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)

James Evans' life is one resplendent with ideas. His trajectory into research and learning in areas as wide as network science, collective intelligence, computational social science, and even how knowledge is created, is as irreducible as it is exhilarating, and is a beacon in disorienting times marked by seemingly accelerating paces of change. 

Origins Podcast Website

Flourishing Commons Newsletter

Show Notes:

• cultural and knowledge observatories (05:30)
• Mark Granovetter (09:15)
• Steve Barley (10:30)
• Woody Powell (10:30)
• Chris Summerfield (11:00)
• Some papers mentioned:
  • Metaknowledge (17:10)
  • Weaving the fabric of science: Dynamic network models of science's unfolding structure (18:30)
• Abduction (21:30)
• epistemic space (22:40)
• Claude Lévi-Strauss (24:20)
• Clifford Geertz (24:30)
• "Dissecting racial bias in an algorithm used to manage the health of populations" Obermeyer et al. (30:00)
• Scarcity Sendhil Mullainathan (35:00)
• The Knowledge Lab (36:00)
• "Quantifying the dynamics of failure across science, startups and security" Yin et al. (45:00)
• Charles Sanders Peirce (51:00)
• Pirkei Avot (56:00)
• Alison Gopnik on explore-exploit (01:02:30)
• Elise Boulding "the 200-year present" (01:03:00)
• Jo Guldi (01:06:00)
• Lightning Round (01:06:30):
  • Book: The Enigma of Reason
  • Passion: physical exploration and spiritual calling
  • Heart sing: 'social science fiction' and Hod Lipson
  • Screwed up: management style at times
• James online:
  • @profjamesevans
  • The Knowledge Lab
• 'Five-Cut Fridays’ five-song music playlist series  
  • James’ playlist

Logo artwork Cristina Gonzalez

Music by swelo

Ingrid Daubechies is endlessly, irrepressibly, beautifully curious. She is a Belgian physicist and mathematician whose scientific achievements have rippled across society in all directions for the past 35 years. But, more than that, she's a fierce champion of diversity and equality, in math and science, in women's rights, in opportunity. To sit with Ingrid, her math and her life, is to illuminate our world and inspire us to imagine other worlds. 

Origins Podcast Website

Flourishing Commons Newsletter

Show Notes:

• Depression (05:30)
• Krista Tippett On Being Podcast (07:15)
• Arthur Zajonc (10:10)
• Exponential thinking (14:20)
• Applied mathematics (19:00)
• Daubechies wavelet (20:00)
• The life of a researcher (25:00)
• Collaboration (27:00)
• Bell Labs (29:00)
• What is changing in the field of mathematics (32:00)
• Creating a community (34:00)
• Teaching: helping a person grow into the fullness of their imagination (36:00)
• Mathemalchemy (39:00)
• The Bridges Organization (40:00)
• Time to Break Free by Dominique Ehrmann (41:00)
• Mathemalchemy comic book (45:30)
• Bridging ties (47:00)
• Experiences at Burning Man (47:20)
• Pico Iyer (50:30)
• Museum of Mathematics (51:00)
• Flatiron Institute (51:30)
• Lighting Round (54:00)
  • Book: The Broken Earth series by NK Jemisin; Digger by Ursula Vernon
  • Passion: Social justice
  • Heart sing: Temari
  • Screwed up: Aspects of parenting
• Find Ingrid online:
  • https://ece.duke.edu/faculty/ingrid-daubechies
  • The Godmother of the Digital Image New York Times
• 'Five-Cut Fridays’ five-song music playlist series  
  • Ingrid’s playlist

Logo artwork by Cristina Gonzalez

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

Mark Granovetter has made and remade our understanding of social networks, social theory, collective action, and economic sociology, making and remaking our world in the process. It would not be hyperbole to say that few living scholars have had the influence of Mark Granovetter. 

Origins Podcast Website

Flourishing Commons Newsletter

Show Notes:

