Origins are conversations with thought-leaders across an eclectic mix of disciplines (science, engineering, art, and design), crafted specifically for the category-defying society that we live in. We explore the thoughts, passions, and stories that defined these pioneers’ fascinating trajectories, a…
Susan Magsamen makes her life at the frontier: the frontier of neuroscience, of institutional change, of the intersection of art and science. Her's is a life full of wisdom for how to live amongst mystery and befriend complexity.Origins Podcast WebsiteFlourishing Commons NewsletterShow Notes:spontaneous "you are my sunshine" (02:00)T. S. Eliot (08:00)implementation science (08:40)therapeutic recreation (11:00)Trabian Shorters and asset framing (15:00)Daniel Kahneman (16:00)neuroplasticity (22:30)Howard Gardner and Kurt Fisher and Mind, Brain, and Education Program at Harvard (26:15)Karl Alexander (27:30)Curiosity Kits (28:30)NeuroArts (32:00)Gileadby Marilynne Robinson (36:00)more than scientific knowledge (38:00)"Social Support and the Perception of Geographical Slant" (45:00)Resmaa Menakem (46:30)NeuroArts Blueprint Initiative (46:40)"Cirque du Soleil and the neuroscience of awe" on Vox (47:40)Global Watering Hole (51:30)Renée Fleming Neuroarts Investigator Awards (52:30)Rachel Naomi Remen (56:30)Lightning Round (01:03:00)Book: Silent Spring by Rachel CarsonPassion: horseback ridingHeart sing: grandchildrenScrewed up: articulation in these timesFind Susan online:International Arts + Mind LabLogo artwork by Cristina GonzalezMusic by swelo on all streaming platforms or @swelomusic on social media
Origins Podcast WebsiteHello friends, a new season of Origins arrives next week, on Tuesday, May 20. This next chapter of Origins is about exploring conversation, that great practice of placing two things next to one another and allowing them to be astonished by the other. It is also about exploring the collective narrative of our time. This trailer is both introduction and meditation on how Origins is more than a podcast: a space for collective inquiry into living well in a fractured world.Over on Substack we're cultivating not just conversation but community—a space for listening, reflection, and co-creation. This season, you'll find templates born from the gatherings surrounding some of these episodes: guides for more generative encounters, wider conversations, and more generous questions. These tools aren't prescriptions, but invitations.Flourishing Commons Newsletter
Few concepts are more important to our society than resilience. Agnostic of domain, of nation, culture, and scale (as vital, indeed, to the individual life as to the planetary civilization), it would be impossible to overstate the pressure on us to understand it. If resilience is a core competency of our time, it would not be hyperbole to say that Dr. David Woods one of our most important thinkers. Origins Podcast WebsiteFlourishing Commons NewsletterShow Notes:three mile island (07:20)resilience engineering (12:30)the theory of graceful extensibility (12:30)The Risk Society by Ulrich Beck (13:10)how do you know? (14:00)scientific revolutions and paradigm shifts (15:00)retrenchment vs revitalization (16:00)the novelty inequality (28:00)Simon DeDeo on Origins (28:30)Mars Climate Orbiter report (31:00)'faster, better, cheaper' pressure (32:00)Erik Hollnagle and Efficiency-Thoroughness Trade-Off principle (33:30)graceful extensibility (36:20)Douglas Hofstadter and strange loops (41:00)SNAFU catchers (42:00)dialectic between the individual and collective (44:00)Arnold Toynbee (45:00)multi-hazards and changing climate (52:20)John Doyle (54:00)Elinor Ostrom and reciprocity (54:20)Lightning Round (01:01:30):Book: Gödel, Escher, Bach by Douglas HofstadterPassion: History and Atlas of Great Lakes Indian History by Helen Hornbeck TannerHeart sing: graceful extensibility and resilience engineering video seriesScrewed up: building interfaces to the knowledge of resilienceFind David online:Ohio State University siteLogo artwork by Cristina GonzalezMusic by swelo on all streaming platforms or @swelomusic on social media
Paul Smaldino is an explorer. That might seem like an odd way to describe a professor of cognitive science, but anyone who has glanced at his biography will recognize that he lives his life in exploration. His scholarship as his life are inspiration for keeping the lines of inquiry wide open and the things we can discover in doing so.Origins Podcast WebsiteFlourishing Commons NewsletterShow Notes:The Dancing Wu Li Masters (08:00)The Quantum and the Lotus (12:30)Sagehood (15:00)J. Krishnamurti and David Bohm (17:00)Simone de Beauvoir (18:00)Science as an ongoing process of flourishing (18:15)Jeffrey Shank (26:00)Richard McElreath (27:40)"Cultural group selection plays an essential role in explaining human cooperation" Richardson et al. (28:00)"Social conformity despite individual preferences for distinctiveness" (35:00)"Maintaining transient diversity is a general principle for improving collective problem solving" Smaldino et al. (38:00)Philip Kitcher (46:00)explore-exploit tradeoff (46:10)replication crisis (49:00)The Knowledge Machine Strevens (50:30)"Echo chambers and epistemic bubbles" by C Thi Nguyen (53:00)"Interdisciplinarity can aid the spread of better methods between scientific communities" Smaldino and O'Connor (56:00)Wicked problems (56:30)C Thi Nguyen on Origins (57:00)Flourishing (58:00)Lightning round (01:05:00):Book: Dune by Frank Herbert or Culture and the Evolutionary Process by Boyd and RichersonPassion: film and musicHeart sing: two kidsFind Paul online: WebsiteLogo artwork by Cristina GonzalezMusic by swelo on all streaming platforms or @swelomusic on social media
I've been following John Paul Lederach's work for years, finding the words he uses inordinately relevant to all of the details and spaces of my life. John Paul is Professor of International Peacebuilding at the Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at Notre Dame. He has been a teacher to me across time and space and I believe the ideas he brings into the world are teachers we all need for the world we are walking into. Origins Podcast WebsiteFlourishing Commons NewsletterShow Notes:Vocation (12:00)The Moral Imagination: The Art and Soul of Building Peaceby John Paul (12:30)Rumi poetry and the reed flute (19:00)Ongoingness (21:00)Peacebuilding (21:20)Pádraig Ó Tuama (31:00)wonder, wander, and wait (36:00)'bearing witness to more of the complexity of the other' (37:30)collective empathy (40:00)Paulo Freire (44:00)critical yeast (46:00)Francisco Varela and "The Logic of Paradise" (54:00)Mind and Life Dialogues (54:00)Poetry (55:00)Eduardo Galeano (56:00)Donald Hall (01:03:00)Ai-jen Poo (01:11:00)Lightning Round (01:05:00)Book: Tomorrow's Child by Rubem Alves Passion: poetry and physicsHeart sing: podcastingScrewed up: the significance and challenge of patienceFind John Paul online:https://www.johnpaullederach.com/Logo artwork by Cristina GonzalezMusic by swelo on all streaming platforms or @swelomusic on social media
Flourishing is not a fixed state; it is an unfolding. In this time of rupture we need encounters with flourishing, to know it in our lived experiences individually and collectively. In this transformative event on December 12, 2024, Ryan McGranaghan, host of the Origins Podcast and founder of the Flourishing Salons, engaged in a moving conversation with four profound provocateurs and a wider community of artists, designers, engineers, scientists, educators, and contemplatives. The event was co-hosted by Flourishing Salons and the Cultural Programs of the National Academy of Sciences (CPNAS) DC Art and Science Evening Rendezvous (DASER).Origins Podcast WebsiteFlourishing Commons NewsletterShow Notes:Video of the event (link) and event page (link)Opening remarks - JD Talasek, Cultural Programs of the National Academy of Sciences (03:30)DC Art Science Evening Rendezvous (03:30)Ryan McGranaghan framing (05:50)Flourishing Salons (06:00)Rainer Maria Rilke "Let This Darkness Be a Bell Tower" (07:30)Elizabeth Alexander (09:00)James Suzman (09:40)Danielle Allen (09:40)John Paul Lederach and critical yeast (12:00)Audrey Tang (12:50)David Whyte (13:10)"Knowledge Commons and the Future of Democracy" (14:00)Simone Weil (18:00)American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting (19:00)'Flourishing Summits' (19:45)Susan Magsamen provocation (20:15)Julie Demuth provocation (34:00)Jennifer Wiseman provocation (45:00)Dan Jay provocation (56:15)Salon discussion (01:11:00)Find the guests online:Susan MagsamenJulie DemuthJennifer WisemanDan JayLogo artwork by Cristina GonzalezMusic by swelo on all streaming platforms or @swelomusic on social media
Natalie (Talia, as she goes by) Stroud has for years been studying the ways that our lives online show up in and shape our lives together. Her scholarship as her life are unexampled guides to the tumult, the challenges, and the opportunity presented by the advent and evolution of digital media. Origins Podcast WebsiteFlourishing Commons NewsletterShow Notes:Federal Communications Committee "Information Needs of Communities" (08:10)Kathleen Hall Jamieson (08:50)Center for Media Engagement (11:00)Niche News (12:00)Governing the Commonsby Elinor Ostrom (17:00)Understanding Knowledge As a Commonsby Hess and Ostrom (17:30)Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI by Yuval Noah Harari (17:40)'crisis discipline' (e.g., Michael Soulé) (18:00)Danielle Allen on relationality (20:00)New_ Public (22:20)Civic Signals (23:50 & 32:00)Talia's research with Meta around 2020 presidential election (26:00)Eli Pariser (34:00)Great Asking episode of Origins (35:00)the four building blocks of a healthy or flourishing digital community (37:30)what does it mean to flourish? (39:00)Umberto Eco and lists (42:20)trust (43:00)Martha Nussbaum (46:20)public imagination (51:00)Healing the Heart of Democracyby Parker Palmer (55:20)Lightning Round (55:40)Book: The Nature and Origins of Public Opinions by John Zaller Passion: business and marketing 'beach read' booksHeart Sing: election integrityScrewed up: reducing polarization in ways practical and scalableFind Talia online:UT Austin'Five-Cut Fridays' five-song music playlist series Talia's playlistLogo artwork by Cristina GonzalezMusic by swelo on all streaming platforms or @swelomusic on social media
