all about and in no time we were in a lively conversation. The honeybees, I learned, were ambassadors for the U. C. Davis’ Art & Science Fusion program. Billick, it turns out, is the co-founder with entomologist Dr. Diane Ullman. The honeybee decline is a major concern of theirs, but focusing on that is just part of their innovative pedagogy. For the last sixteen years UCD’s Art/Science Fusion experiment has been showing, more and more clearly, the benefits of bringing art and science together in a shared approach to learning. Billick likes to say that their curriculum takes students and teachers into the borderland, the uncharted territory between isolated disciplines. It ... posted on Apr 30 2016 (9,837 reads)

is a transcript of a talk that Dacher Keltner delivered at an Awakin Circle in Santa Clara, CA.  As a a world renowned psychologist and researcher, Dacher is credited with expanding the field of science to include emotions like compassion, gratitude, and awe. As the author of many books and over 100 papers, he has offered thought leadership that can shift our cultural narrative towards kindness and care. As an advisor to companies like Facebook, he has applied his research into systemic implementations. As the founder of Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley, he has started many projects that put these insights into the societal circulation.  His most rec... posted on Nov 4 2016 (30,398 reads)

judge the value of science by the ignorance it defines.” “Science is always wrong,” George Bernard Shaw famously proclaimed in a toast to Albert Einstein. “It never solves a problem without creating 10 more.” In the fifth century BC, long before science as we know it existed, Socrates, the very first philosopher, famously observed, “I know one thing, that I know nothing.” Some 21 centuries later, while inventing calculus in 1687, Sir Isaac Newton likely knew all there was to know in science at the time — a time when it was possible for a single human brain to hold all of mankind’s scienti... posted on Aug 21 2012 (18,106 reads)

planets beyond our own solar system — that might have liquid water and harbor life. She works with the Kepler Mission at NASA, searching among millions of stars that emit "compelling signals" in the range of Kepler's space telescope. For her, it's only a matter of time — a when, not an if — that we discover planets where we know life exists. And, I've never met anyone who speaks more intriguingly than Natalie Batalha about the connection between science, love, and gratitude for life. She is a luminous voice for the way exploring the heavens — as we do that now — is bringing the beauty of the cosmos and the exuberance of scientific... posted on Jan 29 2014 (26,312 reads)

much related because they both take over the cell’s DNA replication machinery. The way viruses optimize themselves is very similar to the way that cancer cells evolve to survive in the hostile human environments, basically. I like to think of myself as having quite a passion for what I do. RW: What do you think the hesitation is when you say that you “like to think of yourself” as having a passion? EJ: Well, there are a lot of misconceptions that the public has about science and scientists. For one thing, there’s hardly ever a good scientist in a movie. Plenty of mad ones. People don’t necessarily appreciate the fact that scientists devote not just a g... posted on May 26 2014 (10,868 reads)

that there are three dimensions of space, I’m not going to sort of jump off the Empire State Building. But what I mean is that these questions about the rock bottom structure of reality do inform my life. They are not esoteric scientific issues that I leave in the office when I go home at night. Krista Tippett, host: The discoveries which the physicist Brian Greene spends his life pondering lead to a thrilling, mind-bending view of the cosmos and of the human adventure of modern science. Think of the certainties many of us grew up learning in school, now overtaken by the constant reimagining of the cosmos that is modern physics. The quaintly simplistic idea that the atom c... posted on Dec 3 2018 (5,724 reads)

the cold as a noble force and how his practices relate to the ancient Tibetan Buddhist practices of tummo, or inner-fire meditation, and how his methodology creates changes in brain chemistry, immunity, and hormonal regulation. We also talked about how he’s currently involved in more than 10 university research projects that are studying the effectiveness of his method, and how he invites all skeptics to join him in testing the results. Wim Hof is on a mission to help humanity with science backing up his methods. Get ready to embrace the cold with Wim Hof. Wim, you’re known as “The Iceman,” with more than twenty world records, including the longest ice bath,... posted on Nov 2 2021 (3,214 reads)

new view, revealing a conscious universe and a living Earth in which we are co-creators, takes us out of fatalistic victimhood to becoming consciously active agents of our destiny! It lifts the fog of our self-image as consumers of stuff, giving us awesome rights and responsibilities to live out our full co-creative humanity. We humans always have been and probably always will be storytellers. Whether we create our stories from the revelations of religions or the researches of science, or the inspirations of great artists and writers or the experiences of our own lives, we live by the stories we believe and tell to ourselves and others. Story, in the modern world, lost i... posted on Feb 26 2015 (22,251 reads)

I’d study botany in college. It was my passion. Still is, of course. But the botany that I encountered there was so different than the way that I understood plants. Plants were reduced to object. What was supposedly important about them was the mechanism by which they worked, not what their gifts were, not what their capacities were. They were really thought of as objects, whereas I thought of them as subjects. And that shift in worldview was a big hurdle for me in entering the field of science. MS. TIPPETT: One way you’ve said is that that science, though, was asking different questions, and you had other questions, other language, and other protocol that came from indigeno... posted on Apr 22 2016 (14,487 reads)

follows is the syndicated transcript  of an On Being interview bewteen Krista Tippett and Suzanne Simard. You can listen to the audio of the interview here. Krista Tippett, host:She is the forest ecologist who has proven beyond doubt that trees communicate with each other, that a forest is a single organism, “wired,” Suzanne Simard says, “for wisdom” and for what it is hard to call anything other than care. She has shifted her field of science on its axis and was an inspiration for the central character in Richard Powers’s celebrated novel The Overstory. But it’s the understory of a forest that Suzanne Simard brought into the light. M... posted on Jun 1 2022 (3,820 reads)

essay is adapted from a talk in which Fritjof Capra discusses some of the findings described in his latest book, Learning from Leonardo: Decoding the Notebooks of a Genius (2013: Berrett-Koehler Publishers). Leonardo da Vinci, the great genius of the Renaissance, developed and practiced a unique synthesis of art, science, and technology, which is not only extremely interesting in its conception but also very relevant to our time. As we recognize that our sciences and technologies have become increasingly narrow in their focus, unable to understand our multi-faceted problems from an interdisciplinary perspective, we urgently need a science and technology that honor and respect ... posted on Apr 21 2014 (19,768 reads)

