Origins Podcast with Ryan McGranaghan

Zachary Ugolnik has for years been charting a new path that refuses the tired and inanimate narrative about the separateness of science and spirituality, reason and religion. In his life we find rich possibility when those old illusory dichotomies are discarded, and from that possibility perhaps new wisdom for creating a society full of care and flourishing, one that embraces our inherent needfulness and borrows from theology, ecology, and the social sciences. 

Origins Podcast Website

Flourishing Commons Newsletter

Show Notes:

• locate shared spaces of curiosity across disciplines (11:50)
• Émile Durkheim and collective effervescence (13:45)
• Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS) at Stanford University (14:10 and 16:20)
• through lines between religion and social science (13:45)
• Victor and Edith Turner  communitas (15:00)
• Simone Weil decreation (18:30)
• re-membering (22:00)
• Zach's book: The Collective Self (18:30)
• Theater of War (24:00)
• Byzantine iconography and perspective (26:00)
• Picasso "Le Taureau" (26:20)
• The Social Science of Caregiving (27:30)
• Flourishing Knowledge Commons (27:45)
• Margaret Levi communities of fate (27:50)
• "Mobilizing in the Interest of Others" by Levi and Ugolnik (30:00)
• Buddhism and interdependence (31:50)
• Collective action problems (34:40)
• flourishing systems (37:30)
• Ilya Prigogine and dissipative structures (39:30)
• Danielle Allen (42:15)
• philanthropy (44:30)
• Strother School of Radical Attention (52:30)
• Andrei Rublev (52:50)
• Daniel Kahneman (53:50)
• Syriac term Iḥidāyā (55:00)
• Lightning Round (57:30):
  • Book: The Way of the Pilgrimand The Narrow Road to the Deep North and Other Travel Sketches by Matsuo Bashō
  • Passion: travel
  • Heart sing: swimming with my kids
  • Screwed up: eulogy 
• Find Zach online:
  • https://zacharyugolnik.com/

Logo artwork by Cristina Gonzalez

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

Dr. Jennifer Wiseman gives expression to our cosmos, as a pioneering astrophysicist, an outspoken advocate for science within policy and the public, as well as a person of faith. Her's are sensibilities of a scientist, a theologian, and a human being in awe of the universe, recognizing that these parts of ourselves need not be in opposition but rather in beautiful and enriching conversation. 

Origins Podcast Website

Flourishing Commons Newsletter

Show Notes:

• Discovery of comet 114P/Wiseman-Skiff (14:30)
• Maria Mitchell (14:30)
• Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences at MIT (15:40)
• Jim Elliot (16:00)
• Needfulness (23:30)
• the 'lone genius' myth of science (26:00)
• the Science of Science (29:40)
• the society of science (30:00)
• "How Prayer Works" by Kaveh Akbar (30:15)
• 'coworkers in the kingdom of culture' W.E.B. Du Bois (35:00)
• The Hubble Space Telescope (37:00)
• Ultra-deep field image (37:00)
• William James and numinous experiences (37:15)
• discovery of exoplanets (43:00)
• "My God, It’s Full of Stars" by Tracy K Smith (43:30)
• what does it mean to flourish? (52:30)
• lightning round (58:30):
  • Book: A Grief Observedby C.S. Lewis & Life, the Universe and Everythingby Douglas Adam
  • Passion: nature and serendipity 
  • Heart sing: the bigger picture, being part of a bigger story
    • a sense of awe and wonder and a sense of hope
    • Jane Hirshfield on Origins
  • Screwed up: worrying about different things in different stages of life
• I am a Strange Loop by Douglas Hofstadter (01:07:00)
• Find Jennifer online:
  • At NASA
  • Wikipedia

Logo artwork by Cristina Gonzalez

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

Susan Magsamen makes her life at the frontier: the frontier of neuroscience, of institutional change, of the intersection of art and science. Her's is a life full of wisdom for how to live amongst mystery and befriend complexity.

