Thoughts

http://www.onbeing.org/program/on-exoplanets-and-love/5029

For Natalie Batalha of NASA's Kepler Mission, it's just a matter of time before we look at the sky and know of planets where life exists. And that, she says, will transform our sense of ourselves:

    "When you look up at the sky on a very dark night at those stars or that crescent moon or whatever it is, what do you feel? You feel wonder, of course. You feel humility. But I think you also feel lonely, small, insignificant. There's a profound sense of loneliness, or just the universe is so big and I'm so small. But imagine in the near-term future, your grandchild or your great-grandchild looks up in the sky and his mother can point to a star and say, that star right there? That star has a planet just like Earth, and it harbors life. That's a different perspective. That's completely different when we can look up in the sky and know that. It's a game-changer."

A luminous voice of how we explore the heavens now — bringing the exuberance of science closer to home to us all.

    "We are extending our senses out into the cosmos in a very real, tangible way, and that makes it so much easier to capture our imagination, to inspire us. Through the Curiosity Rover, we are standing there in our hiking boots on the surface of Mars. Man, I can practically hear the crunching of the dirt underneath my feet. It feels like I could bend down and pick up a rock and toss it over that hill over there, you know? So in a very real way, these experiments are extending our senses out into the cosmos."

Natalie Batalha — Exoplanets and Love: Science That Connects Us to One Another (Aug 29, 2013)

An astrophysicist who’s also explored her science by way of a novel about two pivotal 20th-century mathematicians, Kurt Gödel and Alan Turing. Both pushed at boundaries where mathematics presses on grand questions of meaning and purpose. Such questions helped create the technologies that are now changing our sense of what it means to be human.

See more at www.onbeing.org/program/mathematics-purpose-and-truth/130

Janna Levin — Mathematics, Purpose, and Truth (April 3, 2014)

Human memory is a sensory experience, says psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk. Through his longtime research and innovation in trauma treatment, he shares what he's learning about how bodywork like yoga or eye movement therapy can restore a sense of goodness and safety. What he’s learning speaks to a resilience we can all cultivate in the face of the overwhelming events — which, after all, make up the drama of culture, of news, and of life.

See more at www.onbeing.org/program/restoring-the-body-bessel-van-der-kolk-on-yoga-emdr-and-treating-trauma/5801

Bessel van der Kolk — Restoring the Body: Yoga, EMDR, and Treating Trauma

Gender defines us from the moment we’re born. But how is that related to the lifelong work of being at home in ourselves? For as far back as Joy Ladin can remember, her body didn’t match her soul. We explore this question through her story of transition from male to female — in an orthodox Jewish world.

See more at www.onbeing.org/program/gender-and-the-syntax-of-being-joy-ladin-on-identity-and-transition/5646

Joy Ladin — Gender and the Syntax of Being: Identity and Transition

Two legendary teachers shine a Buddhist light on a classic Christian teaching: love of enemies. Robert Thurman and Sharon Salzberg are working together on how we relate to that which makes us feel embattled from without, and from within.

See more at www.onbeing.org/program/embracing-our-enemies

Sharon Salzberg and Robert Thurman — Embracing Our Enemies and Our Suffering

Courage is borne out of vulnerability, not strength. This finding of Brené Brown’s research on shame and "wholeheartedness" shook the perfectionist ground beneath her own feet. And now it’s inspiring millions to reconsider the way they live, parent, and navigate relations with members of the opposite gender.

See more at www.onbeing.org/program/brene-brown-on-vulnerability/4928

Brené Brown — The Courage to Be Vulnerable

In her TED talks that have been viewed by millions of people, and the research she does for Match.com, Helen Fisher wields science as a sobering, if entertaining, lens on what feel like the most meaningful encounters of our lives. She is a leading anthropologist/explorer on the new frontier of seeing inside our brains when love and sex happen. In this wonderfully personal conversation, she reveals how we can take this knowledge as a form of power, to give conscious new meaning to the thrilling and sometimes treacherous human realms of love, sex, and marriage.

