Origins Podcast with Ryan McGranaghan
Episodes
Dennis Snower and David Sloan Wilson - Rethinking economics for flourishing people and planet
31 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
The fundamental challenges confronting humanity are not the failure of particular nations or institutions or businesses or civil organizations, but ra...
Guru Madhavan - Systems consciousness, repairing what is worn, and life-instilling creations
03 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Guru Madhavan reverences the world and all that is in it. Guru is an engineer, but his conception of engineering is more vast than we typically assign...
Francesca Samsel - Vulnerability, making a new language, and pursuing the irrational
20 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Francesca Samsel is crafting a new language for our world. That is, she crosses art, science, and visualization to open new ways of understanding and ...
Malka Older - Worldbuilding creativity
25 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Malka Older makes a life at the crossroads of our existing and future worlds. Between research into the sociology of organizations, on-the-ground work...
Mette Miriam Böll - Insisting on compassion
28 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Biologist, philosopher, educator, facilitator, and historian of science Mette Miriam Böll is embodiment of the kind of life that emerges when we acce...
Dan Jay - Doubt, collectivity, and transformative creativity
16 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Dr. Dan Jay has a mission to inspire where art and science meet. His life has been spent in the liminal and generative space between and among these d...
Zachary Ugolnik - Science & spirituality, heightened states of community, and new conceptions of flourishing
29 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Zachary Ugolnik has for years been charting a new path that refuses the tired and inanimate narrative about the separateness of science and spirituali...
Jennifer Wiseman - Ultra-deep fields, the numinous, and an omnipresent call to wonder and awe
01 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Dr. Jennifer Wiseman gives expression to our cosmos, as a pioneering astrophysicist, an outspoken advocate for science within policy and the public, a...
Susan Magsamen - Neuroscience, NeuroArts, and the mystery that life really is
20 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Susan Magsamen makes her life at the frontier: the frontier of neuroscience, of institutional change, of the intersection of art and science. Her&apos...
Season Eight Trailer: A meditation on conversation and the collective narrative of our time
16 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Origins Podcast WebsiteHello friends, a new season of Origins arrives next week, on Tuesday, May 20. This next chapter of Origins is about exploring ...
David Woods - the science of resilience, graceful extensibility, and facilitating insight
26 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Few concepts are more important to our society than resilience. Agnostic of domain, of nation, culture, and scale (as vital, indeed, to the individual...
Paul Smaldino - Social identities, collective intelligence, and an ambling open life
28 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Paul Smaldino is an explorer. That might seem like an odd way to describe a professor of cognitive science, but anyone who has glanced at his biograph...
John Paul Lederach - Peacebuilding, critical yeast, and the language of imagination
07 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
I've been following John Paul Lederach's work for years, finding the words he uses inordinately relevant to all of the details and spaces of...
Creating encounters with flourishing: A 'salon' at the National Academy of Sciences
24 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Flourishing is not a fixed state; it is an unfolding. In this time of rupture we need encounters with flourishing, to know it in our lived experiences...
Talia Stroud - Digital communities, civic signals, and connective democracy
05 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Natalie (Talia, as she goes by) Stroud has for years been studying the ways that our lives online show up in and shape our lives together. Her scholar...
Simon DeDeo - Studying society, the science of science, and collisions with the strange
01 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Simon DeDeo's inquiry takes on the most immense topics: astrophysics, history, epistemology, culture. He brings the precision of a physicist, the...
Lindy Elkins-Tanton - Recognizing flourishing, leading teams, and an education for living
13 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Lindy Elkins-Tanton is one of the world's foremost scientists. Couple that with an unprecedented understanding of how teams work and a sense of c...
Jane Hirshfield - Possibility, Poetry, and a Life of Attention
25 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
It would feel wrong to place labels on Jane Hirshfield. Language would fail to reach there, ironic for someone who has devoted their life to the pract...
