Perry Zurn and Dani S. Bassett discuss their book "Curious Minds: The Power of Connection". Curious about something? Google it. But is curiosity simply information seeking? According to "Curious Minds", what gets left out in the conventional understanding of curiosity are the relations between ideas and between people. Curiosity, say Perry Zurn and Dani Bassett, is a practice of connection. It connects ideas into networks of knowledge and it connects the knowers themselves, both to the knowledge they seek and to each other.
Perry and Dani—identical twins who write that their book “represents the thought of one mind and two bodies”—harness their respective expertise in the humanities and the sciences (specifically, philosophy and neuroscience) to identify three distinct styles of curiosity: the butterfly, who collects stories, creating loose knowledge networks; the hunter, who hunts down secrets or discoveries, creating tight networks; and the dancer, who takes leaps of creative imagination, creating loopy networks.
They go on to explain that many of us are all three types but to differing degrees, and that those degrees can change over the course of our lives and even daily, depending on the task at hand. What’s more, they suggest that a true understanding of what happens in the curious brain can pave the way for a curiosity-centric education—an inclusive one that embraces everyone’s innate style of learning. Just think of the possibilities such a paradigm shift would engender.
Get the book here: https://goo.gle/3KiMnHS.
Perry Zurn is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at American University and the author of Curiosity and Power: The Politics of Inquiry. Dani S. Bassett is the J. Peter Skirkanich Professor of Bioengineering at the University of Pennsylvania and received a MacArthur Fellowship in 2014.
Moderated by Sanders Kleinfeld.
#talksatgoogle #connection #curious
,1,Leading theoretical physicist Antonio Padilla discusses his new book, "Fantastic Numbers and Where to Find Them: A Cosmic Quest from Zero to Infinity" – a combination of popular and cutting-edge science, and a lively, entertaining, and even funny exploration of the most fundamental truths about the universe.
Get the book here: https://goo.gle/3AWhS6u.
For particularly brilliant theoretical physicists like James Clerk Maxwell, Paul Dirac, or Albert Einstein, the search for mathematical truths led to strange new understandings of the ultimate nature of reality. But what are these truths? What are the mysterious numbers that explain the universe? In Fantastic Numbers and Where to Find Them, Antonio takes us on an irreverent cosmic tour of nine of the most extraordinary numbers in physics, offering a startling picture of how the universe works.
These strange numbers include Graham’s number, which is so large that if you thought about it in the wrong way, your head would collapse into a singularity; TREE(3), whose finite nature can never be definitively proved, because to do so would take so much time that the universe would experience a Poincaré Recurrence―resetting to precisely the state it currently holds, down to the arrangement of individual atoms; and 10^{-120}, measuring the desperately unlikely balance of energy needed to allow the universe to exist for more than just a moment, to extend beyond the size of a single atom―in other words, the mystery of our unexpected universe.
Leading us down the rabbit hole to a deeper understanding of reality, Antonio explains how these unusual numbers are the key to understanding such mind-boggling phenomena as black holes, relativity, and the problem of the cosmological constant―that the two best and most rigorously tested ways of understanding the universe contradict one another.
Antonio Padilla is a leading theoretical physicist and cosmologist at the University of Nottingham. In 2016, he and his team shared the Buchalter Cosmology Prize for their work on the cosmological constant. He is also a star of the YouTube channel Numberphile, where his most popular videos include a discussion of Ramanujan’s sum of all positive integers, which has been viewed more than eight million times.
Moderated by Gabe Gaster.
,1,In partnership with #IamRemarkable Week, tennis superstar Venus Williams discusses what being remarkable means to her, and discuss the importance of recognizing our own achievements. She will also talk about her dedication to “playing it forward” by using her voice to empower others to make a difference.
With 7 Grand Slam titles, 5 Wimbledon championships and 4 Olympic gold medals, tennis champion Venus Williams is arguably one of the most accomplished and inspiring women in the history of sports. Beginning with her rise to the top at the age of 14, she quickly took the world of tennis by storm, climbing to the top-ranked position, breaking countless records, and winning numerous championships.
Encouraged by her mother at an early age to explore her creative side, Williams enrolled in fashion school where she was instantly drawn to the world of fashion and interior design. Venus parlayed her business acumen with her healthy competitive spirit into two successful design ventures. In 2002, after obtaining an Interior Decorator certification, she founded V Starr, a full-service commercial and residential design firm, which recently announced their partnership with Airbnb partner Niido. And in 2012, Venus obtained an Associate of Science in Fashion Design and launched the fashion-forward activewear brand, EleVen by Venus Williams. Her entrepreneurship has continued in the health, wellness and beauty spaces and includes her role as Chief Brand Officer to Asutra as well as her plant-based protein company, Happy Viking, which she launched in 2020.
In 2009, Venus, along with her sister Serena, became the first female African-Americans to have a stake in an NFL franchise after joining the ownership group of the Miami Dolphins. The following year, Venus published her motivational book, Come to Win which reached number five on The New York Times Best Sellers list.
Throughout her career, Venus has been a steadfast advocate for equality. In 2006, UNESCO, the United Nations’ cultural organization, titled her as the first Promoter of Gender Equality. In 2007 she led an unwavering fight, which resulted in Wimbledon awarding female players the same pay as their male counterparts. Most recently, she launched an awareness initiative called the #PrivilegeTax in conjunction with EleVen to bring attention to wage inequality and unveiled a platform of resources for young women to get inspired and address the issue on a grassroots level.