Simon DeDeo's inquiry takes on the most immense topics: astrophysics, history, epistemology, culture. He brings the precision of a physicist, the capability of a data scientist, and the sensibility of a philosopher to thinking about how we live our lives; and his polymathic life might be the example we need to make sense of the world we are walking into, one requiring an evolution to our way of studying and understanding.Origins Podcast WebsiteFlourishing Commons NewsletterShow Notes:David Spergel (08:40)The Santa Fe Institute (14:10)The Village Vanguard in New York City (16:30)The Applicability of Mathematics as a Philosophical Problem by Mark Steiner (24:30)Murray Gell-Mann (25:00)"The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences" by Eugene Wigner (26:00)"The civilizing process in London's Old Bailey" Klingenstein et al (27:30)Michael Tomasello (31:50)Michael Palmer "Lies of the Poem" (34:50)Phenomenology of Spirit by Hegel (37:20)Gregory Bateson "Where is the mind?" (40:20)The CANDOR corpus (42:50)Judith Donath on Origins (48:10)Marshall McLuhan (49:00)Science of Science (49:10)"New and atypical combinations: An assessment of novelty and interdisciplinarity" (49:10)Helen Vendler (51:20)The Anxiety of Influenceby Harold Bloom (53:00)C Thi Nguyen on Origins (57:00)The Scientific Landscape of Human Flourishing (58:00)eudaimonia (58:30)thumos (59:00)Lightning Round (01:04:50)Book: American Pastoral by Philip Roth Passion: exerciseHeart sing: narrativeScrewed up: teaching and mentoringFind Simon online:WebsiteLogo artwork by Cristina GonzalezMusic by swelo on all streaming platforms or @swelomusic on social media
Lindy Elkins-Tanton is one of the world's foremost scientists. Couple that with an unprecedented understanding of how teams work and a sense of care that is exceedingly rare in our world and you recognize her for what she is: altogether unexampled. Her's is a story of exploration, of universe, of planet, of society, and of self. Origins Podcast WebsiteFlourishing Commons NewsletterShow Notes:Her memoir: A Portrait of the Scientist as a Young Woman (04:40)A Feeling for the Organism by Fox Keller (11:40)Tronto and Fisher on an ethics of care (14:40)ongoingness and Danielle Allen (15:30)The Great Askers (Episode 1 on Origins and an essay) (23:00)Rubric for assessing the excellence of questions (24:15)Psyche mission (26:00)The Science of Team Science (26:30)The Interplanetary Initiative at Arizona State (44:00)Worldbuilding and NK Jemisin (47:00)Dawnby Octavia Butler (47:20)Lightning Round (49:20)Book: The Captive Mindby Czesław MiłoszPassion: living and working with animalsHeart sing: photographing and mosaicking Screwed up: early relationshipsFind Lindy online:https://lindyelkinstanton.com/'Five-Cut Fridays' five-song music playlist series Lindy's playlistLogo artwork by Cristina GonzalezMusic by swelo on all streaming platforms or @swelomusic on social media
It would feel wrong to place labels on Jane Hirshfield. Language would fail to reach there, ironic for someone who has devoted their life to the practice of poetry and the practice of Zen Buddhism. Jane is a modern master, change-maker, and wise and winsome voice. Origins Podcast WebsiteFlourishing Commons NewsletterShow Notes:The Ritual Process by Victor Turner (09:30)nonattachment (14:00)Poem: "My Skeleton" (21:30)Poem: "For What Binds Us" (28:20, read 33:00)Poets for Science (29:10; 56:30)Silent Spring by Rachel Carson (31:00)Poem: "Let Them Not Say" (32:10)Gary Snyder (32:00)Palimpsest (36:20)Poem: "My Hunger" (42:20)Poem: "I Sat in the Sun" (45:30)Man's Search for Meaningby Victor Frankl (48:00)Neti Neti (49:00)Poem: "Possibility: An Assay" (50:30)Stuart Kauffman's theory of adjacent possible (55:30)The 'assay' form of poetry (56:30)Poets for Science in New York Times (57:00)Poem: "On the Fifth Day" (58:40)March for Science (59:00)Wick Poetry Center and David Hassler on Origins (01:01:00)Nobel Science Summit (01:01:00)Videos of poets in poets for science mentioned (01:02:00)Brian Eno (01:06:30)Lightning Round (01:06:00):book: The Invention of Nature by Andrea Wulf passion: being an embodied person outside of words; natural horsemanshipheart sing: conversationsscrewed up: Poem: "My Failure"Astonishing the Gods by Ben Okri (01:12:00)Find Jane online:The Asking: New & Selected Poems Logo artwork by Cristina GonzalezMusic by swelo on all streaming platforms or @swelomusic on social media
Agustín Fuentes reads a multi-million year history of our world, a student of its myriad lessons that often subvert unquestioned modern narratives and the problematic ways we've arrived at them. His is an anthropological, ecological, refreshingly unalloyed sensibility, an uncommon concoction whose life of scholarship and insight illuminate what we all might need to cultivate for the world we are walking into. Origins Podcast WebsiteFlourishing Commons NewsletterShow Notes:Positionality (04:20)Interest in the transcendent (06:15)Willingness to contend with complexity (11:30)Awe and beautify of biology and anthropology (14:20)Eric Wolf '[anthropology is] the most scientific of humanities, the most humanistic of sciences' (16:20)Phyllis Dolhinow (18:00)Karl Popper and falsifiability (22:00)Margaret Lock and local biologies (24:00)Dialectic (24:30)Curriculum for the future (25:00)Myth of 'evolution as progress' (26:00)Teju Cole (33:00)Complexity: connecting the micro and macro (37:00)Approach to teaching and sharing knowledge (40:00)Cultural moment with the idea that we need to hold two truths at once (42:30)'healing comes in the return' (46:40)Jeff Tweedy on writing (49:00)Lightning Round (50:00)Book: The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-ExupéryPassion: Travel, being on planesHeart sing: Book he's writing (and his prior book Race, Monogamy, and Other Lies They Told You) Screwed up: a couple of relationships and guitarFind Agustín online:WebsitePrinceton'Five-Cut Fridays' five-song music playlist series Agustín's playlistLogo artwork by Cristina GonzalezMusic by swelo on all streaming platforms or @swelomusic on social media
Albert-László Barabási thinks in networks and his scholarship, as his life, is embodiment of the explorative, imaginative, and generative nature of networks. It would be difficult to imagine a person better suited to steward us through the innate and seemingly universal tendency of things to connect to each other and all of its implications. Origins Podcast WebsiteFlourishing Commons NewsletterShow Notes:Preferential attachment (10:00)What he tells his students (13:30)Breakthroughs (14:00)'Shelf Time' (14:30)The Science of Science (19:00)Bridging (network science) (19:00)His first and second papers in network science (22:00)Danielle Allen (28:30)David Lazer (https://lazerlab.net/home) 'network based decision making' (31:00)Hélène Landemore epistemic democracy (32:00)Northeastern University Network Science Institute (35:30)Center for Complex Network Research (36:00)Alessandro Vespignani (37:00)János Kertész (38:00)Jane Hirshfield "Let Them Not Say" (42:00)Joan Didion "I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means." (44:30)His writing practice (44:30)His routines (45:00)Commonplace book (53:00)Robert K Merton "Singletons and Multiples in Scientific Discovery" (56:30)What does it mean to flourish? (59:00)Lightning Round (01:03:30):Book: Isaac Asimov The Foundation TrilogyPassion: art (Hidden Patterns exhibition; 150 years of Nature)Heart sing: Network medicineScrewed up: Failing to invest in GoogleFind László online:https://barabasi.com/'Five-Cut Fridays' five-song music playlist series László's playlistLogo artwork by Cristina GonzalezMusic by swelo on all streaming platforms or @swelomusic on social media
Hello friends, a new season of Origins is coming NEXT WEEK. Last season of this show was a season of flourishing. The episodes ahead we not be a season of something in particular but a movement toward process, toward open-endedness, toward unsettledness; of discipline, of intellect, of being. Great scientific breakthroughs are discoveries of process, and the great discoveries of society and our own lives will be the same. Thank you for listening and I'm excited to explore together each of the coming guests, and the exhilarating glimpses they provide into ourselves and our society along the way. Episode transcript, with linksOrigins Podcast WebsiteFlourishing Commons Newsletter
Origins Podcast WebsiteFlourishing Commons Newsletter and the post introducing Great AskingShow Notes:Sara Hendren's Origins Conversationstart of a living conversation (05:20)Ignorance by Stuart Firestein (06:00)questions are the oxygen of imagination (08:00)curiosity is a moral muscle (10:10)The Division of Cognitive Laborby Philip Kitcher (09:20)Sara's substack (10:40)Howard Gardner (11:20)Participatory readiness Danielle Allen (16:40)Living the Questions with Krista (23:30)questions and a state of receptivity (30:20)Sara's blog on voice memos (37:00)vagus nerve (37:00)neuroplasticity (37:30)Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke (45:00)The Virtues of Limits by David McPherson (53:30)the healing is in the return - Sharon Salzberg (55:00)Proust QuestionnaireLightning Round (57:30):Overrated virtue: (Krista) independence; (Sara) fortitude as opposed to true courageWords or phrases to retire: (Krista) losing generative to AI; (Sara) communityValuing in friends: (Krista) laughter; (Sara) longevityLowest depth of misery: (Krista) when imagination shuts down; (Sara) tyranny of inwardness and the lie of aloneness (St. Augustine) Find Sara and Krista online:SaraKristaLogo artwork by Cristina GonzalezMusic by Agasthya Pradhan Shenoy (Swelo)
James Evans' life is one resplendent with ideas. His trajectory into research and learning in areas as wide as network science, collective intelligence, computational social science, and even how knowledge is created, is as irreducible as it is exhilarating, and is a beacon in disorienting times marked by seemingly accelerating paces of change. Origins Podcast WebsiteFlourishing Commons NewsletterShow Notes:cultural and knowledge observatories (05:30)Mark Granovetter (09:15)Steve Barley (10:30)Woody Powell (10:30)Chris Summerfield (11:00)Some papers mentioned:Metaknowledge (17:10)Weaving the fabric of science: Dynamic network models of science's unfolding structure (18:30)Abduction (21:30)epistemic space (22:40)Claude Lévi-Strauss (24:20)Clifford Geertz (24:30)"Dissecting racial bias in an algorithm used to manage the health of populations" Obermeyer et al. (30:00)Scarcity Sendhil Mullainathan (35:00)The Knowledge Lab (36:00)"Quantifying the dynamics of failure across science, startups and security" Yin et al. (45:00)Charles Sanders Peirce (51:00)Pirkei Avot (56:00)Alison Gopnik on explore-exploit (01:02:30)Elise Boulding "the 200-year present" (01:03:00)Jo Guldi (01:06:00)Lightning Round (01:06:30):Book: The Enigma of ReasonPassion: physical exploration and spiritual callingHeart sing: 'social science fiction' and Hod LipsonScrewed up: management style at timesJames online:@profjamesevansThe Knowledge Lab'Five-Cut Fridays' five-song music playlist series James' playlistLogo artwork Cristina GonzalezMusic by swelo