See more at www.onbeing.org/program/helen-fisher-love-and-sex-and-attachment/7288

Helen Fisher — Love and Sex and Attachment

A passionate translator of the beauty and relevance of scientific questions, Margaret Wertheim is also wise about the limits of science to tell the whole story of the human self. Her Institute for Figuring in Los Angeles reveals evocative, visceral connections between high mathematics, crochet and other folk arts, and our love of the planet.

See more at www.onbeing.org/program/margaretwertheim-the-grandeur-and-limits-of-science/7472

[Unedited] Margaret Wertheim with Krista Tippett

The philosopher and Catholic social innovator Jean Vanier is a teacher of the wisdom of tenderness. The L’Arche movement, which he founded, centers around people with mental disabilities and is celebrating its 50th anniversary this month. We experience how Jean Vanier brings the most paradoxical religious teachings to life: that there’s power in humility, strength in weakness, and light in the darkness of human existence.

See more at www.onbeing.org/program/wisdom-tenderness/234

[Unedited] Jean Vanier with Krista Tippett

She became a national figure as the face of the Nuns on the Bus. Sr. Simone Campbell is a lawyer, lobbyist, poet, and Zen contemplative working on issues such as “mending the wealth gap,” “enacting a living wage,” and “crafting a faithful budget that benefits the 100%.” She is a helpful voice for longings so many of us share, across differences, about how to engage with the well-being of our neighbors in this complicated age.

See more at www.onbeing.org/program/simone-campbell-how-to-be-spiritually-bold/7654

Simone Campbell — How to be Spiritually Bold

Often quoted, but rarely interviewed, Mary Oliver is one of our greatest and most beloved poets. She’s just released a new volume, Felicity, at the age of 80. And so we’re revisiting the interview she granted us earlier this year on the wisdom of the world, the salvation of poetry, and the life behind her writing.

See more at www.onbeing.org/program/mary-oliver-listening-to-the-world/7267

Mary Oliver — Listening to the World

In an unsettled political moment, at the end of a divisive campaign, the late, great civil rights elder Vincent Harding is a voice of calm, wisdom, and perspective. He was wise about how the civil rights vision might speak to twenty-first century realities. Just as importantly, he pursued this by way of patient yet passionate cross-cultural, cross-generational relationship. He reminded us that the Civil Rights Movement was spiritually as well as politically vigorous; it aspired to a "beloved community," not merely a tolerant integrated society. He posed and lived a question that is freshly in our midst: Is America possible?

On Being with Krista Tippett

Vincent Harding — Is America Possible?

Debbie talks to poet Eileen Myles about poetry, fame, and politics.

Design Matters with Debbie Millman: 2009-2016

Design Matters with Debbie Millman: Eileen Myles

On Being [APM]

On Exoplanets and Love: Natalie Batalha on Science That Connects Us to One Another (Feb 14, 2013)

Diary 01

Diary 02

Background, context, and poem text: https://www.brainpickings.org/2017/01/31/protest-poem-ella-wheeler-wilcox-amanda-palmer/

CONTEXT / POEM TEXT

Amanda Palmer reads "Protest" by Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1914)

As an anthropologist on the frontier of seeing inside our brains, Helen Fisher explores the thrilling and sometimes treacherous realms of love and sex. In the research she does for Match.com and her TED talks that have been viewed by millions of people, she wields science as an entertaining, if sobering, lens on what feel like the most meaningful encounters of our lives. And in this deeply personal conversation, she shows how it is possible to take on this knowledge as a form of wisdom and power.

On Being with Krista Tippett 

Helen Fisher — This Is Your Brain on Sex

ILLUMINATIONs 5, Lecture Event: "PASSAGE 7: John Cage
– incidents, texts, conversations, and music"
Narrated by Roger Reynolds
Jenny Lin, guest pianist
National Gallery of Art, East Building Auditorium 

Thoughts

de Soleil