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 Website

Flourishing Commons Newsletter

Show 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 Trilogy
  • Passion: art (Hidden Patterns exhibition; 150 years of Nature)
  • Heart sing: Network medicine
  • Screwed up: Failing to invest in Google
• Find László online:
  • https://barabasi.com/
• 'Five-Cut Fridays’ five-song music playlist series
  • László’s playlist

Logo artwork by Cristina Gonzalez

Music 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 links

Origins Podcast Website

Flourishing Commons Newsletter

Origins Podcast Website

Flourishing Commons Newsletter and the post introducing Great Asking

Show Notes:

• Sara Hendren's Origins Conversation
• start 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 Questionnaire
• Lightning Round (57:30):
  • Overrated virtue: (Krista) independence; (Sara) fortitude as opposed to true courage
  • Words or phrases to retire: (Krista) losing generative to AI; (Sara) community
  • Valuing in friends: (Krista) laughter; (Sara) longevity
  • Lowest depth of misery: (Krista) when imagination shuts down; (Sara) tyranny of inwardness and the lie of aloneness (St. Augustine)
• Find Sara and Krista online:
  • Sara
  • Krista

Logo artwork by Cristina Gonzalez

Music by Agasthya Pradhan Shenoy (Swelo)