The fundamental challenges confronting humanity are not the failure of particular nations or institutions or businesses or civil organizations, but rather the disconnect between our economic, political, and social systems. Dennis Snower and David Sloan Wilson, converging economics and evolution, have a plan to ameliorate the decoupling of economic prosperity and political success from social and environmental prosperity, a decoupling that destabilizes our planet.

Origins Podcast Website

Flourishing Commons Newsletter

Show Notes:

• paper that frames this conversation: "Rethinking the Theoretical Foundation of Economics"
• British postal strike (09:20)
• Amos Tversky (10:30)
• Sloan Wilson (11:00)
• Theodosius Dobzhansky (12:00)
• This is Water (15:00)
• David Whyte (16:00)
• Thomas Singer (18:20)
• Evolution Institute (19:20)
• Eric Beinhocker (20:00)
• Mont Pèlerin Society (21:00)
• Philip Anderson More is Different (26:00)
• rethinking wealth (26:30)
• multilevel selection (29:30)
• Elinor and Vincent Ostrom (31:00)
• The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn (42:10)
• Thich Nhat Hanh and engaged Buddhism (01:00:40)
• flourishing (01:08:10)
• Find Dennis online: https://www.global-solutions-initiative.org/person/dennis-j-snower/
• Find David online: davidsloanwilson.world/
• Recommended books:
  • Dennis: Tolstoy and the great works of literature
  • David: Teilhard de Chardin and people/places achieving positive cultural change 'hiding in plain sight'

Logo artwork by Cristina Gonzalez
Music by swelo on all streaming platforms or @swelomusic on social media

Guru Madhavan reverences the world and all that is in it. Guru is an engineer, but his conception of engineering is more vast than we typically assign to the role. To it he brings a systems consciousness that widens the field in recognition of its entanglement with the social and cultural.

Origins Podcast Website

Flourishing Commons Newsletter

Show Notes:

• David Sloan Wilson on Origins (02:05)
• systems consciousness (06:40)
• problematizing the term 'technology' (11:00)
• jirnoddhara - 'repairing what is worn' (13:30)
• Charles Vest (15:20)
• Applied Minds Guru's first book (21:20)
• 'lessons from the scrapheap' (24:00)
• Spanning Space by Claude Claremont (25:00)
• Cloaca Maxima (29:00)
• Wicked Problems by Guru (31:00)
• "How to be a poet" by Wendell Berry (31:00)
• "The Grind Challenges" by Guru (33:00)
• Evolution for Everyone by David Sloan Wilson (41:50)
• Flourishing Salons and the event Guru referred to (43:00)
• FOCUS (45:20)
• Elinor Ostrom (46:30)
• The Disuniting of America by Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. (55:20)
• Paul Virilio's 'inverted miracle' (56:30)
• What does it mean to flourish? (57:30)
• Why War? letters between Einstein and Freud (01:00:30)
• Lightning round (01:05:10)
  • Book: The Faraway Nearby by Rebecca Solnit
  • Passion: cubist painting
  • Heart sing: latest book
    • The Wisdom of the Desert by Thomas Merton
  • Screwed up: communication
• Find Guru online: LinkedIn
• 'Five-Cut Fridays’ five-song music playlist series
  • Guru’s playlist

Logo artwork by Cristina Gonzalez

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

Francesca Samsel is crafting a new language for our world. That is, she crosses art, science, and visualization to open new ways of understanding and engaging with the natural world, not just visually but across the sensorial spectrum. She recognizes the inextricably social element to this, too, and her work raises our capacity to collaborate, and in the process, alters our sense of what scientific inquiry is and can (and perhaps needs to) be. Her work as her life are teachers we need for the world we are walking into.

Origins Podcast Website

Flourishing Commons Newsletter

Show Notes:

• vulnerability (11:30)
• problem with the 'follow your passion' path (14:20)
• Ganymede (15:00)
• what she tells her students (15:50)
• art-science collaboration (16:00)
• Santa Fe Institute (21:20)
• James (Jim) Ahrens (24:00)
• Craig Tweedie (25:20)
• visual structure to see the complexity in data (29:00)
• Isaac Asimov 'that's funny' (30:20)
• the need for scientific breakthrough (31:20)
• Lia Halloran - your hand will physically guide you the way to breakthrough (31:30)
• the only mark that you determine as an artist is the first one (33:00)
• delivery-oriented society (34:30)
• "Stewardship of Global Collective Behavior" by Joseph Bak-Coleman et al. (40:00)
• visual vocabulary work (42:00)
• Art-Sci-Vis Lab at UT Austin (43:20)
• flourishing (47:00)
• Gilead by Marilynne Robinson (51:45)
• lightning round (48:00)
  • Artist: Jon McCormick (work called "Fifty Sisters")
  • Passion: geoscience and the complexity you find when you walk out of the door
  • Heart sing: fused glass, ice, and rock
  • Screwed up: obliviousness to colleagues
• Find Francesca online:
  • Website
  • UT Austin

Logo artwork by Cristina Gonzalez

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