Origins Podcast with Ryan McGranaghan
Ryan McGranaghan
Recent Episodes
Albert-László Barabási thinks in networks and his scholarship, as his life, is embodiment of the explorative, imaginative, and generative nature of networks. It would be difficult to imagine a person better suited to steward us through the innate and seemingly universal tendency of things to connect to each other and all of its implications.
Origins Podcast Website
Flourishing Commons Newsletter
Show Notes:
- Preferential attachment (10:00)
- What he tells his students (13:30)
- Breakthroughs (14:00)
- 'Shelf Time' (14:30)
- The Science of Science (19:00)
- Bridging (network science) (19:00)
- His first and second papers in network science (22:00)
- Danielle Allen (28:30)
- David Lazer (https://lazerlab.net/home) 'network based decision making' (31:00)
- Hélène Landemore epistemic democracy (32:00)
- Northeastern University Network Science Institute (35:30)
- Center for Complex Network Research (36:00)
- Alessandro Vespignani (37:00)
- János Kertész (38:00)
- Jane Hirshfield "Let Them Not Say" (42:00)
- Joan Didion "I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means." (44:30)
- His writing practice (44:30)
- His routines (45:00)
- Commonplace book (53:00)
- Robert K Merton "Singletons and Multiples in Scientific Discovery" (56:30)
- What does it mean to flourish? (59:00)
- Lightning Round (01:03:30):
- Book: Isaac Asimov The Foundation Trilogy
- Passion: art (Hidden Patterns exhibition; 150 years of Nature)
- Heart sing: Network medicine
- Screwed up: Failing to invest in Google
- Find László online:
- 'Five-Cut Fridays’ five-song music playlist series
Logo artwork by Cristina Gonzalez
Music by swelo on all streaming platforms or @swelomusic on social media<
Hello friends, a new season of Origins is coming NEXT WEEK. Last season of this show was a season of flourishing. The episodes ahead we not be a season of something in particular but a movement toward process, toward open-endedness, toward unsettledness; of discipline, of intellect, of being. Great scientific breakthroughs are discoveries of process, and the great discoveries of society and our own lives will be the same.
Thank you for listening and I'm excited to explore together each of the coming guests, and the exhilarating glimpses they provide into ourselves and our society along the way.
Episode transcript, with links
Origins Podcast Website
Flourishing Commons Newsletter
Flourishing Commons Newsletter and the post introducing Great Asking
Show Notes:
- Sara Hendren's Origins Conversation
- start of a living conversation (05:20)
- Ignorance by Stuart Firestein (06:00)
- questions are the oxygen of imagination (08:00)
- curiosity is a moral muscle (10:10)
- The Division of Cognitive Laborby Philip Kitcher (09:20)
- Sara's substack (10:40)
- Howard Gardner (11:20)
- Participatory readiness Danielle Allen (16:40)
- Living the Questions with Krista (23:30)
- questions and a state of receptivity (30:20)
- Sara's blog on voice memos (37:00)
- vagus nerve (37:00)
- neuroplasticity (37:30)
- Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke (45:00)
- The Virtues of Limits by David McPherson (53:30)
- the healing is in the return - Sharon Salzberg (55:00)
- Proust Questionnaire
- Lightning Round (57:30):
- Overrated virtue: (Krista) independence; (Sara) fortitude as opposed to true courage
- Words or phrases to retire: (Krista) losing generative to AI; (Sara) community
- Valuing in friends: (Krista) laughter; (Sara) longevity
- Lowest depth of misery: (Krista) when imagination shuts down; (Sara) tyranny of inwardness and the lie of aloneness (St. Augustine)
- Find Sara and Krista online:
Logo artwork by Cristina Gonzalez
Music by Agasthya Pradhan Shenoy (Swelo)
James Evans' life is one resplendent with ideas. His trajectory into research and learning in areas as wide as network science, collective intelligence, computational social science, and even how knowledge is created, is as irreducible as it is exhilarating, and is a beacon in disorienting times marked by seemingly accelerating paces of change.
Origins Podcast Website
Flourishing Commons Newsletter
Show Notes:
- cultural and knowledge observatories (05:30)
- Mark Granovetter (09:15)
- Steve Barley (10:30)
- Woody Powell (10:30)
- Chris Summerfield (11:00)
- Some papers mentioned:
- Abduction (21:30)
- epistemic space (22:40)
- Claude Lévi-Strauss (24:20)
- Clifford Geertz (24:30)
- "Dissecting racial bias in an algorithm used to manage the health of populations" Obermeyer et al. (30:00)
- Scarcity Sendhil Mullainathan (35:00)
- The Knowledge Lab (36:00)
- "Quantifying the dynamics of failure across science, startups and security" Yin et al. (45:00)
- Charles Sanders Peirce (51:00)
- Pirkei Avot (56:00)
- Alison Gopnik on explore-exploit (01:02:30)
- Elise Boulding "the 200-year present" (01:03:00)
- Jo Guldi (01:06:00)
- Lightning Round (01:06:30):
- Book: The Enigma of Reason
- Passion: physical exploration and spiritual calling
- Heart sing: 'social science fiction' and Hod Lipson
- Screwed up: management style at times
- James online:
- 'Five-Cut Fridays’ five-song music playlist series
Logo artwork Cristina Gonzalez
Music by swelo
Ingrid Daubechies is endlessly, irrepressibly, beautifully curious. She is a Belgian physicist and mathematician whose scientific achievements have rippled across society in all directions for the past 35 years. But, more than that, she's a fierce champion of diversity and equality, in math and science, in women's rights, in opportunity. To sit with Ingrid, her math and her life, is to illuminate our world and inspire us to imagine other worlds.
Origins Podcast Website
Flourishing Commons Newsletter
Show Notes:
- Depression (05:30)
- Krista Tippett On Being Podcast (07:15)
- Arthur Zajonc (10:10)
- Exponential thinking (14:20)
- Applied mathematics (19:00)
- Daubechies wavelet (20:00)
- The life of a researcher (25:00)
- Collaboration (27:00)
- Bell Labs (29:00)
- What is changing in the field of mathematics (32:00)
- Creating a community (34:00)
- Teaching: helping a person grow into the fullness of their imagination (36:00)
- Mathemalchemy (39:00)
- The Bridges Organization (40:00)
- Time to Break Free by Dominique Ehrmann (41:00)
- Mathemalchemy comic book (45:30)
- Bridging ties (47:00)
- Experiences at Burning Man (47:20)
- Pico Iyer (50:30)
- Museum of Mathematics (51:00)
- Flatiron Institute (51:30)
- Lighting Round (54:00)
- Book: The Broken Earth series by NK Jemisin; Digger by Ursula Vernon
- Passion: Social justice
- Heart sing: Temari
- Screwed up: Aspects of parenting
- Find Ingrid online:
- 'Five-Cut Fridays’ five-song music playlist series
Logo artwork by Cristina Gonzalez
Music by swelo on all streaming platforms or @swelomusic on social media