June 30, 2020

Episode 21: Waleed Abdalati - NASA Chief Scientist and how to live a life led by your curiosity

1 hour 7 minutes

Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) (06:00)
One of ten people to be ’NASA Chief Scientist'
Being led around by your curiosity
- ‘Pulls' from our earliest ages in life (07:30)
The Arctic from space (10:00)
- The ’space-based perspective'
’No better compass than your emotions’ (11:30)
- Constructive emotions
Opportunities to connect mind and body (14:00)
Love of career and love of family (23:30)
“It has to give you energy and not drain energy from you" (25:00)
What he tells his students (28:00)
- Think about the act of learning
The goal: learn, grow, have new experiences (30:00)
Becoming comfortable with discomfort - not that hard if you believe in it and if you believe you can contribute meaningfully to it (34:00)
Existing in little space (35:00)
Antidisciplinary (36:00)
NASA = ‘bureaucratic manifestation of all that makes us human’ (38:00)
- Study the far off places that only exist in our imagination
- Takes our humanity and our human spirit to the limit
Communicating difficult things (44:00)
It is our responsibility to understand why others feel and think the way that they do (50:45)
Physics is better behaved than social science (58:00)
Put yourself in a place of understanding why someone may feel differently than you (59:00)
- Put the energy into understanding a divergent perspective from yours
Lightning Round (1:02:00):
- Book: Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! and What Do You Care What Other People Think?
  - Marriage of cerebral and emotional sides
- Passion that helped set your path: theater and his children
- Making your heart sing now: glimmers of hope in the tragedies of this era’s events
- Screwed up: education and career path (1:07:00)
Enjoy the challenge to think differently
'Five-Cut Fridays’ series
- Guest’s list

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By Ryan McGranaghan

88 ratings

June 30, 2020

Episode 21: Waleed Abdalati - NASA Chief Scientist and how to live a life led by your curiosity

1 hour 7 minutes

Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) (06:00)
One of ten people to be ’NASA Chief Scientist'
Being led around by your curiosity
- ‘Pulls' from our earliest ages in life (07:30)
The Arctic from space (10:00)
- The ’space-based perspective'
’No better compass than your emotions’ (11:30)
- Constructive emotions
Opportunities to connect mind and body (14:00)
Love of career and love of family (23:30)
“It has to give you energy and not drain energy from you" (25:00)
What he tells his students (28:00)
- Think about the act of learning
The goal: learn, grow, have new experiences (30:00)
Becoming comfortable with discomfort - not that hard if you believe in it and if you believe you can contribute meaningfully to it (34:00)
Existing in little space (35:00)
Antidisciplinary (36:00)
NASA = ‘bureaucratic manifestation of all that makes us human’ (38:00)
- Study the far off places that only exist in our imagination
- Takes our humanity and our human spirit to the limit
Communicating difficult things (44:00)
It is our responsibility to understand why others feel and think the way that they do (50:45)
Physics is better behaved than social science (58:00)
Put yourself in a place of understanding why someone may feel differently than you (59:00)
- Put the energy into understanding a divergent perspective from yours
Lightning Round (1:02:00):
- Book: Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! and What Do You Care What Other People Think?
  - Marriage of cerebral and emotional sides
- Passion that helped set your path: theater and his children
- Making your heart sing now: glimmers of hope in the tragedies of this era’s events
- Screwed up: education and career path (1:07:00)
Enjoy the challenge to think differently
'Five-Cut Fridays’ series
- Guest’s list