Ingrid Daubechies is endlessly, irrepressibly, beautifully curious. She is a Belgian physicist and mathematician whose scientific achievements have rippled across society in all directions for the past 35 years. But, more than that, she's a fierce champion of diversity and equality, in math and science, in women's rights, in opportunity. To sit with Ingrid, her math and her life, is to illuminate our world and inspire us to imagine other worlds. Origins Podcast WebsiteFlourishing Commons NewsletterShow Notes:Depression (05:30)Krista Tippett On Being Podcast (07:15)Arthur Zajonc (10:10)Exponential thinking (14:20)Applied mathematics (19:00)Daubechies wavelet (20:00)The life of a researcher (25:00)Collaboration (27:00)Bell Labs (29:00)What is changing in the field of mathematics (32:00)Creating a community (34:00)Teaching: helping a person grow into the fullness of their imagination (36:00)Mathemalchemy (39:00)The Bridges Organization (40:00)Time to Break Free by Dominique Ehrmann (41:00)Mathemalchemy comic book (45:30)Bridging ties (47:00)Experiences at Burning Man (47:20)Pico Iyer (50:30)Museum of Mathematics (51:00)Flatiron Institute (51:30)Lighting Round (54:00)Book: The Broken Earth series by NK Jemisin; Digger by Ursula VernonPassion: Social justiceHeart sing: TemariScrewed up: Aspects of parentingFind Ingrid online:https://ece.duke.edu/faculty/ingrid-daubechiesThe Godmother of the Digital Image New York Times'Five-Cut Fridays' five-song music playlist series Ingrid's playlistLogo artwork by Cristina GonzalezMusic by swelo on all streaming platforms or @swelomusic on social media
Mark Granovetter has made and remade our understanding of social networks, social theory, collective action, and economic sociology, making and remaking our world in the process. It would not be hyperbole to say that few living scholars have had the influence of Mark Granovetter. Origins Podcast WebsiteFlourishing Commons NewsletterShow Notes:Attorney for the Damned by John A. Farrell (9:00)Interest in world history (10:00)A History of the Modern World (11:00)Why are there revolutions? (12:00)Philosophy of science (13:00)Carl Hempel (13:00)What does it mean to explain in science? Talcott Parsons (15:00)BF Skinner (16:00)A philosophy of asking questions (17:00)"The function of general laws in history" (18:00)Universal peeking out from the particular (20:00)Max Weber (23:00)Norbert Weiner (30:00)The Strength of Weak Ties (30:00)The Great Fear of 1789 by Georges Lefebvre (31:00)Harrison White (33:00)Anatol Rapoport (37:00)Stanley Milgram (40:30)Danielle Allen (43:00)Threshold analysis (45:00)Lightning round (54:00)Book: Economy and Society by Max WeberPassion: anywhere asking questions that expand youHeart Sing: working on new book and teachingScrewed up: life balanceFind Mark online:https://sociology.stanford.edu/people/mark-granovetter'Five-Cut Fridays' five-song music playlist series Mark's playlistLogo artwork by Cristina GonzalezMusic by swelo on all streaming platforms or @swelomusic on social media
Tina Eliassi-Rad is a network science pioneer, and an intrepid explorer of where network science shows up in our world and how we understand that. Her work, as her life, falls across network science, complexity, artificial intelligence, and commitments to democracy and equality, itself a constellation of experiences and literacies befitting our increasingly complex world. Origins Podcast WebsiteFlourishing Commons NewsletterShow Notes:Jon Kleinberg (09:20)Northeastern Network Science Institute (12:20)Bruch and Newman Aspirational pursuit of mates in online dating markets (13:40) What is a complex system? Ladyman and Wiesner (14:45)What science can do for democracy: a complexity science approach (15:10)Faloutsos (19:00)Ron Burt (24:10)"Examining Responsibility and Deliberation in AI Impact Statements and Ethics Reviews" Liu et al. (27:30)Research group of the future (37:20)The ground truth about metadata and community detection in networks (43:30)Fariba Karimi (44:00)Lightning Round (51:00)Book: Jane EyrePassion: PhilosophyHeart sing: AI systems as part of complex systemsScrewed up: CookingTina online:http://eliassi.org/'Five-Cut Fridays' five-song music playlist series Tina's playlistMusic swelo
Judith Donath is a design thinker for some of the most important theory for how people interact in online spaces, drawing on evolutionary biology, architecture, ethnography, cognitive science. She just might be the voice we need for the multi-media multiscale world we're walking into. Origins Podcast WebsiteFlourishing Commons NewsletterShow Notes:Tsundoku (09:00)The cost of honesty (09:30)theory of mind, MIT Media Lab, and Marvin Minsky (13:00)Roger Schank (13:30)cultural metaphors (14:00)Ocean Vuong (17:15)The Architecture Machine by Nicholas Negroponte (19:30)Bell Labs (20:15)Vienna Circle (20:20)Sociable Media Group (22:40)The Social Machine by Judith Donath (23:05)Fernanda Viégas (35:20)Chat Circles (35:30)Gossip, Grooming, and the Evolution of Language by Robin Dunbar (39:00)The Strength of Weak Ties by Mark Granovetter (43:20)Berkman Klein Center (47:00)Signalling Theory (49:00)Daily Rituals: How Artists Work by Mason Currey (56:00)The Experimental Novel by Émile Zola (59:00)C Thi Nguyen Origins (59:20)Lightning Round (01:00:30)Book: The Lord of the Rings by JRR TolkienPassion: Crossfit's way of thinking about metricsHeart sing: Street photographyTeju ColeScrewed up: Traditional academiaFind Judith online:Website'Five-Cut Fridays' five-song music playlist series Judith's playlistFlourishing SalonsLearning Salon AIArtwork Cristina GonzalezMusic swelo
There is something irresistible about the way C. Thi Nguyen thinks about and structures the world. From the lenses of trust, art, games, and communities he thinks about seemingly everything. In each of these topics, he's written pieces that I consider to be among the most important works on them. Origins WebsiteFlourishing Commons NewsletterShow Notes:Games: Agency as Art (01:55)Anne Harrington (07:20)The Great Endarkenment Elijah Millgram (09:20)Trust and Antitrust Annette BaierHostile Epistemology (21:20)The natural selection of bad science Paul Smaldino (26:40)The Grasshopper Bernard Suits (32:20)Context Changes Everything Alicia Juarrero (36:00)Finite and Infinite Games James Carse (36:30)Ulysses and the Sirens Jon Elster (39:20)Andrea Westlund and Anita Superson (44:40)How Twitter gamifies communication (47:40)Reiner Knizia (48:30)On Being Bored out of Your Mind Milgram (56:30)Childhood as a solution to the explore-exploit tradeoff Alison Gopnik (59:30)Explanation as orgasm Gopnik (01:01:30)Adrian Currie (01:02:20)Cailin O'Connor, Kevin Zollman, Philip Kitcher (01:02:40)Lightning round (01:08:00)Book: Rules: A Short History of What We Live By Lorraine DastonPassion: Game playingHeart sing: porting information; fly-fishingScrewed up: three unpublished novelsThi online:https://objectionable.net/Twitter: @add_hawkThi's Five-Cut Fridays playlistTyler Cowen 'reading in piles'Artwork Cristina GonzalezMusic swelo
We find ourselves living in a time of great complexity and flux, where the very fabric of our societies is being rewoven by the rise of artificial intelligence and the interplay of complex systems. How do we make sense of a world that is undeniably interconnected, with increasingly porous boundaries between nature and culture, human and machine, science and art? Paul Wong is reshaping that conversation, drawing on science, philosophy, and art. Origins Podcast WebsiteFlourishing Commons NewsletterShow Notes:Buckminster Fuller (07:40)Principia Mathematica by Russell and Whitehead (09:00)Peter Kropotkin and Mikhail Bakunin (11:00)Commonwealth Grants Commission (13:10)Range by David Epstein (15:00)David Krakauer (15:20)Claude Shannon and information theory (17:10)Chaos by James Gleick (20:00)Duncan Watts, Barabási Albert-László , and network analysis (24:20)Networks the lingua franca of complex systems (25:20)Stephen Wolfram (25:30)Open Science (28:20)Australian National University School of Cybernetics (28:50)Australian Research Data Commons (29:50)Genevieve Bell (31:20)Ross Ashby's Law of Requisite Variety (32:30)Sara Hendren on Origins and Sketch Model (36:30)What he tells his students (38:00)Alex McDowell on Origins (41:00)The Patterning Instinct by Jeremy Lent and Fritjof Capra (47:30)Tao Te Ching (48:20)Morning routine (49:30)Lightning round (53:40)Book: Special relativity and Dr. SeussPassion: MusicHeart sing: Stitching together cybernetics, complexity, and improvisation Screwed up: Many thingsFind Paul online: https://cybernetics.anu.edu.au/people/paul-wong/'Five-Cut Fridays' five-song music playlist series Paul's playlistLogo artwork by Cristina GonzalezMusic by swelo on all streaming platforms or @swelomusic on social media
Twins Dani Bassett and Perry Zurn are curious. Their work, individually and together, gives new conception and language to what curiosity is, the work that it does in the world. These are human beings of intelligence and integrity and deep care, and their reification of curiosity might just be a generative narrative of our time. Origins Podcast WebsiteFlourishing Commons NewsletterShow Notes:Homeschooling (05:00)Epistemology (09:00)multiple discovery (16:30)foregrounding bravery (21:00)Curious Minds(25:00)Julio Ottino on Origins (28:30)Hope in the Dark by Rebecca Solnit (32:00)Power of curiosity for social movements (34:30)Three types of curiosity (40:30)David Lydon-Staley University of Pennsylvania (44:00)Cognitive flexibility and the discovery of neuroplasticity (45:30)Talking to Strangers by Danielle Allen (47:00)Amartya Sen - democracy is a knowledge and a process of social discovery (53:00)How thought moves (54:00)Dani's course 'the goals of scientific inquiry (55:15)Hippocampal system and mapping conceptual spaces (56:30)Networks as the lingua franca of complex systems (58:00)Lightning round (59:00)Book: Dani - Follow My Leader by and A Room of One's Own by Virginia Wolff; Perry - Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll and books that make him slow downSusan Sontag 'I no longer trust novels which fully satisfy my passion to understand.'Passion: Perry - methods, ways of asking questions; Dani - analogical powerHeart Sing: Dani - Spring; Perry - punctuation marksOn Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong Screwed up: Dani - leaving nursing school; Perry - some breakupsFind Dani online:WebsiteTwitter: @DaniSBassettFind Perry online:WebsiteTwitter: @perryzurn'Five-Cut Fridays' five-song music playlist series Dani and Perry's playlistLogo artwork by Cristina GonzalezMusic by swelo on all streaming platforms or @swelomusic on social media
