Francesca Samsel is crafting a new language for our world. That is, she crosses art, science, and visualization to open new ways of understanding and engaging with the natural world, not just visually but across the sensorial spectrum. She recognizes the inextricably social element to this, too, and her work raises our capacity to collaborate, and in the process, alters our sense of what scientific inquiry is and can (and perhaps needs to) be. Her work as her life are teachers we need for the world we are walking into.

Origins Podcast Website

Flourishing Commons Newsletter

Show Notes:

• vulnerability (11:30)
• problem with the 'follow your passion' path (14:20)
• Ganymede (15:00)
• what she tells her students (15:50)
• art-science collaboration (16:00)
• Santa Fe Institute (21:20)
• James (Jim) Ahrens (24:00)
• Craig Tweedie (25:20)
• visual structure to see the complexity in data (29:00)
• Isaac Asimov 'that's funny' (30:20)
• the need for scientific breakthrough (31:20)
• Lia Halloran - your hand will physically guide you the way to breakthrough (31:30)
• the only mark that you determine as an artist is the first one (33:00)
• delivery-oriented society (34:30)
• "Stewardship of Global Collective Behavior" by Joseph Bak-Coleman et al. (40:00)
• visual vocabulary work (42:00)
• Art-Sci-Vis Lab at UT Austin (43:20)
• flourishing (47:00)
• Gilead by Marilynne Robinson (51:45)
• lightning round (48:00)
  • Artist: Jon McCormick (work called "Fifty Sisters")
  • Passion: geoscience and the complexity you find when you walk out of the door
  • Heart sing: fused glass, ice, and rock
  • Screwed up: obliviousness to colleagues
• Find Francesca online:
  • Website
  • UT Austin

Logo artwork by Cristina Gonzalez

Music by swelo on all streaming platforms or @swelomusic on social media

Malka Older makes a life at the crossroads of our existing and future worlds. Between research into the sociology of organizations, on-the-ground work in humanitarian aid and disaster risk reduction, and acclaimed writing of speculative and science fiction, Older brilliantly, beautifully, uncommonly lives the great paradox in front of us all: to hold at once the two truths of lived experience and imagined future.

Origins Podcast Website

Flourishing Commons Newsletter

Show Notes:

• the immigrant sensibility (05:00)
• belonging (07:20)
• exile (09:00)
• Danielle Allen's theory of justice (15:00)
• A Paradise Built in Hellby Rebecca Solnit (16:00)
• Malka's work in the international space (16:20)
• Global Voices (19:15)
• Where are you REALLY from? (19:40)
• The Institute on Statelessness and Inclusion (20:30)
• 'Great Asking' (22:30)
• Positionality (23:00)
• Mu - unask the question (23:20)
• the opportunity in disaster (27:10)
• 2004 Boxing Day Indian Ocean Tsunami (31:00)
• psychological distance (34:40)
• Malka's book ...And Other Disasters(35:30)
• the importance of improvisation (43:00)
• David Whyte - the conversational nature of reality (46:30)
• Malka's book Infomocracy (49:00)
• the adjacent possible (53:45)
• The Crisis of Narration by Byung-Chul Han (59:15)
• The Sociological Imaginationby C Wright Mills (59:30)
• what does it mean to flourish? (59:45)
• the generative narrative of our time (01:08:30)
• Lightning round (01:02:00)
  • Book: The Lord of the Rings
  • Passion: Hearing a new language
  • Heart sing: Global Voices
  • Screwed up: relationship
• Find Malka online:
  • Wikipedia
  • Arizona State Profile
  • LinkedIn

Logo artwork by Cristina Gonzalez

Music by swelo on all streaming platforms or @swelomusic on social media

Biologist, philosopher, educator, facilitator, and historian of science Mette Miriam Böll is embodiment of the kind of life that emerges when we accept, recognize, and revere our profound interconnectedness. Her scholarship as her life are nourishment for returning to the task we are all called to: to human well, at once simple and complex, individual and civilizational.

Origins Podcast Website

Flourishing Commons Newsletter

Show Notes:

• Tibetan Book of the Dead (04:20)
• Dzogchen - Tibetan Buddhist Teachings (05:00)
• John P. Milton (05:40)
• drawing her out on interconnectedness (12:30)
• Krishnamurti (17:00)
• Systems awareness and change processes (17:25)
• Polycrisis (17:35)
• life is a creative journey (18:20)
• John Paul Lederach on Origins (19:30)
• systems thinking (20:15)
• Jesper Hoffmeyer (20:30)
• Peter Senge (22:00)
• Why most systems change efforts fail (22:40)
• industrial PhD program Denmark (e.g., here) (32:10)
• Presence: An Exploration of Profound Change in People, Organizations, and Society by Peter Senge (34:00)
• compassionate systems framework (37:30)
• Otto Scharmer (37:30)
• compassionate systems workshops (42:40)
• generative social fields (44:00)
• Francisco Varela: The Logic of Paradise (53:00)
• "Keeping Quiet" by Pablo Neruda (59:00)
• Lightning round (58:30)
  • Book: The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
  • Passion: Regenerative futures field
  • Heart Sing: Digital detox
  • Screwed up: Practicality
• Find Mette online:
  • Center for Systems Awareness

Logo artwork by Cristina Gonzalez

Music by swelo on all streaming platforms or @swelomusic on social media