Simon Penny (simonpenny.net) explores the dynamical experience of embedded, situated cognition, while addressing the fundamental limitations of traditional computing rhetoric as it applies to embodied intelligence.

Together with paleoanthropologist Sang-Hee Lee, we take a journey millions of years into the past to unearth the mysterious origins of Homo sapiens. Do we owe a debt of gratitude to Neanderthals for our capacity for speech? Why did we stand up, and at what cost? What does the future hold as our bodies continue to evolve? In her latest book, "Close Encounters with Humankind" professor Lee answers these questions and countless more, revealing much about what it means to be human.

In her landmark book, “The Power of Eight”, journalist and author Lynne McTaggart (www.lynnemctaggart.com) opens our eyes to the healing potency of positive intention. Building on decades of rigorous scientific research on the capacity of human intention to affect the physical world, Lynne expands her focus to test the power of the collective will to heal individuals, and even entire regions of the world embroiled in conflict. Along the way, surprising results of these experiments reveal a reciprocal healing effect which may turn the self-help industry on its head.

In her book, "On Living", Kerry Egan shares the stories of her terminally-ill patients as together, they do the difficult work of healing, forgiving, and finding meaning at the end of their lives. Each story is a glimpse of perspective, a lesson gleaned from those whose little remaining time sheds light on what matters most in life.

Psychiatrist, professor and author Dr. Bernard Beitman gives shape and clarity to the amorphous phenomenon of coincidence in his book, "Connecting with Coincidence". The first psychiatrist since Carl Jung to systematize the study of synchronicity, Dr. Beitman offers a roadmap for recognizing and utilizing coincidence as a tool for making assured decisions, while offering theoretical explanations founded in neuroscience and metaphysics.

At the frontier of theoretical physics emerges a theory which may hold the key to understanding some of science and philosophy's greatest questions. The Holographic Theory of the universe, as discussed in Jude Currivan's latest book, "The Cosmic Hologram", offers the possibility of reconciling Quantum Mechanics with Einstein's Theory of Relativity, while revealing the universe at its most fundamental to be an evolving, in-formed, in-formation-based system where consciousness is at once an emergent and co-creative element toward its evolution.

In this premier episode, I chat with Marcus Chown about his latest book, "The Ascent of Gravity". The first force to be described is today, the least understood. Along the path toward understanding the quixotic nature of gravity, we'll embark on a centuries-long journey across wildly disparate landscapes of physics, beginning with a Newtonian perspective and ending in the curious realm of cosmic holography.