Today we are going to be combining paradox, evolving language, and contextual “warm data. “ Combining is the title of Nora Bateson’s latest book, and Embracing Paradox, Evolving Language is Lisa Maroski’s latest offering. They will be our two guests, and I am tingling with anticipation. What are we going to talk about? I don’t know.  We are going to “pick the flowers, pee in the bushes, throw the stones, watch the clouds, sleep in the shade, and eat the fruit” and then see what happens. We are going to explore the depth of this magnificent, interconnected world. The only thing we know is that the map is not the territory; the name is not the thing named. We know that all the things we typically separate into their own domain – the ecological, biological, economic, philosophical, and educational are really interconnected. But how?  What is the pattern that connects these all together? Join us for this special edition of the Circle for Original Thinking with our guests Lisa Maroski and Nora Bateson.   

Nora Bateson is an award-winning filmmaker, artist, international lecturer, research designer, author, and president of the International Bateson Institute. She is the founder and creator of the concept of “Warm Data” and the practices of the Warm Date Lab and People Need People online. Nora wrote, directed, and produced the documentary An Ecology of Mind: A Daughters’ Portrait of Gregory Bateson. Her work brings tougher the fields of biology, cognition, art, anthropology, psychology, and information technology together into a study of patterns in the ecology of living systems. She is the author of Small Arcs of Larger Circles (Triarchy Press, 2016) and Combining (2023).  

L.E. Maroski is the author of the novel The One that Is Both (2006) and the Nautilus award-winning book Embracing Paradox, evolving Language: Expressing the Unity and Complexity of Integral Consciousness (2026). She combines the fields of psychology, philosophy, linguistics and evolutionary consciousness into her work, building on her study of philosophy and psychology at Bryn Mawr College, where Ashok Gangadean was one of her professors. She is a long-time member of the Jean Gebser Society and CG Jung Society.