I致e often thought TV critics existed to prove that not everyone needs algebra, but I知 beginning to think some advanced physics might not have been a bad prerequisite.

It痴 not the nearly 90 minutes that PBS devoted to an upcoming "Nova" presentation on string theory here earlier in the month that has me feeling science-challenged so much as the realization that the Big Thinkers � people like Nobel-winning physicist Richard Feynman � are beginning to have an influence on television that extends well beyond "Star Trek."

One of the most talked-about shows of the fall season is CBS' 'Joan of Arcadia," in which a young girl named Joan (Amber Tamblyn) gets messages from God. (Fox, meanwhile, has a show in which a young girl gets messages from souvenirs, as well as one in which a young girl gets messages from dead people, suggesting a trend that those who treat and study schizophrenia might need to be concerned about.)

Any worry that creator Barbara Hall ("Judging Amy") would be charging into "Touched by an Angel" territory was pretty much dispelled when Hall started talking about her approach to God.

"My own spiritual beliefs and my belief approaching the show come from science, come from physics," she said Sunday. "I'm kind of a physics buff�and I actually told my writing staff they had to read these physics books. And they just kind of laughed. And then yesterday, I had to go and say, 'You really have to read these physics books.' Because � it痴 so clear when you take a look at physics how little we understand. We are really the fish who don稚 know that they池e in water."

Asked for a reading list � we may take our shoes off to do higher math, but a lot of us do read � Hall mentioned Leonard Mlodinow's "Feynman痴 Rainbow: A Search for Beauty in Physics and Life," K.C. Cole's "First You Build a Cloud: And Other Reflections on Physics as Way of Life" and T. Lee Baumann's "God at the Speed of Light," as well as Julian Jaynes' "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind," which she described as "a book that explores�why early man actually thought he or she heard voices."