Venus' achievements throughout her legendary career have merited her a plethora of additional accolades, including the Americanism Award, honored by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), Glamour Magazine’s "Woman of the Year," ESPN’s "WTA Player of the Year," and Forbes’ "Celebrity 100," among others.
Moderated by Nelson Boyce.
#IamRemarkable Week, 28-30 September 2022, is a digital experience celebrating the power of diversity, inclusion and allyship. Get inspired through virtual talks, online workshops and confidence boosting challenges. Join us and celebrate your achievement. Learn more & sign up!
,1,Aliza Knox discusses her book "Don't Quit Your Day Job: The 6 Mindshifts You Need to Rise and Thrive at Work," which presents the six empowering, essential mindshifts necessary to rise and thrive in your career – and to love your life at the same time. Driven by Aliza’s four decades working in and leading some of the world’s most celebrated firms, and featuring candid accounts of other people’s successes and missteps in global tech, consumer goods, healthcare, academia, social services and more, this book is an essential guide to integrating your professional and personal goals to build a fulfilling, complete life. "Don’t Quit Your Day Job" provides a global outlook that reveals how to excel in today’s hybrid, often dispersed world of work. Whether you’re just starting your first job or you’re ready to rise to the C-suite, it will help you advance and flourish in the workplace.
Get the book here: https://goo.gle/3JYAbfa.
Aliza Knox built and led APAC businesses for three of the world's top technology firms—Google, Twitter and Cloudflare. Named 2020 APAC IT Woman of The Year and Top 100 Women in IT (Singapore), she spent decades as a global finance and consulting executive, and is currently a non-executive board director and a senior advisor for Boston Consulting Group. Aliza now shares her passion and lessons learned with the next generation of business leaders, guiding companies across new frontiers while building and maintaining strong connections between teams around the world. Aliza has been featured in outlets like Business Insider, Quartz, The Muse, TechCrunch and The Economic Times, and is a regular columnist for Forbes, where she shares her wisdom (and humor) to help professionals who dream of "doing it all."
Moderated by Madhuri Duggirala.
#talksatgoogle #womeninbusiness
,1,Christina Ho (何紫婷) discusses her journey from fine arts graduate and cabin crew member to becoming a pilot. Her story inspires and reminds us to stay curious and dare to try.
Christina Ho is currently an airline pilot at one of the world’s leading airlines based in Hong Kong and one of the few female pilots in the industry. Before becoming a pilot, she was a fine arts graduate and former cabin crew member without an engineering background or flying experience. She discovered her passion in aviation and decided to sign up for the cadet pilot program after seeing pilots in action at the cockpit jumpseats. As of today, she has accumulated 4 years of flying experience. Her dedication and confidence in flying further developed after she calmly managed an emergency situation during her solo flight training. She described her journey as “intensive and challenging yet rewarding.”
She is passionate in empowering and inspiring youth and women to pursue their dreams, using her story of turning impossible to possible through learning with passion and courage. Christina is an avid volunteer and works with the Hong Kong Youth Aviation Academy as an instructor, at Female Pilot Advisory Group, and the Peer Assistant Network (PAN) within her company. She and her colleagues at the Female Pilot Advisory Group successfully advocated for updating the operation menu by aircraft manufacturers, Boeing and Airbus, from "He should" to "Pilot should," which is the first step toward eliminating stereotypes.
Outside of aviation, she continues to create – creating the #christtina_meow character and launching a series called #LifeLessonsFromTheSky (#天空教會我的事) with motivation quotes – and promote positive thinking. In her own words, “Everyone has roles and responsibilities to make our society a better place, whether you are at work, at home or in the community.”
Moderated by Ada Au.
,1,Perry Zurn and Dani S. Bassett discuss their book "Curious Minds: The Power of Connection". Curious about something? Google it. But is curiosity simply information seeking? According to "Curious Minds", what gets left out in the conventional understanding of curiosity are the relations between ideas and between people. Curiosity, say Perry Zurn and Dani Bassett, is a practice of connection. It connects ideas into networks of knowledge and it connects the knowers themselves, both to the knowledge they seek and to each other.
Perry and Dani—identical twins who write that their book “represents the thought of one mind and two bodies”—harness their respective expertise in the humanities and the sciences (specifically, philosophy and neuroscience) to identify three distinct styles of curiosity: the butterfly, who collects stories, creating loose knowledge networks; the hunter, who hunts down secrets or discoveries, creating tight networks; and the dancer, who takes leaps of creative imagination, creating loopy networks.
They go on to explain that many of us are all three types but to differing degrees, and that those degrees can change over the course of our lives and even daily, depending on the task at hand. What’s more, they suggest that a true understanding of what happens in the curious brain can pave the way for a curiosity-centric education—an inclusive one that embraces everyone’s innate style of learning. Just think of the possibilities such a paradigm shift would engender.
Get the book here: https://goo.gle/3KiMnHS.
Perry Zurn is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at American University and the author of Curiosity and Power: The Politics of Inquiry. Dani S. Bassett is the J. Peter Skirkanich Professor of Bioengineering at the University of Pennsylvania and received a MacArthur Fellowship in 2014.
Moderated by Sanders Kleinfeld.
#talksatgoogle #connection #curious