• Attorney for the Damned by John A. Farrell (9:00)
• Interest in world history (10:00)
• A History of the Modern World (11:00)
• Why are there revolutions? (12:00)
• Philosophy of science (13:00)
• Carl Hempel (13:00)
  • What does it mean to explain in science? 
• Talcott Parsons (15:00)
• BF Skinner (16:00)
• A philosophy of asking questions (17:00)
• "The function of general laws in history" (18:00)
• Universal peeking out from the particular (20:00)
• Max Weber (23:00)
• Norbert Weiner (30:00)
• The Strength of Weak Ties (30:00)
• The Great Fear of 1789  by Georges Lefebvre (31:00)
• Harrison White (33:00)
• Anatol Rapoport (37:00)
• Stanley Milgram (40:30)
• Danielle Allen (43:00)
• Threshold analysis (45:00)
• Lightning round (54:00)
  • Book: Economy and Society by Max Weber
  • Passion: anywhere asking questions that expand you
  • Heart Sing: working on new book and teaching
  • Screwed up: life balance
• Find Mark online:
  • https://sociology.stanford.edu/people/mark-granovetter
• 'Five-Cut Fridays’ five-song music playlist series  
  • Mark’s playlist

Logo artwork by Cristina Gonzalez

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

Tina Eliassi-Rad is a network science pioneer, and an intrepid explorer of where network science shows up in our world and how we understand that. Her work, as her life, falls across network science, complexity, artificial intelligence, and commitments to democracy and equality, itself a constellation of experiences and literacies befitting our increasingly complex world.

Origins Podcast Website

Flourishing Commons Newsletter

Show Notes:

• Jon Kleinberg (09:20)
• Northeastern Network Science Institute (12:20)
• Bruch and Newman Aspirational pursuit of mates in online dating markets (13:40) 
• What is a complex system?  Ladyman and Wiesner (14:45)
• What science can do for democracy: a complexity science approach (15:10)
• Faloutsos (19:00)
• Ron Burt (24:10)
• "Examining Responsibility and Deliberation in AI Impact Statements and Ethics Reviews" Liu et al. (27:30)
• Research group of the future (37:20)
• The ground truth about metadata and community detection in networks (43:30)
• Fariba Karimi (44:00)
• Lightning Round (51:00)
  • Book: Jane Eyre
  • Passion: Philosophy
  • Heart sing: AI systems as part of complex systems
  • Screwed up: Cooking
• Tina online:
  • http://eliassi.org/
• 'Five-Cut Fridays’ five-song music playlist series  
  • Tina’s playlist

Music swelo

Flourishing Commons Newsletter

Show Notes:

• Tsundoku (09:00)
• The cost of honesty (09:30)
• theory of mind, MIT Media Lab, and Marvin Minsky (13:00)
• Roger Schank (13:30)
• cultural metaphors (14:00)
• Ocean Vuong (17:15)
• The Architecture Machine by Nicholas Negroponte (19:30)
• Bell Labs (20:15)
• Vienna Circle (20:20)
• Sociable Media Group (22:40)
• The Social Machine by Judith Donath (23:05)
• Fernanda Viégas (35:20)
• Chat Circles (35:30)
• Gossip, Grooming, and the Evolution of Language by Robin Dunbar (39:00)
• The Strength of Weak Ties by Mark Granovetter (43:20)
• Berkman Klein Center (47:00)
• Signalling Theory (49:00)
• Daily Rituals: How Artists Work by Mason Currey (56:00)
• The Experimental Novel by Émile Zola (59:00)
• C Thi Nguyen Origins (59:20)
• Lightning Round (01:00:30)
  • Book: The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien
  • Passion: Crossfit's way of thinking about metrics
  • Heart sing: Street photography
    • Teju Cole
  • Screwed up: Traditional academia
• Find Judith online:
  • Website
• 'Five-Cut Fridays’ five-song music playlist series  
  • Judith’s playlist
• Flourishing Salons
• Learning Salon AI

Artwork Cristina Gonzalez

There is something irresistible about the way C. Thi Nguyen thinks about and structures the world. From the lenses of trust, art, games, and communities he thinks about seemingly everything. In each of these topics, he's written pieces that I consider to be among the most important works on them.

Origins Website

Flourishing Commons Newsletter

Show Notes:

• Games: Agency as Art (01:55)
• Anne Harrington (07:20)
• The Great Endarkenment Elijah Millgram (09:20)
• Trust and Antitrust Annette Baier
• Hostile Epistemology (21:20)
• The natural selection of bad science Paul Smaldino (26:40)
• The Grasshopper Bernard Suits (32:20)
• Context Changes Everything Alicia Juarrero (36:00)
• Finite and Infinite Games James Carse (36:30)
• Ulysses and the Sirens  Jon Elster (39:20)
• Andrea Westlund and Anita Superson (44:40)
• How Twitter gamifies communication (47:40)
• Reiner Knizia (48:30)
• On Being Bored out of Your Mind Milgram (56:30)
• Childhood as a solution to the explore-exploit tradeoff Alison Gopnik (59:30)
• Explanation as orgasm Gopnik (01:01:30)
• Adrian Currie (01:02:20)
• Cailin O'Connor, Kevin Zollman, Philip Kitcher (01:02:40)
• Lightning round (01:08:00)
  • Book: Rules: A Short History of What We Live By Lorraine Daston
  • Passion: Game playing
  • Heart sing: porting information; fly-fishing
  • Screwed up: three unpublished novels
• Thi online:
  • https://objectionable.net/
  • Twitter: @add_hawk
• Thi’s Five-Cut Fridays playlist
• Tyler Cowen 'reading in piles'