Every so often someone comes along whose thinking and work inspire you with the kind of awe that always feels new and fills you with an energy that brings vibrancy to life. Julio Mario Ottino is one of these people. Pulling from science, technology, and art, creating entirely new spaces in their convergence, he has transformed how to think about discovery and creativity. Origins Podcast WebsiteFlourishing Commons NewsletterShow Notes:Jorge Luis Borges and Franz Kafka influences (07:10)his first book: The Mathematical Foundations of Mixing(08:00)emergence (14:20)multiple discoveriescultivating patience and tolerating tension (21:00)Oliver Sacks (24:30)hardest thing to teach (25:00)specialists vs. generalists (26:00)Dario Robleto at the Block Museum (29:00)enrich your set of possible ideas (30:00)mental library (30:15)whole brain engineering (32:00)Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO) (38:00)Emergent disciplines: synthetic biology, computational social science, finite Earth measuring complexity (43:0)capacity for emergence science of science (44:30)Luis Amaral (45:30)Daniel Diermeier (45:30)Dashun Wang (47:40)Brian Uzzi (48:30)Noshir Contractor (50:00)Nexus book (51:30)An epistemology of collectivity (54:15)the myth of the lone genius (54:30)Primo Pensiero - first thought (57:00)Find Julio online:www.juliomarioottino.com/Lightning round (01:01:00)Book: Collected Fictionsby Jorge Luis BorgesPassion: documenting his life in cartoonsHeart sing: limits of artificial intelligenceScrewed up: managing people'Five-Cut Fridays' five-song music playlist series Julio's playlistLogo artwork by Cristina GonzalezMusic by swelo on all streaming platforms or @swelomusic on social media
After a generative break from new episodes, Origins Podcast is back with Season Six!2023 has been a year of rapid change even as we carry the rupture of the last three years. It is precisely into this evolving landscape, that we are excited to announce that Origins Podcast returns with its Sixth Season! While it will continue to be a forum to explore the pivotal moments for a diverse array of voices where the universal peeks out from the particular, we are also adapting the show to our changing world, a living experiment and conversation, embracing new ways of being. Over the past few weeks we have taken a short pause from new episodes. While focusing on new work and new community at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory and a young daughter at home, this has not been idle time, but it has been a change of pace and with different breath so, too, has come rejuvenation and unexpected generativity. Both have influenced the show.Origins is a space for all of us to ground toward flourishing. Running underneath every episode is curiosity and figuring about what a guest shares says about our flourishing, as individuals and as a society. Anthropologist James Suzman says that flourishing is using our wealth well to enrich ourselves spiritually, enrich ourselves mentally, and doing social good. Political philosopher, Danielle Allen, says it is to be empowered not only in your personal lives but also in your co-participation and co-ownership of our public spaces and public lives. Flourishing is an unfolding, a process, not a thing and certainly not static. In this era of twin crises of inattention and disconnection, Join us as we explore the question of flourishing, figuring out what it is, what it looks and feels like in our lives, an orientation that requires compassion. We will dive deep into both, scientifically and spiritually. Through it all, we'll be asking more spacious, generative questions, creating different narratives of our time and pulling us beyond ourselves and our categories; questions we can all bring into our lives and that might reweave our civic communities.Finally, a note about some of the themes we will be exploring: The art of inquiry and curiosityArtificial Intelligence and societyWhat we are talking about when we talk about collective intelligence and our knowledge commonsAnthropology and ethnography, these sciences of cultural excavationHealthy relationalityThe civics and philosophy of scienceAnd in all things, the connection to flourishing, of science, of society, of life and joy. Please join in this living conversation. We have created a free Substack newsletter,The Flourishing Commons, to enrich these episodes. All of this is punctuated by new music and a new logo by friends of the show and kindred minds, Agasthya Pradhan Shenoy and Cristina Gonzalez. Follow us on Apple, Google, Spotify, or wherever you listen.
Frank White is a philosopher of space. In 1987 he coined the term "the overview effect," referring to the life-altering experience astronauts received upon witnessing our planet from outer space. His work, as his life, bring this transformation of perspective into sharper focus, presenting an alternative perception of ourselves, our world, and our future. Origins Podcast WebsiteFlourishing Commons NewsletterShow Notes:The Overview Effect & The Cosma Hypothesis(03:00)Being a part of something larger than yourself (06:30)The overview effect as an experience (13:00)Gerard K. O'Neill and the Space Studies Institute (14:00)Hope in the Darkby Rebecca Solnit (23:40)Holonomy: A Human Systems Theory by Jeff Stamps (27:30)Nurturing a movement (29:00)"The further out human beings look the further inward we see" (30:00)Pale blue dot (30:00)Overview Institute (31:00)Space Frontier Foundation (31:10)'boundary objects' (38:00)Institute of Noetic Sciences (40:00)Human Space Program (40:30)Edgar Mitchell and virtual reality (41:20)William James and noetical quality (43:00)Bring indigenous thinking to the conversation (47:00)Dan Hawk (47:00)Orbital Assembly Corporation (48:00)Danielle Wood (51:00)Atul Gawande "What Matters in the End" (51:00)From Age-ing to Sage-ing by Zalman Schachter-Shalomi and Ronald Miller (52:00)Maria Popova on the supreme art of living (56:00)Lightning Round (56:00)Book: The High Frontier by Gerald K O'NeillPassion: spiritualityHeart sing: artificial intelligenceScrewed up: not getting PhDFind Frank online:Twitter: @fwhite66Website: https://frankwhiteauthor.com/about'Five-Cut Fridays' five-song music playlist series Frank's playlist
Nicole Stott has a towering range of knowledge and experience, from the heights of outer space as a NASA astronaut to the depths of the ocean as an aquanaut, from the rigor and structure of science to the openness and imagination of art. She continually defies category, and her life embodies the creativity and interconnection that we are called to in the face of planetary challenges.Origins Podcast WebsiteFlourishing Commons NewsletterShow Notes:Early mentors (06:30)Keeping wonder alive (11:15)The Disappearing Art Of Maintenance by Alex Vuocolo (11:15)Exceptional collaboration (14:45)Collaborative capacity (18:20)Crewmates on spaceship Earth (18:30)How is conflict addressed on the space station? (19:00)Oliver Wendell Holmes 'the simplicity on the other side of complexity' (22:30)Her book Back to Earth: What Life in Space Taught Me About Our Home Planet and Our Mission to Protect It.(23:10)We live on a planet, we are all Earthlings, only line that matters is the thin blue line of our atmosphere Living and cooperating in space a guide for how to live and cooperate on EarthMorning routine (29:00)The Overview Effect by Frank White (31:00)Concluding astronaut career (36:00)Space for Art Foundation (40:30)Social and relational 'technologies' (41:30)Curiosity for difference (42:00)Healing the Heart of Democracy by Parker Palmer (43:00)David Vaughan (45:00)Parenting (47:30)Messages of hope (45:50)Lightning Round (53:40)Book: West with the Nightby Beryl MarkhamPassion: Art and creativity sideHeart sing: Women in space & Space for Art FoundationScrewed up: Self-confidenceFind Nicole online:WebsiteTwitter: @Astro_Nicole'Five-Cut Fridays' five-song music playlist series Nicole's playlist
David Sloan Wilson is one of biology's most prolific and impactful scientists. He is author of paradigmatic contributions to evolutionary theory and how organisms behave, such as multilevel selection and core design principles for the efficacy of groups. But the reach of his work is far beyond the domains of biology and sociology, in whole a toolkit for improving how we live together and weaving between areas of thought. Origins Podcast WebsiteFlourishing Commons NewsletterShow Notes:Atlas Hugged (06:30)Sociobiology by EO Wilson (12:00)Acceptance and Commitment Therapy and Steven C Hayes (21:00)Science proceeds by seeing really good reasons for not believing the current model for reality Lindon Eaves (25:40)Elinor Ostrom (26:15)EO Wilson (26:15)Elliott Sober (27:00)Ostrom design principles for governing the commons (31:00)The Tragedy of the Commons [Hardin, 1968] (34:20)The Neighborhood Project by Sloan Wilson (41:30)Richard A Kauffman (David's graduate student)Core competencies of prosociality (48:50)The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn (49:10)The knowledge commons (51:00)The Noosphere and Pierre Teilhard de ChardinLynn Margulis (53:50)Dual inheritance theory (55:00)Lightning round (01:01:00):Book: Origin of Species by Charles Darwin and The Secret of our Successand The WEIRDest People in the World by Joseph HenrichPassion: being stewards of the natural worldHeart sing: stewarding prosocialityFind David online:Website: https://davidsloanwilson.world/Twitter: @David_S_WilsonProsocial Commons: https://thisviewoflife.com/introducing-the-prosocial-commons/'Five-Cut Fridays' five-song music playlist series David's playlist
