You are here, welcome.

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What We Nurture

Ms. Tippett: So I want to talk tonight about — about that wisdom that you've learned and how it might apply to our lives as parents. Not just the spiritual lives of our children, but how we nourish ourselves, right, as we are present to them and as we impart what we want to impart to them. I have to say, Sylvia, that, you know, you're sitting here and you are so calm and you radiate wisdom and your books radiate wisdom, so it's somewhat comforting for me for you to also describe yourself as a lifelong worrier and just talk about how being fretful comes naturally. Because you talked about that from your own childhood that your mother was ill.

Dr. Boorstein: Mm-hmm. I had reasons to be anxious as a child. My mother did have what they called in those days a weak heart. She'd had rheumatic fever as a child and she had, as a consequence, she lived with a chronic coronary insufficiency and I worried about that. She actually died when I was in my very early 20s, so I've passed more than 50 years now without a mother. I wish I'd had one longer, but when I was a child, I worried about it a lot. But you know what I've found, Krista? There are people who are given to fretting without a fretful environment. I think it's actually — it's a — it's a genetic glitch of neurology and that it happens to some people and not for other people.

Actually, the Buddha said we have one of five genetic fallback glitches when we're challenged. He said some people fret, some people get angry, some people lose heart and all their energy goes and they don't know what to do with themselves, some people think, "Uh-oh, it's me. I didn't do things right. It's always my fault. I messed things up." And some people need to be sensually soothed. They think, "Where's a donut shop? Where's the pizza?" People have different tendencies. It was very, very helpful for me as an adult to learn that because it completely comes without a judgment. I don't have to say I am a chronic fretter. I could say, you know, when I'm challenged, fretting arises in my mind and it's not a moral flaw. It's very good for people who have a short fuse to be able to think, "You know, I have this unusual neurological glitch."

Ms. Tippett: That naturally arises in me to know that.

Dr. Boorstein: This is what happens when I'm challenged. But to take it as — I tell it to people that my glitch is that "when in doubt, worry." It came with the equipment. I'm also short and I have brown eyes. If I could see that in the same neutral, it just came with the equipment, then I don't have to feel bad about it, but I can work with it wisely. That's really the important part, when we see as adults what it is that our fallback glitch is. You can say, "Uh-oh." And I think, in a certain way, that's a sign of wisdom when a person begins to be able to delineate this is what happens to me under tension.

Ms. Tippett: Is that piece of self-knowledge.

Dr. Boorstein: As a piece of self-knowledge that makes a break in between a certain next step and that next step and say, "Whoa." So when I'm in an airport, for instance, or if I come to a place where I've agreed to meet my husband on a corner of a certain street at 5:00 and I come there at 5:00 and he's not there and it's five past five and he's not there, I could start to think maybe this, maybe that, maybe this, maybe that.

Ms. Tippett: Right, right.

Dr. Boorstein: But I think to myself, wait a minute. That is just my peculiar neurological glitch kicking in. Probably not, you know, I could just wait here quietly. I could look in the windows. I could look at the people. I could say relaxing phrases to my own mind. I could wish well to the passersby. There are just lots of other things I can do.

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  When the sale comes first,

  And the truth comes second,

  Just stop...

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Getting Revenge and Forgiveness

Michael McCullough describes science that helps us comprehend how revenge came to have a purpose in human life. At the same time, he stresses, science is also revealing that human beings are more instinctively equipped for forgiveness than we've perhaps given ourselves credit for. Knowing this suggests ways to calm the revenge instinct in ourselves and others and embolden the forgiveness intuition.

Krista Tippett on Being

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Concrete Nouns

Concrete nouns are nouns that can be touched, smelled, seen, felt, or tasted. Steak, table, dog, Maria, salt, and wool are all examples of concrete nouns.

Abstract Nouns

More ethereal, theoretical concepts use abstract nouns to refer to them. Concepts like freedom, love, power, and redemption are all examples of abstract nouns.

Abstract nouns refer to concepts, ideas, philosophies, and other entities that cannot be concretely perceived.

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It was… some time ago now, that I met an interesting old man in Jamaica… he was telling this story.

Dair iz ah place, on da Sout end of da island… where da waves crash.
Jou cannot go dair, put up ja hands, and stop da wave… no.
But… what jou can do, is go out… meet da wave… and ride.
And if jou do... jou will feel da wind in jour hair,
and da spray on jour face… jou will be wit, da power, of da ocean...

meet da wave… and ride… meet da wave, and ride.