Fundamental forces of physics somehow determine everything that happens — as my guest today, Leonard Mlodinow has written — “from the birth of a child to the birth of a galaxy.” I’ve been puzzling over this especially since my conversation with Brian Greene. And Leonard Mlodinow weighs into this puzzling in intriguing ways. He is a physicist ready to openly reflect on the gap between theory and reality — and the fascinating interplay between a life in science and life in the world. He’s co-written books with Stephen Hawking — and Deepak Chopra. He’s written for television — “Star Trek: The Next Generation.” ... posted on Jul 15 2014 (25,857 reads)

100 solutions to climate change. Despite his accolades, Paul is softly spoken. He gives opinions tentatively and without bravado. Just a few days before we spoke, US President Donald Trump had pulled out of the Paris climate accords. I don’t ask Paul whether this makes him feel pessimistic, because I know the answer. That day in Portland, he told the graduates, “When asked if I am pessimistic or optimistic about the future, my answer is always the same: ‘If you look at the science about what is happening on earth and aren’t pessimistic you don’t understand data. But if you meet the people who are working to restore this earth and the lives of the poor, and y... posted on Apr 13 2018 (13,460 reads)

and on Refinery29. It was the centerpiece film for the first annual 50/50 Day, which had over 11,000 screenings around the globe, all linked together in an online discussion about what it will take to move to a more gender-balanced world. In this episode of Insights at the Edge, Tiffany and I spoke about her unusual approach of using short films as a centerpiece to a social change strategy and movement. We talked about her short film, The Science of Character, and also the social science and neuroscience behind character, how you can embody different virtues by working on developing specific character strengths. We also talked about her discovery of the importance of a tech... posted on Aug 11 2018 (5,898 reads)

are and where we came from, we will have failed.” This must be what Rilke, too, had at heart when he exhorted us to live the questions. And yet if there is one common denominator across the entire history of human culture, it is the insatiable hunger to know the unknowable — that is, to know everything, and to know it with certainty, which is itself the enemy of the human spirit. The perplexities and paradoxes of that quintessential human longing, and how the progress of modern science has compounded it, is what astrophysicist and philosopher Marcelo Gleiser examines in The Island of Knowledge: The Limits of Science and the Search for Meaning (public library). Partway bet... posted on Mar 16 2015 (18,237 reads)

thinkers and activists. More about the site here.  Dr. Diana Beresford-Kroeger, botanist, medical biochemist, writer and broadcaster, combines medical training with a love of botany. She is an expert on the medicinal, environmental and nutritional properties of trees, and author most recently of The Global Forest. When her parents died, she was raised by an uncle who taught her everything from physics to Buddhism and Gaelic poetry. She was one of only two women to graduate in science from University College Cork in 1963, where she had taken on a "crushing load of studies in classical botany, molecular biology, mathematics, and medical biochemistry".  In t... posted on Sep 12 2019 (6,771 reads)

Feeling as the Moving Force in All Life For 150 years, biology, the ‘science of life,’ made no great effort to answer the question of what life really is. Biologists had a concept they thought to be sufficient for their research: Most of them assumed organisms to be tiny machines. Today, this belief has been shaken. Only a few years ago we witnessed researchers celebrating the ‘decoding’ of the human genome as a secular breakthrough. They seemed to be on the verge of unraveling the mechanics of life. But not much has happened since then. The boom has come to a standstill. We don’t hear much from geneticists these days. Certainly, they have been ... posted on Jun 29 2021 (3,712 reads)

call alternative healing, and in ancient wisdom traditions, and modern spiritual practices. I first met Lissa about 10 years ago in the living room of a mutual and very dear mentor and friend, Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen, who has been a true pioneer and inspiration for an integrative health movement, someone who has widened the path that Lissa and I have walked. I just wanna take this moment to recognize her and all those who have done work in healing the earth, healing ourselves, expanding science, spreading wisdom and love on all sides of the bedside, so to speak, because we're really all learning and growing and healing together. It is a pleasure, Lissa, to be in conversation w... posted on Aug 28 2023 (3,342 reads)

place in me, a place of fellow feeling, of feeling traveling, of journeying together in some mystery that I know we share. I can “be not afraid” even while I have fear. If we could reclaim the sacred—simple respect—in education, how would it transform our knowing, teaching, and learning? I would like to suggest several answers, but I want to preface them by telling a story, not from the world of religion, not from the world of education, but from the world of science, because I think there is much for us to learn from the world of science about the very things that we care about. Science is not the enemy, not great science. I want to tell you about a gr... posted on Aug 25 2017 (15,281 reads)

science we cover here on Greater Good—aka, “the science of a meaningful life”—has exploded over the past 10 years, with many more studies published each year on gratitude, mindfulness, and our other core themes than we saw a decade ago. 2012 was no exception. In fact, in the year just past, new findings added nuance, depth, and even some caveats to our understanding of the science of a meaningful life. Here are 10 of the scientific insights that made the biggest impression on us in 2012—the findings most likely to resonate in scientific journals and the public consciousness in the years to come, listed in roughly the order in which they were publ... posted on Mar 13 2013 (19,262 reads)