Ed Finn might be best described as an imaginer. The rest of the many things that he is and does kind of fall into place with that foundation. He started and for the past decade has been Director of the unexampled Center for Science and the Imagination at Arizona State University. Origins Podcast WebsiteFlourishing Commons NewsletterShow Notes:Gödel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter (06:20)Specialization vs generalization (07:00)N Katherine Hayles (12:00)We have never been modernby Bruno Latour (19:00)Franco Moretti (24:15)Center for Science and the Imagination (26:15)"Innovation Starvation" by Neal Stephenson (28:00)Meeting Neal Stephenson (31:40)Hieroglyph: Stories and Visions for a Better Future co-edited by Ed Finn (33:30)Thoughtful optimism and hope (36:30)Adjacent possible (38:00)David Foster Wallace "This is water" (41:00)Collaborative Imagination: A methodological approach (42:30)What Algorithms Want: Imagination in the Age of Computing by Ed Finn (48:20)Effective computability (50:00)Halting Problem (50:30)Turing Machine (50:30)Curriculum of the future (57:30)"Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid" by Jonathan Haidt (58:20)Flourishing Salons with the Cultural Programs of the National Academy of Sciences (01:03:00)Lightning Round (01:04:00): Book: The Diamond Age by Neal StephensonPassion: travel and the fine art of hospitalityHeart sing: veteran's imagination project and K-12 futures literacyScrewed up: conference callsFind Ed online:Center for Science and the ImaginationTwitter: @zonalWebsite'Five-Cut Fridays' five-song music playlist series Ed's playlist
Alex McDowell is a worldbuilder. He builds future realities to envision worlds that don't yet exist. By working across disciplines to imagine the future, his worlds inform and inspire stories and open eyes to new possibilities. Origins Podcast websiteShow Notes: Quaker meeting (09:40)EmpowermentThe skills of listening and gathering (11:40)The politics of your social experience (12:10)Worldbuilding"Storytelling Shapes the Future" Every world is a holistic system at multiple scalesMinority Report (22:00)Triangle of narrative design (27:00)Relationship to complex systems (27:30)Counterfactuals to explore a world (27:50)Cultivating interdisciplinary collaboration in teams (28:00)Scenius (29:00)Building enough of a framework to know what we don't know (31:00)Teaching (40:00)The literacies of worldbuildingWork collaboratively in the space of uncertaintyExperimental Design company (44:30)Great 'Askers' (49:00)Balancing curiosity and boredom (51:00)MIT Media Lab (52:00)Scott Fisher (52:30)Falling forward (55:00)Lightning round (55:15)Book: Neuromancer by William GibsonCognitive estrangementPassion: GuitarHeart sing: New language for molecular biologyScrewed up: Graphic design for record labelsFind Alex online:Twitter: @worldbldgWebsite: https://alexmcdowell.design/'Five-Cut Fridays' five-song music playlist series Alex's playlist
Poetry comes up so often in my conversations these days. Our society in crisis seems to be desperate for it, without being able to name that desperation until a poem calls it out of us. For years, award-winning Poet David Hassler has been defining and redefining how poetry enters and moves people and communities. Show Notes:Jane Hirshfield (04:30)Poets for Science (04:50)Francis Weller - how we tend the dead is as important as how we tend the living (09:30)Prayer wheels (14:00)Buddhist principles of Right Absorption and Right Understanding (17:20)Maggie Anderson (21:00)Krista Tippet - poetry is the human capacity to articulate truth at the edges of what words can touch (22:30)Poems always acknowledge the limits of what can be saidTraveling Stanzas (23:10)Robert Bly - metaphor is how you say something true about a complicated thing (24:00)Donald Hall The Unsayable Said (24:30)The art of gathering (27:40)Maj Ragain - poetry is the means by which a place comes to know itself (30:00)Dear Vaccine (33:20)Naomi Shihab NyeFuture of social media (35:10)Jonathan HaidtWilliam Stafford - poetry is the kind of thing that you have to see out of the corner of your eye and it will disappear without favor (37:00)Richard Feynman's Ode to Wonder (39:00)Healing the Heart of Democracyby Parker J Palmer (42:00)Dear Ukraine (48:20)Marge Piercy (50:00)Pursuing a question (51:40)Lightning round (53:00)Book: New Self, New Worldby Philip ShepherdPassion: Dancing (Teju Cole - sitting in the dark waiting for something to happen)Heart sing: Staging Dear VaccineScrewed up: Salacious poetry for kindergarteners Find David online:Kent State UniversityTwitter: @DavidWickPoetry'Five-Cut Fridays' five-song music playlist series David's playlist
Alicia Juarrero is Professor Emerita of Philosophy at Prince George's Community College and the author of Dynamics in Action, a text that many consider to have laid the foundation for how we think about complexity in our society. So Alicia is a philosopher for this moment in human history.Show Notes:Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke (03:31)Live the questionsDuino ElegiesUser Friendly by Cliff Kuang (11:50)Herbert Simon and the importance of information diet (12:50)The Self-Organizing Universe by Erich Jantsch (15:00)Dave Snowden Cynefin Framework (20:00)Dave on OriginsAristotelian four causes (22:30)Emergence (27:40)Network thinking (28:20)Barabási Albert-LászlóSteven StrogatzMereology (31:00)Order Out of Chaos by Prigogine, Stengers, and Toffler (32:15)Complicated vs complex (38:00)John Holland "fail safe and safe fail" (40:00)Graceful Extensibilityby David Woods (41:20)Vector Analytica (43:20)Healthy relationality (54:00)Trust (59:15)Danielle Allen (01:01:00)Flourishing Commons newsletter (01:02:00)Tragedy of the Commons by Garrett Hardin Governing the Commons by Elinor Ostrom Lightning round (01:03:20)Book: Order Out of ChaosPassion: reading broadlyHeart sing: how design creates context that also creates affordancesThe Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman User Friendly by Cliff KuangScrewed up: attention to ideas over people-orientated application of those ideasFind Alicia online:Website'Five-Cut Fridays' five-song music playlist series Alicia's playlist
Brandon Ballengée has a unique quality of attention, one that is not constrained by traditional distinctions between art & science and working & living. He wants to share that capacity to witness to liberate everyone's imagination of what this world can be, a world we are of rather than just in. This ecological consciousness informs his work as a visual artist, biologist and environmental educator. Show Notes:biodiversity (07:00)trophic networks (13:10)ethnography and buffer zones (15:00)citizens getting involved to help biodiversityparticipatory and co-creative nature of his workcommons spaces (16:00)Garret Hardin Tragedy of the Commons (16:20)antiform and antidisciplinary (17:00)complexity (17:10)Malamp project (19:50)evince empathy not fear (21:30)consilience (23:15)the myth of either/or (24:00)the complexity in ushow do you do both art and science? (24:30)how we might approach conservation - connection (27:30)Ghosts of the Gulf exhibit (28:40)Stan Sessions (29:00)Taylor Energy Spill (32:30)What adaptation looks like (33:45)how we persist (35:00)giving yourself over to culture (38:30)Atelier de la Nature(39:00)Newton Harrison and ecological art (44:30)Project about cajun prairiethe impact of our actions (47:30)Rebecca Solnit - Hope in the DarkPoetry Unbound: Yusef Komunyakaa Praising Dark Placeslong view of time, the long arc of change (47:45)muscular hope (48:00)superorganisms and cooperation (50:00)civic engagement (50:30)Lightning round (55:00)Book: Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold (and EO Wilson's the Future of Life)Passion: food as a way to educateHeart sing: learning about gardeningScrewed up: process to make crude oil paintingsFind Brandon online:WebsiteTwitter: @bballengeeAtelier de la Nature'Five-Cut Fridays' five-song music playlist series Brandon's playlist
Welcome back to Origins, listeners. After a few month hiatus, we're back with an exhilarating, generative, spacious season of the show--the hiatus was in part so that I could focus on research, to launch a new series of 'salons' with the Cultural Program for the National Academy of Science (see here for an example), help ignite a new initiative toward Open Science with NASA, and to do more writing, which you can read a bit about in a new Substack newsletter (The Flourishing Commons) that is an accompaniment to these various activities. The goal of that newsletter is to think about and realize healthier relationality and welcome you to join that conversation. All of these activities have influenced what the next season of Origins will be. These conversations will continue to be what they always have been -- explorations of the spaces between art, science, engineering, and design with the people who live in and shape them. They will continue to reveal these individual's network of thoughts, influences, and impacts, and will continue to draw out the relevance to each of you.But Season Five will center threshold topics we face as a society now: How do we facilitate broader collaboration and wider collective intelligence? How can we ask more generative questions and learn the skill of asking better questions? What is the role of context and contextualization in our systems? Where do we need art and science in the future of our democracy and governance? How do we create a slower discourse and cultivate a quality of attention? How do we improve our information diets? Amidst all of these, Season five will be about ideas and practices of muscular hope and worldbuilding. It will be about The philosophies of living that come from them and the way that these things are a kind of bridge to all domains of inquiry and living; universalizing ideas; ideas around which we might find consilience.We will be exploring the myriad places we find muscular hope and worldbuilding in our cosmos and in our history and in our imagination and the nuanced ways that they are expressed there. We will be learning that there is no one source of these things, that they exist across ways of knowing, not ways that we hold explicitly in our minds and those we have yet to give language and image toWittgenstein wrote that "The limits of my language mean the limits of my world." Let's build a new vocabulary to talk about the problems confronting us; a more muscular and spacious vocabulary -- one generative of a new world more capable of flourishing. We're delighted to bring you guests that embody these ideas. No matter where you come from, what you do in this world, you will find these conversations full of curiosity and insight. My work is to draw out how people survive, flourish, grow, keep loving and laughing so that you can bring the ideas into your own life. That is my commitment to you with the dozen or so episodes that follow.
