Open Transcripts

The Conversation #67 — Aengus Anderson

presented by Aengus Anderson

The strange thing about writing a headstone is that you’re simultaneously writing a conclusion, and an introduction.

The Conversation #66 — Lisa Gray-Garcia

presented by Aengus Anderson, Lisa Gray-Garcia, Neil Prendergast

As a person who’s been criminalized and arrested for the sole act of being poor in the US, it’s probably something I’m always walking with, speaking on, and trying to effectively change just by…in some ways not so much raising awareness, which seems very passive to be, but more about sparking people’s understanding and change.

Reverse Engineering the Brain

presented by David Cox

I suspect that when many of you think about neuroscience, the first things that come to mind are medical applications: mental disorders, pharmaceuticals. But what I’m going to try and argue today is that the stakes are much greater in the year 2015.

The Conversation #65 — Rebecca Solnit

presented by Aengus Anderson, Neil Prendergast, Rebecca Solnit

There’s a lot of beautiful things. And I think if there’s one thing I’m most deeply disquiet about it’s…power. Why are we doing almost nothing about climate change? It’s because despite the fact that most people on earth and many government on Earth do, the oil corporations and the governments most closely allied to the oil corporations, notably ours, don’t want to do anything.

Freedom From Consequences

presented by Adriana Lukas

Lack of attachment…does not mean disconnection from the world and others, but ability to control what can be controlled: the self, rather than consequences. It is about detaching our motivation from the results of an action so we do not lose sight of what else is important: a sense of perspective.

The Conversation #64 — Peter Gleick

presented by Aengus Anderson, Micah Saul, Neil Prendergast, Peter Gleick

We have even in the United States serious and growing water scarcity challenges. We have contamination problems with chemicals that we have not adequately regulated here in the United States. We have conflicts between states in the United States about who gets to use what water to do what. We have evidence that climate change is already influencing water demand, affecting water availability, changing extreme events. There are a whole suite of water-related problems, here, unrelated to these basic human need challenges that’re pressing in other parts of the world.

The Conversation #63 — Kim Stanley Robinson

presented by Aengus Anderson, Kim Stanley Robinson, Micah Saul, Neil Prendergast

I vacillate…between thinking that we’re doomed because we have given ourselves over to a stupid system that’s now backed up by guns. And then a much more utopian view that we’ve always lived in stupid systems and that we’re always making them better.

The Conversation #62 – Rebecca Costa

presented by Aengus Anderson, Neil Prendergast, Rebecca Costa

If you were to ask me what the crisis in the present is, as an evolutionary biologist I have to go back millions of years and try to connect all the dots, going back to man as a single-celled organism to present time, and saying what is it that is causing modern consternation? More importantly, is there a pattern? Has this happened before? Were there some ordinary people like you and I, shopkeepers in Rome, who were standing around and saying, “You know, our leaders don’t seem to be on top of our problems. They seem to be getting worse one generation after another.”

The Conversation #61 – Rainey Reitman

presented by Aengus Anderson, Neil Prendergast, Rainey Reitman

As we’ve moved into increasingly digital spaces, so online worlds, we’re moving away from your traditional physical spaces where you have public streets; where you have public squares; where people can go to protest, and into areas, if you would call them that, that are entirely controlled by corporations.

The Conversation #60 – George Lakoff

presented by Aengus Anderson, George Lakoff, Neil Prendergast

Consciousness is linear; goes, you know, one step after another. And the brain doesn’t work that way. The brain is parallel and has lots and lots of parallel tracks going on at once in thought and in characterizing the substrate of what it is you understand and express. There’s no way you could possibly be conscious of most of or even a small part of what you’re thinking.