Origins Podcast with Ryan McGranaghan

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. 

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