Subscribe to The Flourishing Commons - a newsletter to accompany Origins episodes and to build a community around a rich forum for exchange. Sara Hendren is a humanist in tech. This may seem like a strange statement, but it may be a perfect place to pick up Sara's trajectory. She is a brilliant designer, an affecting educator, and just might be the source of language that will transform the way you witness the world. Show Notes:critique and repair (06:55)Generous Thinking Kathleen Fitzpatrick (22:00)Epistemic humilityRelational model of change (22:50)The Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle (24:40)Becca Rothfeld 'friendship as a recognition-relation' Danielle Allen 'healthy relationality' (28:30)Our Common Purpose: Reinventing American Democracy for the 21st CenturyEducation for American Democracy: Excellence in History and Civics for all Learners K-12Curriculum of the future (30:00)Danielle Allen What is education for?Trabian Shorters 'asset framing' (36:30)Jonathan Adler and narrative identity (40:00)Theologian William May 'an openness to the unbidden' (43:00)Book: What Can A Body Do? How We Meet the Built World (47:00)New America Think Tank (55:00)Lightning Round (57:00)Book: Pilgrim at Tinker Creek Annie Dillard Passion: Philosophy and FictionWorldbuildingHeart Sing: Medieval philosophy and theology Deep TimeScrewed up: Losing perspective on time passing while her children were smallBoyhoodFind Sara online:What Can A Body Do? How We Meet the Built WorldNewsletter "Undefended/Undefeated"Website'Five-Cut Fridays' five-song music playlist series Sara's playlist
Michael Hochberg is Distinguished Research Director with the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (the French National Centre for Scientific Research) and based at the University of Montpellier, France. His research has for many years spanned fields from ecology to epidemiology to biodiversity to innovation to the communication of science and touches every scale imaginable, from cells to societies. Show Notes:the magic of doing science (04:20)Howell Daley (13:00)Some of the breadth of Michael's publications (13:30)Ecology drives the worldwide distribution of human diseasesAn ecosystem framework for understanding and treating diseaseInnovation: an emerging focus from cells to societiesAn Editor's Guide to Writing and Publishing Science (13:40)The richness of the evolutionary perspective (14:00)social parasitism (22:00)How social interactions factor into how he sees the world (34:00)Chinchorro cultureMarquet et al., Emergence of social complexity among coastal hunter-gatherers in the Atacama Desert of northern ChileThe connection of climate change and culture changeEssence of innovation (44:20)The adjacent possible - Stuart Kauffman (44:30)Origins of Order by Stuart Kauffman Article: Innovation: an emerging focus from cells to societies (46:10)Parallel between mutation in biology and invention in technology (47:00)Are We Publishing Too Many Articles? (51:30)The knowledge commons (51:45)The hedonic treadmill (52:10)Science and art (55:30)Evaluation culture (55:50)Lightning round (01:05:20)Book: Exercised by Daniel LiebermanPassion: Listening to and playing music musicHeart sing: bloggingScrewed up: Remaining in certain collaborations too longFind Michael online:Blog: https://mehochberg.wixsite.com/blogTwitter: @HochTwit'Five-Cut Fridays' five-song music playlist series Michael's playlist
For years Dave Snowden has helped me understand how to navigate a complex world better than perhaps any other thinker. He draws so widely from all schools of thought in forming frameworks for sensemaking.This episode is expanding. It will be with me for a long time and I hope it stays with you, too. Read more at: https://www.originspodcast.co/episodes-1Show Notes:Complicated vs complex (08:00)Paul CilliersDynamics in Action Alicia Juarrero Lecture: "How not to manage complexity"The Patterning Instinct Jeremy Lent (16:00)Tropes in narrative theory (17:50)Assemblage and 'lines of flight' -- Gilles Deleuze (18:10)Jacques Derrida 'Aporia' (22:20)How the light gets in Festival (29:15)Flourishing Salons (29:40)Cynefin Framework (24:00 & 32:50)Nora Bateson Origins episode (37:00)Bateson-Snowden "When Meaning Loses Its Meaning" (37:00)Stacey Matrix (39:00)Daily routines (50:00)Hope (51:10)Hope in the Dark Rebecca SolnitTheology of Hope Jürgen MoltmannHope Without Optimism & Radical Sacrifice Terry EagletonKrista Tippet 'muscular hope'Lightning Round (55:30)Book: Spirit in the World Karl RahnerPassion: Walking and rugbyHeart Sing: New framework Screwed Up: senior leadership course at IBMFind Dave online:Twitter: @snowdedLinkedInThe Cognitive Edge (Dave's blog)Sensemaker ethnographic tool'Five-Cut Fridays' five-song music playlist series Dave's playlist
Katy Börner is one of the great mappers of our age. Her maps tell the history of science, trace how communication has evolved from the stone age to modern day, and reveal the connections across our society. In her work, all of these things become visual and interactive. That is to say she is the perfect person to talk to in this age when complexity lurks behind the most intractable issues facing our society and demands new ways of witnessing them.Show Notes:Places & Spaces: Mapping Science exhibit (07:00)Helping anyone find their place in scienceThe value and beauty and complexity of scienceTrajectory of a person's education (09:30)Martin Storksdieck Origins EpisodeInteractive data visualization (10:30)Long view of time (11:45)The ubiquity and importance of networks (14:45 and 21:00) How we map what we don't know (16:15)Human BioMolecular Atlas Program Consortium (HuBMAP) - map the human body at a single-cell resolution (16:50)Human Cell Atlas ProjectHuBMAP massive open online course (MOOC)Douglas Hofstadter and Indiana University Cognitive Science Program (22:00)Indiana University Advanced Visualization Lab (22:10)Mentorship and advice (23:20)The Atlas series of books (27:00)Atlas of Science: Visualizing what we knowAtlas of Knowledge: Anyone can mapAtlas of Forecasts: Modeling and Mapping Desirable FuturesCapacity for communication (36:00)Organization and curation (36:10)Team science (36:30)Networks and network science (43:00)Indiana University Network Science InstituteDark Matter and the Dinosaurs by Lisa Randall (45:00)Morning Routine (45:30)Wanderlust by Rebecca Solnit (47:00)Lightning Round (49:00)Book: Edward TuftePassion: CookingHeart Sing: Atlas of the human bodyScrewed up: Impatience and the impact it has on certain people/relationshipsFind guest online:WebsiteTwitter: @katycns'Five-Cut Fridays' five-song music playlist series Katy's playlist
This episode originally aired on June 4, 2020. There are new episodes coming to you soon, so stay tuned. But now is a good time to revisit wise words from one of my favorite previous guests, Cecilia Conrad, Managing Director of the MacArthur ('Genius') Fellows Program and the 100&Change program. The 2021 class of MacArthur Fellows was announced in late September 2021. In Cecilia Conrad's words, “As we emerge from the shadows of the past two years, this class of 25 Fellows helps us reimagine what's possible. They demonstrate that creativity has no boundaries. It happens in all fields of endeavor, among the relatively young and more seasoned, in Iowa and Puerto Rico. Once again, we have the opportunity for exultation as we recognize the potential to create objects of beauty and awe, advance our understanding of society, and foment change to improve the human condition.”There are themes that have emerged from this show that I didn't think when I launched it would become central to what we explore in these conversations. One of those themes is the breadth of awe in this world and how we experience it individually and collectively, how it disarms each of us to our most elemental and constellates the world to its greatest height. The way that Cecilia empowers and imagines the world of awe that could be in her life as in her work was one of the powerful influences for this theme on Origins. Like a book read at different times, this conversation will take on new life for whatever the pivotal moment you are in right now, the ones realized and the ones we may only see in hindsight. If you enjoyed this conversation, check out these other episodes:Dan Goods - design at NASA, life's throughlines of wonder, and the museum of aweEpisode 25: César Hidalgo - Information and complexity, learning and leading, rethinking technology in societyEpisode 23: Giorgia Lupi - Harmonizing life and data through design
Dr. and professor Jessica Flack has been a dream guest for Origins since the beginning - the kind of generous intellect and polymath whose words and work expand everyone around her. She also might be the person we can place our trust in to help us learn how to make sense of an increasingly complex world. Show Notes:Josh Epstein - agent-based modeling (04:20)The Santa Fe Institute (SFI) and complex systems thinking (07:30)Mark Newman and network scienceMurray Gell-MannThe Synergism Hypothesis by Peter A. Corning (14:00)The Biology of Moral Systems by Richard D. Alexander (16:00)Indirect reciprocityCollective Computation Group (C4) (19:20)Coarse-grainingHow do everyone's coarse-graining converge?Jim CrutchfieldJohn Hopfield (23:30)Studying social dynamics in macaque societies (29:40)People in her close network (37:00)Rob BoydDave BaconDavid KrakauerJohn BaezNihat AyPhysical fitness (41:00)The Sports Gene by David EpsteinScale by Geoffrey West (41:20)Morning routine (47:00)Lightning round (49:00)Book: Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison Jorge Luis BorgesPassion: Cooking and Walter Fontana "Functional self-organization in complex systems"Heart sing: SurfingScrewed up: Mathematical skills trainingFind Jessica online:WebsiteTwitter: @C4COMPUTATIONInstagram: jcflack1'Five-Cut Fridays' five-song music playlist series Jessica's playlist