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Kathryn Schulz: On being wrong

Most of us will do anything to avoid being wrong. But what if we're wrong about that? "Wrongologist" Kathryn Schulz makes a compelling case for not just admitting but embracing our fallibility.

Kathryn Schulz is the author of "Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error," and writes "The Wrong Stuff," a Slate series featuring interviews with high-profile people about how they think and feel about being wrong.

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Sheena Iyengar on the art of choosing

Sheena Iyengar studies how we make choices -- and how we feel about the choices we make. At TEDGlobal, she talks about both trivial choices (Coke v. Pepsi) and profound ones, and shares her groundbreaking research that has uncovered some surprising attitudes about our decisions.

Sheena Iyengar studies how people choose (and what makes us think we're good at it).

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There is wisdom "Between The Folds".

DIRECTOR'S STATEMENT, VANESSA GOULD

At its heart, Between the Folds is a film about potential. The potential of an uncut paper square. The potential of a wild scientific idea. The potential to see things differently.

For as long as I can remember, the driving impulses behind art, science, sculpture and math have felt deeply connected—all ways of interpreting our experiences in a language that's universal. When I first learned about the curious phenomenon of fine artists, scientists and mathematicians from all over the world working in the very same medium of origami, I knew there had to be something special about it—that in the simplicity of a paper square must be hiding some untold potential for new connections and ideas.

Surprisingly, as a documentary project, this film has been less about telling a story and rather about finding an idea—layers of ideas. All of us involved in this project have been energized by the challenge of making a film about ideas—their evolution, their beauty, their inevitable paradoxes and mystery. We knew the project’s central themes would speak to different people in different ways, as any film about ideas should. Therefore, it was of great importance that its themes be presented subtly and flexibly, so that every viewer can experience the film in ways that are both universally resonant and personally meaningful.

For me, as a filmmaker, this has also been a project about transformation—not only of paper squares, but of people and lives also. Most of those featured in the film left traditional lives to devote themselves to the thing they love most—paperfolding: the magical process of transforming two dimensions into three dimensions. Their remarkable stories resonated so strongly with me upon abandoning my own former work, that I was determined to bring their inspiring stories of transformation to light. And so, my devotion to this film rests in the hope that others take inspiration from these incredible stories, as well.

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Charles Limb: Your brain on improv

Musician and researcher Charles Limb wondered how the brain works during musical improvisation -- so he put jazz musicians and rappers in an fMRI to find out. What he and his team found has deep implications for our understanding of creativity of all kinds.

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Life: The Happiness, Suffering, and The Wonder

An excerpt from Krista Tippet's "Radio Pilgrimage" with Thich Nhat Hanh.

Brother Thich Nhat Hanh: Mindfulness is a part of living. When you are mindful, you are fully alive, you are fully present. You can get in touch with the wonders of life that can nourish you and heal you. And you are stronger, you are more solid in order to handle the suffering inside of you and around you. When you are mindful, you can recognize, embrace and handle the pain, the sorrow in you and around you to bring you relief. And if you continue with concentration and insight, you'll be able to transform the suffering inside and help transform the suffering around you.

Ms. Tippett: And, you know, this word "miracle," on the surface, is quite intriguing when what you're describing is so organic. I mean, it's getting in touch with your breath, first of all. Does that word or does this phrase "the miracle of mindfulness," does that come out of your Buddhist training or was that a phrase that came to you?

Brother Thây: It is in my heart when I use it, because when you breathe in, your mind comes back to your body, and then you become fully aware that you're alive, that you are a miracle and everything you touch could be a miracle — the orange in your hand, the blue sky, the face of a child. Everything become a wonder. And, in fact, they are wonders of life that are available in the here and the now. And you need to breathe mindfully in and out in order to be fully present and to get in touch with all these things. And that is a miracle, because you understand the nature of the suffering, you know that all of suffering, that suffering play in life, and you are not trying to run away from suffering anymore, and you know how to make use of suffering in order to build peace and happiness.

It's like growing lotus flowers. You cannot grow lotus flowers on marble. You have to grow them on the mud. Without mud, you cannot have a lotus flower. Without suffering, you have no ways in order to learn how to be understanding and compassionate...

From: Speaking of Faith with Kristia Tippett.