Origins Podcast Website

Flourishing Commons Newsletter

Show Notes:

• spontaneous "you are my sunshine" (02:00)
• T. S. Eliot (08:00)
• implementation science (08:40)
• therapeutic recreation (11:00)
• Trabian Shorters and asset framing (15:00)
• Daniel Kahneman (16:00)
• neuroplasticity (22:30)
• Howard Gardner and Kurt Fisher and Mind, Brain, and Education Program at Harvard (26:15)
• Karl Alexander (27:30)
• Curiosity Kits (28:30)
• NeuroArts (32:00)
• Gileadby Marilynne Robinson (36:00)
• more than scientific knowledge (38:00)
• "Social Support and the Perception of Geographical Slant" (45:00)
• Resmaa Menakem (46:30)
• NeuroArts Blueprint Initiative (46:40)
• "Cirque du Soleil and the neuroscience of awe" on Vox (47:40)
• Global Watering Hole (51:30)
• Renée Fleming Neuroarts Investigator Awards (52:30)
• Rachel Naomi Remen (56:30)
• Lightning Round (01:03:00)
  • Book: Silent Spring by Rachel Carson
  • Passion: horseback riding
  • Heart sing: grandchildren
  • Screwed up: articulation in these times
• Find Susan online:
  • International Arts + Mind Lab

Logo artwork by Cristina Gonzalez

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

Origins Podcast Website

Hello friends, a new season of Origins arrives next week, on Tuesday, May 20. 

This next chapter of Origins is about exploring conversation, that great practice of placing two things next to one another and allowing them to be astonished by the other. It is also about exploring the collective narrative of our time. 

This trailer is both introduction and meditation on how Origins is more than a podcast: a space for collective inquiry into living well in a fractured world.

Over on Substack we’re cultivating not just conversation but community—a space for listening, reflection, and co-creation. This season, you’ll find templates born from the gatherings surrounding some of these episodes: guides for more generative encounters, wider conversations, and more generous questions. These tools aren’t prescriptions, but invitations.

Flourishing Commons Newsletter

Few concepts are more important to our society than resilience. Agnostic of domain, of nation, culture, and scale (as vital, indeed, to the individual life as to the planetary civilization), it would be impossible to overstate the pressure on us to understand it. If resilience is a core competency of our time, it would not be hyperbole to say that Dr. David Woods one of our most important thinkers. 

Origins Podcast Website

Flourishing Commons Newsletter

Show Notes:

• three mile island (07:20)
• resilience engineering (12:30)
• the theory of graceful extensibility (12:30)
• The Risk Society by Ulrich Beck (13:10)
• how do you know? (14:00)
• scientific revolutions and paradigm shifts (15:00)
• retrenchment vs revitalization (16:00)
• the novelty inequality (28:00)
• Simon DeDeo on Origins (28:30)
• Mars Climate Orbiter report (31:00)
• 'faster, better, cheaper' pressure (32:00)
• Erik Hollnagle and Efficiency-Thoroughness Trade-Off principle (33:30)
• graceful extensibility (36:20)
• Douglas Hofstadter and strange loops (41:00)
• SNAFU catchers (42:00)
• dialectic between the individual and collective (44:00)
• Arnold Toynbee (45:00)
• multi-hazards and changing climate (52:20)
• John Doyle (54:00)
• Elinor Ostrom and reciprocity (54:20)
• Lightning Round (01:01:30):
  • Book: Gödel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter
  • Passion: History and Atlas of Great Lakes Indian History by Helen Hornbeck Tanner
  • Heart sing: graceful extensibility and resilience engineering video series
  • Screwed up: building interfaces to the knowledge of resilience
• Find David online:
  • Ohio State University site

Logo artwork by Cristina Gonzalez

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

Paul Smaldino is an explorer. That might seem like an odd way to describe a professor of cognitive science, but anyone who has glanced at his biography will recognize that he lives his life in exploration. His scholarship as his life are inspiration for keeping the lines of inquiry wide open and the things we can discover in doing so.