JoAnn Kuchera-Morin is a composer. But the music she writes is more than mere notes; it embraces art and science and engineering and finds new frontiers at the intersection of them all. Her 'music' is both song and her research into new modes of immersive, interactive scientific and artistic investigation. Through art as with science, her work seeks to create as she says, "an exponential rise in consciousness."Show Notes:Pythagoras - a rock is music frozen in time (09:00)Evolving according to where our culture is (11:20)Iannis Xenakis (12:30) Peripersonal and Extrapersonal space (15:40)AlloSphere (17:00 and 36:00)TED Talk - a new way to seeData sonification Origins episode #7 with Matt RussoBuddhist principle of impermanence (22:10)In Love with the World by Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche (23:00)New field of "Digital Multimedia" (28:30)Computer science and electrical engineeringSignal processing and programmingMusic and visual artsMedia Arts and Technology Program (29:50)Proprioception (39:10)Paideia (40:30)How do we go from the familiar to the strange? (47:00)Morning routine (48:00)The Impersonal Life by Joseph Benner (49:00)Bardo (53:30)Lightning Round (54:00)Book: Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa YoganandaThe Simarillion by JRR TolkienPassion: Running, riding, exercise on a mountainHeart sing: the AlloSphere and the proximity to the frontier of science and art; Students dreamsScrewed up: Preoccupation with work over familyFind JoAnn online:Website'Five-Cut Fridays' five-song music playlist series JoAnn's playlist
I have trouble wrapping any adequate labels around this episode's guest, Paco Nathan. Paco is a technologist, data scientist and an evangelist of a brighter data and technology future. He has an uncommon ability to synthesize the gaps and trends in this complex and evolving space, and gives me hope that we can create a more flourishing future within it.Show Notes:Origins of Artificial Intelligence and mentors (06:00)Humberto Maturana ("What the frog's eye tells the frog's brain")Fernando FloresFrancisco VarelaTerry WinogradCybernetics by Norbert Weiner (06:30)Project Cybersyn (07:00)Autopoiesis and Cognition by Humberto Maturana and Francisco VarelaExpert systems (13:20)Bell Labs (16:30)Hopfield network (16:50)Systems thinking (22:30)What is data science? (22:45)DJ PatilJohn TukeyThe complexities of today's world (29:50)Complexity and emergence (31:00)How Learning Works by Susan Ambrose (32:00)Panama papers (39:00)How to think in graphs daily (41:30)Have a shape in mind, even if you don't have the labels yetAmbiguity aversion (47:40)"Unknown unknowns"Dave Snowden and Cynefin Framework (47:45)Complex areas: no deterministic approach will arrive at a 'right answer'Medium posts: Sense and Scalability and Graph thinking (51:00)derwen.ai (52:30)How he takes notes (58:00)Lightning Round (01:01:00):Book: Ecotopia Emerging by Ernest CallenbachPassion: cookingHeart sing: sustainability and regenerative processes (open science)Screwed up: book storeRecommender systemFind guest online:Twitter: @pacoidWebsite: https://derwen.ai/paco'Five-Cut Fridays' five-song music playlist series Paco's playlist
Caitlin McShea is that special kind of curious that you cannot help but be inspired by, and she has the intellect to spread that curiosity over any domain. For the past ten years in roles varying from director of art galleries, curator and coordinator of exhibits, and now as a program manager at the Santa Fe Institute, she has been giving language, image, and concreteness to some of the most imaginative and futuristic thoughts of our age.Show Notes:Life's Edge Carl Zimmer (03:00)Four Lost Cities Annalee NewitzOur conversation on the Alien Crash Site podcast - youtube or audio (06:10)The Santa Fe Institute (SFI) (07:00)Interplanetary Project (16:50)'Wicked' problems (24:45)What is complexity? (25:30)Murray Gell-Mann (26:50)Gilles Deleuze (27:30)Valery Plame (34:00)James Drake (35:00)Feynman diagrams (35:10)David Krakauer (36:30)Jorge Luis Borges (39:20)How Emotions are Made Lisa Feldman Barrett (41:40)Two types of entropy in communication - Vanessa Ferdinand (50:00)Ted Chiang "The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate" (52:30)Roadside Picnic the Strugatsky Brothers (53:00)What I Talk About When I Talk About Running Haruki Murakami (58:00)Lightning Round (59:00)Book: One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia MarquezPassion: Visual artsHeart sing: CharcuterieScrewed up: EducationFind guest online:Twitter: @SantaFeMcShea'Five-Cut Fridays' five-song music playlist series Caitlin's playlist
Show Notes:Artificial Intelligence (AI) (01:00)Love of the liminal spaces (03:20)Philosophy and connection to AI (07:30)Advaita VedantaThe science of creativity (10:00)Never run out of problems to solve (11:20)Supervised and Unsupervised Learning (14:00)Doris Tsao at Caltech (15:30)AGI = Artificial General Intelligence (16:30)TED talks (19:40)2018 "Trinity of Artificial Intelligence" 2021 "Can Artificial Intelligence be conscious too?"What can you not do by simply scaling up? (20:20)Bongard-LOGO Challenge (21:00)Edge AI (23:30)Doris Tsao - what is the role of feedback in how we study things? (26:10)“What I cannot create, I do not understand” -Richard Feynman (26:40)The alignment problem (28:40)GPT model (37:00)The importance of metrics (38:50)Flourishing (39:00)Nick Bostrom paper clip thought experiment (39:50)Social media (41:00)Advocacy for women and minorities (43:00)Timnit Gebru (44:00)Joy Buolamwini (44:00)AI4All (45:30)Caltech Wave Program (45:40)me too. Movement (47:40)Curriculum for a flourishing society (50:00)Frederick Eberhardt at CaltechLightning Round (54:20)Book: Michio Kaku HyperspacePassion: DancingHeart sing: Rethinking how we interact with the world; yogaScrewed up: Twitter presenceFind Anima online:http://tensorlab.cms.caltech.edu/users/anima/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anima-anandkumar/'Five-Cut Fridays' five-song music playlist series Anima's playlist
Dan Goods is a leader among the community of creatives at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, so he's an imaginer among imaginers. A creator among creators. He's one of the most innovative minds I've come across, and someone who embodies selflessness and that most wonderful and contagious quality that is an insatiable curiosity. Show Notes:How he decided to go to art school (08:00)Out of Control by Kevin Kelly (10:30)David Kremers (10:30)Long view of time Roland Young (11:30)Teachers as cultivators of attention (13:45)How movable is your current perception of the limit? (14:10)The bridge to nowhere in LA (18:30)Echo mountain in LA (19:20)The places Los Angeles forgot (20:00)Design philosophy (21:00)Is it awesome?Tools for new perception (23:30)Dials metaphor (Lou Danzinger)Turning something upside downUsing your thumb to block things out (restrict the senses)Story of getting to NASA JPL (26:30)Giving to others the gifts you have received (36:30)ReciprocityExoplanet Travel Bureau (40:30)Life is your PhD (46:00)JPL's The Studio (47:00)Curriculum for design thinking (47:10)Help someone think through their thinking (54:00)Dan's TED talk "The museum of awe" (55:30)Re-sensitizing ourselves to life (56:40)Beginner's mind; Curiosity studies; Cognitive science: Exploration over exploitationErwin McManusIt is a gift and privilege to be aliveLightning Round (01:02:30)Book: Dr. SeussPassion: Exercise and perseverance Heart sing: Listen to a million people singing at onceScrewed up: Learning to lead a teamFind guest online:Website: http://www.directedplay.comTwitter: @dangoodsInstagram: @iamdangoods'Five-Cut Fridays' five-song music playlist series Dan's playlist
During two years spent at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, curiosity-driven coffee conversations every morning with people who surprised and inspired me sparked an endless fascination with the pivotal moments across a life. Travels to leading art, science, engineering, and design institutions around the world nourished my passion and blossomed into the conversations you hear on Origins every other week. On Origins we bring you conversations with thought-leaders across an eclectic mix of disciplines (science, engineering, art, and design), crafted specifically for the category-defying society that we live in. Join us as we explore the people expanding our world along with their network of thoughts, influences, and impacts, and what meaning they hold for you. Over the past 18 months we have published 33 mind-expanding, path-altering conversations. The craft of the show has evolved over that time (just go back and listen to the first few episodes to see just how far it has come) and we welcome these changes as the only way to respond to our uncertain society. Today we release Season Four as the next step in that evolution. We have used the personal 'trajectory' as a way of organizing things. Trajectories are not always best experienced in a sequential way and I believe there are better dimensions for organizing them. That is the structure of this podcast - the complex exploration of these trajectories to meet the complex lives of our guests and so that you can relate them to your own. On this season we will lean in to that complexity at a time when the world demands this kind of rethinking of each of us. Over the next dozen or so episodes we will explore topics central to our society today, including: the philosophy of design and what it means for science and society, the deeper view of artificial intelligence, becoming a planetary civilization and the science and engineering we need, thinking collectively rather than individually and the groups and institutions that are showing us how, the global commons, what it means to flourish as individuals and as groups, and much much more. The thought-leaders you will hear from over the next dozen or so episodes come from around the globe and are those that are creating the waves that will shape our society of the future. I cannot overstate how excited I am for you to hear each one. The speakers we bring to the show are much more than the conversation we can possibly have in an hour. They are worlds and they bring us into contact with many other worlds. We use the show notes to be a kind of network of those worlds, helping you take the ideas into your own life and explore the web of information. If you enjoy the show, it goes a long way to helping others discover it and experience whatever joy or expansion you have by rating us on Apple Podcasts and leaving a review. You can find and share Origins wherever you get your podcasts (Apple, Google, Spotify, etc.) and we are appreciative of any posts on Instagram or Twitter to thoughts an episode sparked in you. Help us create a community around these brilliant conversations.Finally, we are always drawing inspiration from new people and looking to bring those voices to Origins. Please share who is inspiring you and that you might like to hear on the show. Drop us an email from our website OriginsPodcast.co or send me a note on Twitter (@AeroSciengineer).
