Origins Podcast with Ryan McGranaghan

Tomas Björkman transcends science, business, philosophy, and social and personal change. Founder of the Ekskäret Foundation and coauthor of The Nordic Secret, Tomas’ story is a guide for anyone thinking about the future of society - a confluence of physics, macroeconomics, and entrepreneurship.

Show Notes: 

• Ekskäret Foundation; Oak Island Foundation (05:45) 
• Origins of his union of scientific sensibility + entrepreneurship (07:00) 
• From academia to business (09:00) 
• Try to understand the world AND try to shape the world (10:00) 
• Taking risks (12:00) 
• We are not transparent to ourselves (14:30) 
• Social entrepreneur (17:20) 
• Complexity (21:30) 
• The Nordic Secret (25:00) 
• Corporate culture (26:20) 
• Building stable lasting democracy (33:00) 
  • Conscious co-creation 
  • Inner maturity  
  • Retreat centers
  • Jim Rutt podcast on the Nordic Secret
  • German philosophical background: Schiller, Goethe, von Humboldt, Herder, Hegel — Bildung
•  Are we facing deep and rapid societal change? (36:00) 
•  Horizontal and vertical development (42:00) 
  • Otto Scharmer - vertical literacy
  • Frederic Laloux Reinvent the Organization
  • Robert Kegan   
• 29k.org (51:00) 
• Jonathan Rowson (52:30) 
  • Book: Spiritualize  
• Personal practices (59:30) 
  • Book: The World We Create
  • Morning routine (01:00:45) 
  • ‘Retreats in Nature' 
  • Guided psychedelic experiences (see Michael Pollan’s How to Change Your Mind)  
• Lightning Round (01:05:00) 
  • Book: Ken Wilbur Integral Psychology
  • Passion: Sailing and Trekking  
  • Heart sing: Discovering fiction (where to start? Marcel Proust, Goethe, Schiller) 
    • Proust Questionnaire  
  • Screwed up: Timing of media initiative 
• Find guest online: 
  • http://www.tomas-bjorkman.com/
  • Emerge
  • Perspectiva
  • 29k.org

Full Show Notes here

Show Notes: 

• Storytelling (03:00) 
• Wonder Collaborative (04:30) 
• Jane Goodall (05:00) 
• Human Nature (CRISPR documentary) 
  • Nobel Prize Winner Jennifer Doudna
• Ron Vale (06:00) 
• "Cell Hell” - Cell Biology and Genetics course at Middlebury 
• iBiology (09:00) 
• The power of words (09:45) 
• “Bringing good people to work with you” (10:30) 
  • How do you build a team? 
• Creating community that cuts across disciplines (11:20) 
  • "Antidisciplinary" 
  • Elliot Kirschner - ‘morphing’ iBiology 
• Matthew Meselson and Franklin Stahl (16:00) 
• The art of the question (17:45) 
• Conversations in Science with Dan Rather (18:00) 
• Reinventing science film-making (25:30) 
• Stepping outside of academic research (26:00) 
• Patronin protein (27:00) 
• “I belong” moment (30:00) 
• What is CRISPR and what do people not realize about its importance? (32:00) 
• Equality of access to scientific progress (38:00) 
• Tenets of innovating in science communication (40:30) 
• Carl Sagan, Ann Druyan, Richard Feynman (44:45) 
• Pandemic routine (45:45) 
• Morning routine (49:00) 
• Lightning round (51:00) 
  • Book: Harry Potter & Lord of the Rings; Creativity Inc (Pixar)
  • Passion: Logos of communication  
  • Heart Sing: Her kids (seeing language and expression develop) 
  • Screwed up: Writing grants 
• Find guest online: 
  • iBiology
  • Wonder Collaborative  
  • Coming soon: Science Communication Lab
  • Twitter: @ssgoodwin
• 'Five-Cut Fridays’ five-song music playlist series   
  • Sarah’s playlist

Show Notes: 

• Small Arcs of Larger Circles (02:00) 
• Objectivity (05:45) 
• Relationships and interdependencies (07:00) 
• Smiling with your whole system (10:00) 
• Flip side of delight and seeing connections (11:00) 
• Language developed from your own frustration (13:30)
  
