Guru Madhavan reverences the world and all that is in it. Guru is an engineer, but his conception of engineering is more vast than we typically assign to the role. To it he brings a systems consciousness that widens the field in recognition of its entanglement with the social and cultural.

Origins Podcast Website

Flourishing Commons Newsletter

Show Notes:

• David Sloan Wilson on Origins (02:05)
• systems consciousness (06:40)
• problematizing the term 'technology' (11:00)
• jirnoddhara - 'repairing what is worn' (13:30)
• Charles Vest (15:20)
• Applied Minds Guru's first book (21:20)
• 'lessons from the scrapheap' (24:00)
• Spanning Space by Claude Claremont (25:00)
• Cloaca Maxima (29:00)
• Wicked Problems by Guru (31:00)
• "How to be a poet" by Wendell Berry (31:00)
• "The Grind Challenges" by Guru (33:00)
• Evolution for Everyone by David Sloan Wilson (41:50)
• Flourishing Salons and the event Guru referred to (43:00)
• FOCUS (45:20)
• Elinor Ostrom (46:30)
• The Disuniting of America by Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. (55:20)
• Paul Virilio's 'inverted miracle' (56:30)
• What does it mean to flourish? (57:30)
• Why War? letters between Einstein and Freud (01:00:30)
• Lightning round (01:05:10)
  • Book: The Faraway Nearby by Rebecca Solnit
  • Passion: cubist painting
  • Heart sing: latest book
    • The Wisdom of the Desert by Thomas Merton
  • Screwed up: communication
• Find Guru online: LinkedIn
• 'Five-Cut Fridays’ five-song music playlist series
  • Guru’s playlist

Logo artwork by Cristina Gonzalez

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

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