In this episode I chat with psychologist, skeptic and author Sue Blackmore, who was at the Edinbrugh Book Festival to talk about her new book Ten Zen Questions.
The two of us chatted about parapsychology, her new theory about the evolution of technology and how to meditate in 20 seconds.
http://richardwiseman.wordpress.com/2009/08/24/episode-4-afternoon-tea-with-sue-blackmore/
Speaker: Joshua Foer
Chair: Professor Helena Cronin
This event was recorded on 5 April 2011 in Sheikh Zayed Theatre, New Academic Building
Once upon a time remembering was everything. Today, we have endless mountains of documents, the Internet and ever-present smart phones to store our memories. As our culture has transformed from one that was fundamentally based on internal memories to one that is fundamentally based on memories stored outside the brain, what are the implications for ourselves and for our society? What does it mean that we’ve lost our memory? Joshua Foer studied evolutionary biology at Yale University and is now a freelance science journalist, writing for the National Geographic and New York Times among others.
http://www.lse.ac.uk/resources/podcasts/publicLecturesAndEvents.htm
Scientists can now explain virtually every stage of the evolutionary process. But there’s a basic question that still mystifies even the best scientists: How did life first begin on Earth? Or to put in another way, how did non-life somehow turn into life? And can we say the Earth itself is alive? In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge we’ll talk with James Lovelock about his Gaia theory, and explore the question, What is Life?
SEGMENT 1:
This hour explores some of the fundamental mysteries of life - from how it first started on Earth to the possibility of supremely intelligent life on other planets and why technology is evolving like life itself. We begin with a rare recording of Nobel Prize winning physicist Edwin Schrodinger and comments on his book "What Is Life?" from Nobel Prize winning biologists James Watson and Harold Varmus. We also hear from Ken Miller, co-author of the most widely used biology textbook in American high schools, and Craig Venter, widely regarded as one of science’s leading innovators. Venter, who’s come as close as anyone has to creating life in a test tube, tells Steve Paulson what drives him. And we hear from some ordinary people about what they think life is.
SEGMENT 2:
University of Wisconsin geochemist Nita Sahai talks with Anne Strainchamps about how life might have begun on Earth. On the other hand, maybe the Earth itself is alive. That’s the remarkable idea behind the Gaia hypothesis. James Lovelock came up with it in the 1960s and at first no one would take him seriously. Lovelock, now in his nineties and one of our most celebrated scientists, tells Steve Paulson where the Gaia theory came from and how it’s evolved.
SEGMENT 3:
Kevin Kelly is one of the founders of Wired magazine. He’s also the author of a provocative book called "What Technology Wants." Kelly tells Jim Fleming that the sum total of our technology - what he calls "the technicum" - is taking on the properties of life itself. And anthropologist Tom Boellstorff takes us on a tour through the virtual world of Second Life. Astro-biologist Paul Davies chairs the SETI Post-Detection Task Group and is the author of "The Eerie Silence: Renewing Our Search for Alien Intelligence." He tells Steve Paulson that alien intelligence might be stranger than anything Hollywood has dreamt up.
Languages are Parallel Universes
"To have a second language is to have a second soul," said Charlemagne around 800 AD. "Each language has its own cognitive toolkit," said psychologist/linguist Lera Boroditsky in 2010 AD.
Different languages handle verbs, distinctions, gender, time, space, metaphor, and agency differently, and those differences, her research shows, make people think and act differently.
http://longnow.org/seminars/02010/oct/26/how-language-shapes-thought/
Tagged with language linguistics cognitive science long now
Humans evolved a brain with an extraordinary knack for language, but just how and when we began using language is still largely a mystery. Early human communication may have been in sign language or song, and scientists are studying other animals to learn how human language evolved.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129155123
Tagged with language evolution communication science linguistics culture
Brain science podcast and interview with Maryanne Wolf - how the brain processes language.
Tagged with linguistics language brain cognition reading development science
How are the discovery of oxygen, the founding of the Unitarian Church and ecosystem science linked? Author Steven Johnson tells the story of scientist and theologian Joseph Priestley, a protege of Benjamin Franklin and friend of Thomas Jefferson, in The Invention of Air.
With our economy a shambles and our environment threatened, is there any reason to be optimistic about the future? Matt Ridley says there’s scientific proof to say we should be.
Tagged with science biology evolution book:author=matt ridley matt ridley
Alok Jha and guests (including Philip Ball) discuss what makes music so fascinating; Also, Britain’s plans for space; and the nature of time
In the 1960s, Stewart Brand became one of the country’s first and most famous champions of a new ecological awareness. His Whole Earth Catalog spoke to a generation of hippies and back-to-nature commune dwellers.
Now, at 70, Stewart Brand is calling on environmentalists to reframe their understanding of the problem — and solutions. It’s too late for back-to-nature, he says. Global warming is beyond that.
To survive now, Brand says, we need nuclear power, genetic engineering, giant cities. We must manage nature or lose civilization.
This hour, On Point: In the face of global warming, Stewart Brand redefines green.
http://www.onpointradio.org/2009/10/stewart-brands-ecopragmatism
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