  
  • Different kinds of teachers 
• Esalen Institute (15:30) 
• Diving more deeply into the arts and an exploration of culture (19:20) 
• Working with different groupings of people (19:40) 
• Describing things nonlinearly (20:30) 
• 'Warm data' (23:50) 
• Mutual learning between generations (27:00) 
• ‘Change is when you throw away the ladder’ (28:00) 
• Willingness to play and be wrong - inadequacy (30:00) 
• New way of thinking and learning - Warm Data Labs (34:30) 
  • Observe the observer 
  • Multiple description 
  • Fluid patterning 
  • Paradox, inconsistency, time 
  • Holism, reductionism
  • Cultural 
  • Tone, texture, aesthetic
    
    
• Bertrand Russell logical typing
• 'Transcontextual aboutness' (47:00) 
• Symmathesy (52:30)
• Morning routine (55:00)
• Elvis Costello - embodying visions for things (58:00)
• Julie Odell How to Do Nothing (01:00:00)
• Andrea Gibson poem Tincture (01:01:50)
• Lightning Round (01:04:00)
  • Book: Alice in Wonderland
  • Passion: The willingness of art and not knowing where it is going
  • Heart sing: New dog, Blake
  • Screwed up: Doing things just in time
• The reason to give is not because of what you will get for it
  • Tend vitality
• Find guest online: 
  • Twitter: @NoraBateson
  • https://batesoninstitute.org/nora-bateson/
• 'Five-Cut Fridays’ five-song music playlist series   
  • Guest’s playlist

Show Notes: 

• National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) (02:00) 
• Rachel Carson’s words (03:30) 
• Scale of things and perspective 
• Pioneers of oceanography: Rossby and Montgomery (07:30) 
• Global conclusions from small data (09:30) 
• World Ocean Circulation Experiment (10:00) 
• Eye-opening expeditions (12:00) 
• All kinds of ways of ’seeing’ (14:00) 
• Evolution of distributing data (15:00) 
• Recording our experiences (17:00) 
• Books (19:45) 
  • Burr by Gore Vidal  
  • Iron Coffins by Herbert Werner 
• Mentors and lessons:  
  • “Had to make mistakes myself to realize what they [were] trying to tell me all along”  
• Thomas Rossby (25:00) 
• Generosity of time and ideas 
• Understanding of how people need to work together (28:00) 
• Working across boundaries 
• Curiosity-driven networks (29:50) 
• NOAA Big Data Project (31:30) 
• Establishing trust in group projects (34:45 and 37:45) 
• The challenges of 2020 (37:50) 
• Open Commons Consortium and Cancer Moonshot (49:20) 
• The why and how of career shifts (52:00) 
• First Street Foundation (54:00) 
  • Changing people’s minds about climate change 
  • More meaningful activities that just providing data 
  • https://floodfactor.com/
  • Making effective data tools 
• Not about prediction, but response (01:02:00) 
• Humanity’s biggest advantage (01:07:00) 
• Quantifying the risk due to and making decisions about climate change (01:12:00) 
• Jenny Odell - art is being the orchestrator of attention (01:13:30) 
  • Giorgia Lupi episode 
  • Aoife Van Linden Tol episode  
• What makes us human (01:14:00) 
• Lightning round (01:15:00) 
  • Book: The Information (James Gleick) 
    • Chaos
  • Passion: family and outdoors together 
  • Heart sing: fire risk 
  • Screwed up: learning to say when he didn’t know something 
• Find guest online: 
  • LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/edwardkearns 
  • Twitter: @edward_j_kearns 
• 'Five-Cut Fridays’ five-song music playlist series   
  • Ed’s playlist

Show Notes: 

• NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (05:15) 
• Mentors (07:20) 
• Building and leading teams (13:15) 
• Comfort with uncertainty (15:30) 
• Waleed Abdalati Origins episode (18:30) 
• What drew Nash to JPL (19:00) 
• Trajectories to JPL (20:00) 
• Why you need to read sociology books (22:00) 
• Being a Renaissance Person - curiosity across human endeavors (22:40) 
• T-shaped people (23:00) 
• Challenging yourself (29:45) 
• The change in mentality that comes with public service (32:50) 
• NASA JPL Team X (35:15) 
  • What is Team X?
• van Allen, von Braun, and Pickering famous picture (38:00) 
• What networked computers did for JPL (40:30) 
• Alfred’s contribution to Team X efficiency - paper (42:15) 
• Three types of fun (44:10) 
• Thinking about how you provide information (46:15) 
  • Related: see discussion of human-centered design in Rachel Young Origins episode  
• "Murphy was an optimist” (48:00) 
• Melanie Mitchell Origins episode (56:10) 
• Writing (56:45) 
  • Helping Writers Become Authors podcast
  • Children of Tendu podcast and parallels to proposal writing 
  • Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way  
  • Why you need to learn about design 
  • “All endeavors of humanity are communicative endeavors" 
  • “Vision without action is a daydream, action without vision is a nightmare" 
• “You can never be too clear” (01:05:30) 
• Thinking in questions (01:06:00) 
  • “The people who really make it in life are not those who get the right answer, but the ones that ask the right question”  
  • Right question is the quantum leap to the right answer 
• Lightning round (01:08:00): 
  • Book: Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman 
  • Passion: Gift of gab  
  • Heart sing: Broadest possible definition of product development (The Invincible Company book)  
  • Screwed up: Leading people during Planck Mission project 
• Find guest online: 
  • Twitter @aeniii
  • NASA JPL  
• 'Five-Cut Fridays’ five-song music playlist series   
  • Alfred’s playlist

Show Notes: 

• Spiritual background of his childhood (05:30) 
• Discipline to do good work (06:10) 
• Mentor: Albert-László Barabási (09:30) 
  • How do you demand excellence? 
• Musing on the competitive mentality (11:45) 
• Relevance of science is a very social dimension (12:30) 
• What he tells his students (13:30) 
• Adapting as an individual (14:45) 
• MIT Media Lab Collective Learning Group (17:00) 
• The Last Dance documentary (18:30) 
• The Playbook documentary series (18:40) 
• Complexity (21:00) 
  • Fractals, iterating functions, and chaos
  • Lorenz
  • Feigenbaum
• Book: Why information grows (26:45) 
  • What is information?  
• Book: How humans judge machines (30:20) 
  • Why has knowledge not made it everywhere?  
• TED Talk: “A bold idea to replace politicians” (34:20) 
  • Rethinking democracy and technology 
• Trusting technologies (36:45) 
• Counterfactuals (37:00) 
• What is intelligence? (38:15) 
• Failure that set up for later success (41:15) 
• Reorienting yourself (42:30) 
• Morning routine (45:30) 
• Acting on first emotion (48:00) 
  • Do not lose the emotional energy that comes with creativity - it is fleeting and love is going to fade, so be romantic while love is there 
• Lightning Round (40:15) 
  • Books: Blank Slate (Steven Pinker), the Righteous Mind (Jonathan Haidt), and the Secret of Our Success (Joseph Henrich) 
  • Passion: Writing 
    • Janna Levin (astrophysicist and writer): A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines
  • Heart Sing: Review of economic complexity 
  • Screwed up: Ability to accept things he has screwed up 
• Find guest online: 
  • Website
  • Twitter: @cesifoti
  • https://www.judgingmachines.com/
• 'Five-Cut Fridays’ five-song music playlist series   

Show Notes: 

• Santa Fe Institute (2:00) 
• Alexander Hamilton biography by Ron Chernow (4:30) 
• The Universe and Dr. Einstein by Lincoln Barnett (5:45) 
• Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter (7:30) 
  • Martin Gardner Scientific American “Mathematical Games" (8:30) 
• Douglas Hofstadter (10:00) 
• John Holland (14:30) 
  • Adaptation in Natural and Artificial Systems
• Copycat cognitive architecture (17:00) 
  • Description  
  • Fantastic discussion
• What sustains her in moments of doubt (21:00) 
• Article about analogies related to COVID (25:00) 
• Overcoming the sense of obligation to follow curiosity (27:30) 
• Strategy for saying ’no’ (29:45) 
• Morning routine (31:00) 
• Pomodoro Method for time management (33:00) 
• Complexity and complex systems (39:00) 
  • Must read: Chaos by James Gleick  
• R-naught parameter and COVID (44:00) 
• Becoming comfortable with uncertainty (45:00) 
  • Think about the world in terms of information 
• Think more complexly - think in relationships instead of entities (46:45) 
  • Network science
• SFI - Transmission Series (49:15) 
• What is missing from our models of intelligence? (50:00) 
• Writing process (54:00) 
• Anne Lamott Bird by Bird (57:45) 
• Lightning round (58:30) 
  • Book: The Recursive Universe  
    • John Conway’s Game of Life  
  • Passion: outdoors 
  • Heart sing: analogy and abstraction beyond human intelligence 
  • Screwed up: Early life with with physics 
• Find Melanie online 
  • https://melaniemitchell.me/
  • Twitter: @MelMitchell1 
• 'Five-Cut Fridays’ series  
  • Melanie’s list