Origins Podcast Website

Flourishing Commons Newsletter

Show Notes:

• The Dancing Wu Li Masters (08:00)
• The Quantum and the Lotus (12:30)
• Sagehood (15:00)
• J. Krishnamurti and David Bohm (17:00)
• Simone de Beauvoir (18:00)
• Science as an ongoing process of flourishing (18:15)
• Jeffrey Shank (26:00)
• Richard McElreath (27:40)
• "Cultural group selection plays an essential role in explaining human cooperation" Richardson et al. (28:00)
• "Social conformity despite individual preferences for distinctiveness" (35:00)
• "Maintaining transient diversity is a general principle for improving collective problem solving" Smaldino et al. (38:00)
• Philip Kitcher (46:00)
• explore-exploit tradeoff (46:10)
• replication crisis (49:00)
• The Knowledge Machine Strevens (50:30)
• "Echo chambers and epistemic bubbles" by C Thi Nguyen (53:00)
• "Interdisciplinarity can aid the spread of better methods between scientific communities" Smaldino and O'Connor (56:00)
• Wicked problems (56:30)
• C Thi Nguyen on Origins (57:00)
• Flourishing (58:00)
• Lightning round (01:05:00):
  • Book: Dune by Frank Herbert or Culture and the Evolutionary Process by Boyd and Richerson
  • Passion: film and music
  • Heart sing: two kids
• Find Paul online: Website

Logo artwork by Cristina Gonzalez

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

I've been following John Paul Lederach's work for years, finding the words he uses inordinately relevant to all of the details and spaces of my life. John Paul is Professor of International Peacebuilding at the Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at Notre Dame. He has been a teacher to me across time and space and I believe the ideas he brings into the world are teachers we all need for the world we are walking into.

Origins Podcast Website

Flourishing Commons Newsletter

Show Notes:

• Vocation (12:00)
• The Moral Imagination: The Art and Soul of Building Peaceby John Paul (12:30)
• Rumi poetry and the reed flute (19:00)
• Ongoingness (21:00)
• Peacebuilding (21:20)
• Pádraig Ó Tuama (31:00)
• wonder, wander, and wait (36:00)
• 'bearing witness to more of the complexity of the other' (37:30)
• collective empathy (40:00)
• Paulo Freire (44:00)
• critical yeast (46:00)
• Francisco Varela and "The Logic of Paradise" (54:00)
• Mind and Life Dialogues (54:00)
• Poetry (55:00)
• Eduardo Galeano (56:00)
• Donald Hall (01:03:00)
• Ai-jen Poo (01:11:00)
• Lightning Round (01:05:00)
  • Book: Tomorrow's Child by Rubem Alves 
  • Passion: poetry and physics
  • Heart sing: podcasting
  • Screwed up: the significance and challenge of patience
• Find John Paul online:
  • https://www.johnpaullederach.com/

Logo artwork by Cristina Gonzalez

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

Flourishing is not a fixed state; it is an unfolding. In this time of rupture we need encounters with flourishing, to know it in our lived experiences individually and collectively. In this transformative event on December 12, 2024, Ryan McGranaghan, host of the Origins Podcast and founder of the Flourishing Salons, engaged in a moving conversation with four profound provocateurs and a wider community of artists, designers, engineers, scientists, educators, and contemplatives. The event was co-hosted by Flourishing Salons and the Cultural Programs of the National Academy of Sciences (CPNAS) DC Art and Science Evening Rendezvous (DASER).


Origins Podcast Website

Flourishing Commons Newsletter

Show Notes:

• Video of the event (link) and event page (link)
• Opening remarks - JD Talasek, Cultural Programs of the National Academy of Sciences (03:30)
• DC Art Science Evening Rendezvous (03:30)
• Ryan McGranaghan framing (05:50)
• Flourishing Salons (06:00)
• Rainer Maria Rilke "Let This Darkness Be a Bell Tower" (07:30)
• Elizabeth Alexander (09:00)
• James Suzman (09:40)
• Danielle Allen (09:40)
• John Paul Lederach and critical yeast (12:00)
• Audrey Tang (12:50)
• David Whyte (13:10)
• "Knowledge Commons and the Future of Democracy" (14:00)
• Simone Weil (18:00)
• American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting (19:00)
• 'Flourishing Summits' (19:45)
• Susan Magsamen provocation (20:15)
• Julie Demuth provocation (34:00)
• Jennifer Wiseman provocation (45:00)
• Dan Jay provocation (56:15)
• Salon discussion (01:11:00)
• Find the guests online:
  • Susan Magsamen
  • Julie Demuth
  • Jennifer Wiseman
  • Dan Jay