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The late John O'Donohue, poet and philosopher

...one day I read in [my old friend Meister Eckhart, 14th-century mystic] and he said, "There is a place in the soul — there is a place in the soul that neither time, nor space, nor no created thing can touch." And I really thought that was amazing, and if you cash it out what it means is, that in — that your identity is not equivalent to your biography. And that there is a place in you where you have never been wounded, where there's still a sureness in you, where there's a seamlessness in you, and where there is a confidence and tranquility in you. And I think the intention of prayer and spirituality and love is now and again to visit that inner kind of sanctuary.

Speaking of Faith with Kristia Tippett.

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Two Dean Kamen Quotes

If history is any indication, all truths will eventually turn out to be false.

People take the longest possible paths, digress to numerous dead ends, and make all kinds of mistakes. Then historians come along and write summaries of this messy, nonlinear process and make it appear like a simple, straight line.

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Cairn To Cairn
She's Like a Swallow

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I believe in intuition and inspiration. Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution. It is, strictly speaking, a real factor in scientific research.
Wikiquote: Albert Einstein; Cosmic Religion : With Other Opinions and Aphorisms (1931) by Albert Einstein, p. 97; also in Transformation : Arts, Communication, Environment (1950) by Harry Holtzman, p. 138

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Wear your learning, like your watch, in a private pocket, and do not pull it out and strike it merely to show you have one. If you are asked what o'clock it is, tell it, but do not proclaim it hourly and unasked, like the watchman.
-- Lord Chesterfield, statesman and writer, 1694-1773

Source: Watts Wacker
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Thinking about Science: a Conversation with Lorraine Daston (2007)

The Max Planck Institute for the History of Science occupies an elegant and airy new building in a leafy suburb of Berlin. It houses approximately a hundred scholars whose research extends from medieval cosmology to the role of experiment in 19th century German gardening to the ways in which medical technology has reshaped the contemporary boundary between life and death. The director is American Lorraine Daston.

David Cayley interviewed her recently in her office at the institute, Daston told him there was a time when she would not even have dreamed of a hundred historians of science under one roof. When she was a graduate student at Harvard in the 70’s, she says, the history of science was more a collection of strays from other disciplines than it was a discipline in itself. But a crucial challenge had been issued. In 1962 philosopher/historian Thomas Kuhn had published The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, the book that suddenly put the previously unusual word paradigm on everybody’s lips. Kuhn rejected the assumption of a continuous linear progress in science. And thereby, Lorraine Daston says, he framed the question with which her generation grew up, how to write the history of science as something other than a triumphant progress to a foregone conclusion.

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A Conversation with Arthur Zajonc

Arthur Zajonc sees contemplation as investigating life from the inside — and now it is teaching him about living with Parkinson's Disease. We hear how this physicist draws on the humanities and meditation to integrate the intellectual and sensory aspects of life.

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Another Conversation with Arthur Zajonc

One of Arthur Zajonc's inspirations is the great German poet Goethe. Goethe died nearly two centuries ago. Arthur Zajonc works at the cutting edge of contemporary quantum physics. But it is the old poet, Zajonc thinks, who can best show us how we ought to contemplate the puzzling discoveries of modern physics. In this episode, physicist Arthur Zajonc talks to David Cayley about Goethe’s way of knowing, about the philosophical challenge of contemporary physics, and about the role of contemplation in science. And since his name so closely resembles the name of his subject, you also hear many unintentional rhymes as Zajonc discusses science.

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False Signals Cause Misleading Brain Scans
by Jon Hamilton

[fMRI] images appear amazingly crisp and precise. But scientists say the truth behind them is a little fuzzier.

"These are difficult, challenging experiments," says Chris Baker, chief of the Unit on Learning and Plasticity in the Laboratory of Brain and Cognition at the National Institute of Mental Health. And the images they produce can be misleading...

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Peering Into The Human Brain With fMRI Techniques

IRA FLATOW: Let's talk about cause and effect, for example. When you say something, we say the brain lights up in a certain area.

Dr. GRINBAND: Right.

IRA FLATOW: But can we go the other direction? If we see the brain light up in a certain area, do we know what they're thinking about?

Dr. GRINBAND: Yes. so that's the direction people want to go, but that's a very dangerous direction to go into, because there is no one-to-one relationship between brain activity and a particular thought process. So, different thought processes will activate the same area. So, knowing that that area is active does not allow you to go backwards and tell you what the person was actually thinking.

IRA FLATOW: There may be lots of places that light up.

Dr. GRINBAND: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And some areas that light up may be specific to that particular thought process or task and some are non-specific, that is, they may be related to being awake or paying attention or things that all tasks require but are not specific to any one particular process...
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