Artwork Cristina Gonzalez

Music swelo

We find ourselves living in a time of great complexity and flux, where the very fabric of our societies is being rewoven by the rise of artificial intelligence and the interplay of complex systems. How do we make sense of a world that is undeniably interconnected, with increasingly porous boundaries between nature and culture, human and machine, science and art? Paul Wong is reshaping that conversation, drawing on science, philosophy, and art.

Origins Podcast Website

Flourishing Commons Newsletter

Show Notes:

• Buckminster Fuller (07:40)
• Principia Mathematica by Russell and Whitehead (09:00)
• Peter Kropotkin and Mikhail Bakunin (11:00)
• Commonwealth Grants Commission (13:10)
• Range by David Epstein (15:00)
• David Krakauer (15:20)
• Claude Shannon and information theory (17:10)
• Chaos by James Gleick (20:00)
• Duncan Watts, Barabási Albert-László , and network analysis (24:20)
• Networks the lingua franca of complex systems (25:20)
• Stephen Wolfram (25:30)
• Open Science (28:20)
• Australian National University School of Cybernetics (28:50)
• Australian Research Data Commons (29:50)
• Genevieve Bell (31:20)
• Ross Ashby's Law of Requisite Variety (32:30)
• Sara Hendren on Origins and Sketch Model (36:30)
• What he tells his students (38:00)
• Alex McDowell on Origins (41:00)
• The Patterning Instinct by Jeremy Lent and Fritjof Capra (47:30)
• Tao Te Ching (48:20)
• Morning routine (49:30)
• Lightning round (53:40)
  • Book: Special relativity and Dr. Seuss
  • Passion: Music
  • Heart sing: Stitching together cybernetics, complexity, and improvisation 
  • Screwed up: Many things
• Find Paul online: https://cybernetics.anu.edu.au/people/paul-wong/
• 'Five-Cut Fridays’ five-song music playlist series  
  • Paul’s playlist

Logo artwork by Cristina Gonzalez

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

Twins Dani Bassett and Perry Zurn are curious. Their work, individually and together, gives new conception and language to what curiosity is, the work that it does in the world. These are human beings of intelligence and integrity and deep care, and their reification of curiosity might just be a generative narrative of our time. 

Origins Podcast Website

Flourishing Commons Newsletter

Show Notes:

• Homeschooling (05:00)
• Epistemology (09:00)
• multiple discovery (16:30)
• foregrounding bravery (21:00)
• Curious Minds(25:00)
• Julio Ottino on Origins (28:30)
• Hope in the Dark by Rebecca Solnit (32:00)
• Power of curiosity for social movements (34:30)
• Three types of curiosity (40:30)
• David Lydon-Staley University of Pennsylvania (44:00)
• Cognitive flexibility and the discovery of neuroplasticity (45:30)
• Talking to Strangers by Danielle Allen (47:00)
• Amartya Sen - democracy is a knowledge and a process of social discovery (53:00)
• How thought moves (54:00)
• Dani's course 'the goals of scientific inquiry (55:15)
• Hippocampal system and mapping conceptual spaces (56:30)
• Networks as the lingua franca of complex systems (58:00)
• Lightning round (59:00)
  • Book: Dani - Follow My Leader by and A Room of One's Own by Virginia Wolff; Perry - Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll and books that make him slow down
    • Susan Sontag 'I no longer trust novels which fully satisfy my passion to understand.'
  • Passion: Perry - methods, ways of asking questions; Dani - analogical power
  • Heart Sing: Dani - Spring; Perry - punctuation marks
    • On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong 
  • Screwed up: Dani - leaving nursing school; Perry - some breakups
• Find Dani online:
  • Website
  • Twitter: @DaniSBassett
• Find Perry online:
  • Website
  • Twitter: @perryzurn
• 'Five-Cut Fridays’ five-song music playlist series  
  • Dani and Perry’s playlist

Logo artwork by Cristina Gonzalez

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