Show Notes: 

• Data-driven design firm Accurat
• Data humanism
• When she realized design was going to be a part of her life (07:00) 
• A ’new chapter’ in her life to fuse data and design (07:30) 
• What teachers told her that changed her (08:00) 
• Discovery of information design (09:00) 
• Rules versus limitations (10:15) 
  • Rules as catalyzers of creativity 
  • Pushing yourself beyond your comfort zone 
• Phases of dealing with COVID-19 (13:00) 
• Think about yourself in 2-3 years - who do you want to remember yourself to be? (13:45) 
• Daily practices (14:15) 
  • How to be in touch with what makes you feel better (15:30) 
  • Be patient with yourself 
• What she does when she feels uncreative (16:30) 
• Saying no to things (19:00) 
  • Setting rules for yourself 
  • Decide who it is that you are 
• Maria Popova and Brain Pickings (23:15) 
• Design vs. data science (25:00) 
• Data as a way to analyze oneself (25:15) 
• Design firm IDEO and user-centered design (28:30) 
• Antidisciplinary (28:40) 
• What to avoid when starting a new project (29:15) 
• The tension between familiarity and the unknown (30:15) 
• The energy you put out (32:20) 
• The value of new creative environments (33:00) 
• Pentagram (33:20) 
• Not the next ’thing,’ the next ‘chapter’ (35:00) 
• Using a language is a way to train the brain (37:00) 
• MIT Media Lab (38:30) 
• Friends in space piece (42:00) 
• Lightning Round (44:00): 
  • Book: The image of the city Kevin Lynch 
  • Passion that set her path: playing the piano 
  • Latest passion: Romantic relationship 
  • Screwed up: Relationship with her father and time 
• Find Giorgia online 
  • http://giorgialupi.com/
  • Twitter
• 'Five-Cut Fridays’ five-song music playlist series  
  • Giorgia’s list

Show Notes: 

• Marx Philosophic and Economic manuscript of 1844 (3:30) 
• Changed by exposure to systematic class privilege (7:10) 
• ‘Cubilcle’-ization revolution (8:10) 
• Normative aspects of economics and markets (11:30) 
• The American Economic Journal (15:00) 
• Being intellectually curious (16:00) 
• Hugh Lacey History of Philosophy and Science - Swarthmore (16:00) 
• Thomas Kuhn - Structure of Scientific Revolutions (18:30) 
  • How scientific ‘controversies’ arise and how they are resolved 
• Intellectual fruitfulness of doing philosophy of X where X can be any discipline or problem (20:00) 
  • Turning point: do this from political and economic philosophy  
• Normative inquiry has to be responsive to the actual experiences of people (22:00) 
• Early life as a contemporary philosopher (24:00) 
• John Dewey and privatism (25:00) 
• Max Weber “Science as a Vocation" (26:30) 
  • Any vocation is ‘Wissenschaft’ (knowledge-making) 
• Sustaining moments are those when the big questions arise 
• Why it is hard to ask people what matters to them (32:00) 
• Ethnography and human-centered design - how your ideas impact on the ground (33:20) 
• Read broadly (34:00) 
• "The Island Of Stone Money” - Island of Yap (36:30) 
• Creative process (38:20) 
  • “The key is always to keep reading" 
  • How she decides what to read - have a research question in mind (39:20) 
• What is populism? By Jan-Werner Müller (42:20) 
• Landmark paper “What is the point of equality” (42:30) 
• Quest for equality is a quest for justice, to get rid of oppressive social relations (46:20) 
• MacArthur Foundation ‘Genius Grants’ (47:25) 
• Cecilia Conrad Origins episode (48:20) 
• Future book (50:30) 
• Research into how different disciplines attributes ‘genius’ (51:30) 
• Definitions of genius (52:00) 
• How she organizes information (52:30) 
• Thomas Piketty Capital in the Twenty-First Century (1:00:00) 
• Morning routine (1:07:10) 
• Locke’s Second Treatise (1:09:50) 
• Lightning Round (1:17:00) 
  • Book: The Theory of Moral Sentiments by Adam Smith 
• 'Five-Cut Fridays’ series  
  • Guest’s list

• 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