All religions, at their core, are the same; this remarkable claim is made by Huston Smith, bestselling author and professor of comparative religion at Syracuse University, MIT and the University of California, Berkeley. Raised a Methodist, Smith also practices yoga, prays five times daily as Muslims do, and joyfully joins his daughter and her Jewish husband in observing the Sabbath. He has traveled around the world 10 times, visiting ashrams and temples, synagogues and mosques, zen masters and swamies.

His book The World’s Religions has sold more than 2.5 million copies worldwide since 1959, and is considered one of the defining treatises on the subject. In this series of conversations with renowned journalist Bill Moyers, Smith provides thoughtful insights into the world’s largest religions with these compelling episodes: Hinduism and Buddhism, Confucianism, Christianity and Judaism, Islam, and A Personal Philosophy — and how, taken at their best, they provide universal truths that unite and define the human spirit. (1996)