Logo artwork by Cristina Gonzalez

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

Natalie (Talia, as she goes by) Stroud has for years been studying the ways that our lives online show up in and shape our lives together. Her scholarship as her life are unexampled guides to the tumult, the challenges, and the opportunity presented by the advent and evolution of digital media.

Origins Podcast Website

Flourishing Commons Newsletter

Show Notes:

• Federal Communications Committee "Information Needs of Communities" (08:10)
• Kathleen Hall Jamieson (08:50)
• Center for Media Engagement (11:00)
• Niche News (12:00)
• Governing the Commonsby Elinor Ostrom (17:00)
• Understanding Knowledge As a Commonsby Hess and Ostrom (17:30)
• Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI by Yuval Noah Harari (17:40)
• 'crisis discipline' (e.g., Michael Soulé) (18:00)
• Danielle Allen on relationality (20:00)
• New_ Public (22:20)
• Civic Signals (23:50 & 32:00)
• Talia's research with Meta around 2020 presidential election (26:00)
• Eli Pariser (34:00)
• Great Asking episode of Origins (35:00)
• the four building blocks of a healthy or flourishing digital community (37:30)
• what does it mean to flourish? (39:00)
• Umberto Eco and lists (42:20)
• trust (43:00)
• Martha Nussbaum (46:20)
• public imagination (51:00)
• Healing the Heart of Democracyby Parker Palmer (55:20)
• Lightning Round (55:40)
  • Book: The Nature and Origins of Public Opinions by John Zaller 
  • Passion: business and marketing 'beach read' books
  • Heart Sing: election integrity
  • Screwed up: reducing polarization in ways practical and scalable
• Find Talia online:
  • UT Austin
• 'Five-Cut Fridays’ five-song music playlist series  
  • Talia’s playlist

Logo artwork by Cristina Gonzalez

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

Simon DeDeo's inquiry takes on the most immense topics: astrophysics, history, epistemology, culture. He brings the precision of a physicist, the capability of a data scientist, and the sensibility of a philosopher to thinking about how we live our lives; and his polymathic life might be the example we need to make sense of the world we are walking into, one requiring an evolution to our way of studying and understanding.

Origins Podcast Website

Flourishing Commons Newsletter

Show Notes:

• David Spergel (08:40)
• The Santa Fe Institute (14:10)
• The Village Vanguard in New York City (16:30)
• The Applicability of Mathematics as a Philosophical Problem by Mark Steiner (24:30)
• Murray Gell-Mann (25:00)
• "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences" by Eugene Wigner (26:00)
• "The civilizing process in London’s Old Bailey" Klingenstein et al (27:30)
• Michael Tomasello (31:50)
• Michael Palmer "Lies of the Poem" (34:50)
• Phenomenology of Spirit by Hegel (37:20)
• Gregory Bateson "Where is the mind?" (40:20)
• The CANDOR corpus (42:50)
• Judith Donath on Origins (48:10)
• Marshall McLuhan (49:00)
• Science of Science (49:10)
• "New and atypical combinations: An assessment of novelty and interdisciplinarity" (49:10)
• Helen Vendler (51:20)
• The Anxiety of Influenceby Harold Bloom (53:00)
• C Thi Nguyen on Origins (57:00)
• The Scientific Landscape of Human Flourishing (58:00)
• eudaimonia (58:30)
• thumos (59:00)
• Lightning Round (01:04:50)
  • Book: American Pastoral by Philip Roth 
  • Passion: exercise
  • Heart sing: narrative
  • Screwed up: teaching and mentoring
• Find Simon online:
  • Website

Logo artwork by Cristina Gonzalez

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