Peter Turchi takes the art and act of writing as an irresistible analog for the art and the act of living. His work is part of a long tradition of fascination with processes of writers and he is among the masters at relating that process in a way that reaches all domains of society. For anyone who has ever thought about writing - the craft of it, its centrality in the human experience, its analog for life itself - this conversation is for you.Show Notes:How he began writing (04:30)Dealing with rejection (12:00)Richard Russo writer (18:00)Maps of the Imaginations: The Writer as Cartographer (18:30)The Power of Maps by Dennis Woods (21:30)Other brilliant books on mapsJorge Luis Borges (19:00)Origins - Melanie Mitchell (28:30)Lisa Feldman Barrett (28:45)The Atlas of Cyberspace by Rob Kitchin (29:30)The Visual Display of Quantitative Information by Edward Tufte (30:15)Origins - Giorgia Lupi (31:20)Origins - Matt Russo (31:30)MFA Program at Warren Wilson (34:40)Productivity-driven culture (38:15)Alison Gopnik - Explore/Exploit paradigm (41:30)Charles Ritchie artist (45:30)E.O. Wilson - “A lifetime can be spent in a Magellanic voyage around the trunk of a single tree” (46:40)A Muze and a Maze (46:00)The Book of Sand by Borges (51:30)Joan Dideon “I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear” Peter's daily routine (53:45)Lightning round (58:00):Book: Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov Passion: MusicMaking heart sing: Sonoran DesertFind guest online:http://www.peterturchi.com/'Five-Cut Fridays’ five-song music playlist series Peter’s playlist
Ethan Zuckerman is a voice that you need to know. He’s a pioneer for the use of media as a tool for social change, for cultivating international development with technology, and for the activation of new media technologies by activists. Ethan is uncommonly insightful about the currents and trends of our society. In this conversation he helps us understand the shape of our public discourse, and relates it to the world of today and tomorrow. Show Notes:Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows - Sonder (05:00)Book: Rewire (08:00)MIT Media Lab Center for Civic Media (12:00)Nathan Matias (Cornell)Catherine D'Ignazio (MIT)Molly Sauter (University of Maryland)The Good Citizen Michael Schudson (16:00)The Social Machine Judith Donath (16:20)Rachel Barenplat: the velveteen rabbi (18:40)QAnon (22:30)Global voices (28:40)Small communities doing digital connection well (29:50)Michael Wood Lewis - Front Porch ForumEsra'a Al ShafeiSara Lomax-Reese - WURD RadioOrigins episode with Richard Bartlett and Microsolidarity (33:45)The slow professor by Maggie Berg and Barbara Seeber (35:00)Mistrust (37:00)Twilight of the elites Chris Hayes (38:30)Black lives matter and defund the police (40:30)Problem with a zero sum view (44:30)The sum of us by Heath McGhee (47:45)Lightning round (50:40):Book: The Creation of the Media by Paul StarrPassion: Music and ethnomusicologyHeart sing: Traveling (blog) and board gamesScrewed up: RelationshipJoke answer: invented the pop-up adFind guest online:Twitter: @EthanZhttps://ethanzuckerman.com/'Five-Cut Fridays’ five-song music playlist series Ethan’s playlist
We find ourselves in a world that feels incongruent and unfamiliar, changing socially and technologically at paces that expose conventional explanations as inadequate. Climate change, pandemics, political unrest have punctuated this new century and feel like clarion calls for new ways of being and being together. Enter Richard D. Bartlett — someone who has been a pioneer in thinking about these new modes.Show Notes:Apologetics (06:30)What is community? (06:50)The concept of flourishing (08:15)Having a gift/role in the world (12:00)Robin Wall Kimmerer Braiding Sweetgrass "The most important thing that each of us can know is our unique gift and how to use it in the world" Occupy movement (12:00)J.P. Lederach's "Critical Yeast" from The Moral ImaginationGovernance strategies for our time (18:30)What it takes to scale community authentically? (25:00)Does change need to be orchestrated from a central point? (28:00)Complexity (31:00)Microsolidarity (31:30)Enspiral'Crews'How to weave social fabric blog post (43:00)Morning routine (43:10)Adrienne Maree Brown We Will Not Cancel Us (44:00)Writing practice (45:00)Sendhil Mullainathan Scarcity (49:45)Lightning Round (50:30)Books: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance Robert PirsigThe listening society Hanzi FreinachtSandtalk Tyson YunkaportaOn Orality and Literacy Walter OngTomas Björkman Origins episodePassion: inventing instrumentsSonification - Matt Russo Origins episodeHeart sing: nonlinear and nonlogical use of languageScrewed up: Cheating on a partner, violating the terms of a relationshipFind guest online:Twitter: @RichDecibelsFollow Richard on MediumRichard's websitehttps://www.thehum.org/'Five-Cut Fridays’ five-song music playlist series Richard’s playlist
Tomas Björkman transcends science, business, philosophy, and social and personal change. Founder of the Ekskäret Foundation and coauthor of The Nordic Secret, Tomas’ story is a guide for anyone thinking about the future of society - a confluence of physics, macroeconomics, and entrepreneurship.Show Notes: Ekskäret Foundation; Oak Island Foundation (05:45) Origins of his union of scientific sensibility + entrepreneurship (07:00) From academia to business (09:00) Try to understand the world AND try to shape the world (10:00) Taking risks (12:00) We are not transparent to ourselves (14:30) Social entrepreneur (17:20) Complexity (21:30) The Nordic Secret (25:00) Corporate culture (26:20) Building stable lasting democracy (33:00) Conscious co-creation Inner maturity Retreat centersJim Rutt podcast on the Nordic SecretGerman philosophical background: Schiller, Goethe, von Humboldt, Herder, Hegel — Bildung Are we facing deep and rapid societal change? (36:00) Horizontal and vertical development (42:00) Otto Scharmer - vertical literacyFrederic Laloux Reinvent the OrganizationRobert Kegan 29k.org (51:00) Jonathan Rowson (52:30) Book: Spiritualize Personal practices (59:30) Book: The World We CreateMorning routine (01:00:45) ‘Retreats in Nature' Guided psychedelic experiences (see Michael Pollan’s How to Change Your Mind) Lightning Round (01:05:00) Book: Ken Wilbur Integral PsychologyPassion: Sailing and Trekking Heart sing: Discovering fiction (where to start? Marcel Proust, Goethe, Schiller) Proust Questionnaire Screwed up: Timing of media initiative Find guest online: http://www.tomas-bjorkman.com/EmergePerspectiva29k.orgFull Show Notes here
Show Notes: Storytelling (03:00) Wonder Collaborative (04:30) Jane Goodall (05:00) Human Nature (CRISPR documentary) Nobel Prize Winner Jennifer DoudnaRon Vale (06:00) "Cell Hell” - Cell Biology and Genetics course at Middlebury iBiology (09:00) The power of words (09:45) “Bringing good people to work with you” (10:30) How do you build a team? Creating community that cuts across disciplines (11:20) "Antidisciplinary" Elliot Kirschner - ‘morphing’ iBiology Matthew Meselson and Franklin Stahl (16:00) The art of the question (17:45) Conversations in Science with Dan Rather (18:00) Reinventing science film-making (25:30) Stepping outside of academic research (26:00) Patronin protein (27:00) “I belong” moment (30:00) What is CRISPR and what do people not realize about its importance? (32:00) Equality of access to scientific progress (38:00) Tenets of innovating in science communication (40:30) Carl Sagan, Ann Druyan, Richard Feynman (44:45) Pandemic routine (45:45) Morning routine (49:00) Lightning round (51:00) Book: Harry Potter & Lord of the Rings; Creativity Inc (Pixar)Passion: Logos of communication Heart Sing: Her kids (seeing language and expression develop) Screwed up: Writing grants Find guest online: iBiologyWonder Collaborative Coming soon: Science Communication LabTwitter: @ssgoodwin'Five-Cut Fridays’ five-song music playlist series Sarah’s playlist
Show Notes: Small Arcs of Larger Circles (02:00) Objectivity (05:45) Relationships and interdependencies (07:00) Smiling with your whole system (10:00) Flip side of delight and seeing connections (11:00) Language developed from your own frustration (13:30)Different kinds of teachers Esalen Institute (15:30) Diving more deeply into the arts and an exploration of culture (19:20) Working with different groupings of people (19:40) Describing things nonlinearly (20:30) 'Warm data' (23:50) Mutual learning between generations (27:00) ‘Change is when you throw away the ladder’ (28:00) Willingness to play and be wrong - inadequacy (30:00) New way of thinking and learning - Warm Data Labs (34:30) Observe the observer Multiple description Fluid patterning Paradox, inconsistency, time Holism, reductionismCultural Tone, texture, aestheticBertrand Russell logical typing'Transcontextual aboutness' (47:00) Symmathesy (52:30)Morning routine (55:00)Elvis Costello - embodying visions for things (58:00)Julie Odell How to Do Nothing (01:00:00)Andrea Gibson poem Tincture (01:01:50)Lightning Round (01:04:00)Book: Alice in WonderlandPassion: The willingness of art and not knowing where it is goingHeart sing: New dog, BlakeScrewed up: Doing things just in timeThe reason to give is not because of what you will get for itTend vitalityFind guest online: Twitter: @NoraBatesonhttps://batesoninstitute.org/nora-bateson/'Five-Cut Fridays’ five-song music playlist series Guest’s playlist
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