Agustín Fuentes - A master class in anthropology and a life lived among complexity
21 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Agustín Fuentes reads a multi-million year history of our world, a student of its myriad lessons that often subvert unquestioned modern narratives an...
Albert-László Barabási - Network science, breakthrough orientation, and a life made around discovery
16 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Albert-László Barabási thinks in networks and his scholarship, as his life, is embodiment of the explorative, imaginative, and generative nature of...
Origins and Ongoingness: Thoughts on Season Seven
09 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
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 seaso...
The Great Askers (episode 1): Sara Hendren and Krista Tippett
30 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Origins Podcast WebsiteFlourishing Commons Newsletter and the post introducing Great AskingShow Notes:Sara Hendren's Origins Conversationstart of...
James Evans - Cultural observatories, knowledge communities, and a life resplendent with ideas
09 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
James Evans' life is one resplendent with ideas. His trajectory into research and learning in areas as wide as network science, collective intell...
Ingrid Daubechies - The "Godmother of digital image" on the beauty of the world
28 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Ingrid Daubechies is endlessly, irrepressibly, beautifully curious. She is a Belgian physicist and mathematician whose scientific achievements have ri...
Mark Granovetter - Weak ties, living questions, and the history and future of social science
31 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Mark Granovetter has made and remade our understanding of social networks, social theory, collective action, and economic sociology, making and remaki...
Tina Eliassi-Rad - A master class in network thinking and the kind of life it makes
03 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Tina Eliassi-Rad is a network science pioneer, and an intrepid explorer of where network science shows up in our world and how we understand that. Her...
Judith Donath - Technology, trust, and what holds society together
01 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Judith Donath is a design thinker for some of the most important theory for how people interact in online spaces, drawing on evolutionary biology, arc...
C. Thi Nguyen - This conversation will change how you see the world
25 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
There is something irresistible about the way C. Thi Nguyen thinks about and structures the world. From the lenses of trust, art, games, and communiti...
Paul Wong - Reinventing cybernetics and composing a life
13 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
We find ourselves living in a time of great complexity and flux, where the very fabric of our societies is being rewoven by the rise of artificial int...
Dani Bassett and Perry Zurn - Understanding curiosity, nourishing a life, and how thoughts move
30 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Twins Dani Bassett and Perry Zurn are curious. Their work, individually and together, gives new conception and language to what curiosity is, the work...
Julio Ottino - chaos, the capacity for emergence, and timeless ideas
16 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Every so often someone comes along whose thinking and work inspire you with the kind of awe that always feels new and fills you with an energy that br...
Season Six Trailer: A season of flourishing
06 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
After a generative break from new episodes, Origins Podcast is back with Season Six!2023 has been a year of rapid change even as we carry the rupture ...
Frank White - The Overview Effect and a planetary civilization
14 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Frank White is a philosopher of space. In 1987 he coined the term "the overview effect," referring to the life-altering experience astronaut...
Nicole Stott - Ambassador to the cosmos and to our humanity
03 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Nicole Stott has a towering range of knowledge and experience, from the heights of outer space as a NASA astronaut to the depths of the ocean as an aq...
David Sloan Wilson - Archipelagos of knowledge, commons, and the science of cooperation
06 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
David Sloan Wilson is one of biology’s most prolific and impactful scientists. He is author of paradigmatic contributions to evolutionary theory and...
Ed Finn - Thoughtful optimism, intellectual voyaging, and a Center for Science and the Imagination
01 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Ed Finn might be best described as an imaginer. The rest of the many things that he is and does kind of fall into place with that foundation. He start...
Alex McDowell - A master class in worldbuilding and designing holistic spaces
04 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Alex McDowell is a worldbuilder. He builds future realities to envision worlds that don't yet exist. By working across disciplines to imagine the...
David Hassler - Leaping thought, authoring a life, and a spirit of passionate inquiry
06 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Poetry comes up so often in my conversations these days. Our society in crisis seems to be desperate for it, without being able to name that desperati...
Alicia Juarrero - the philosopher who will change how you think about complexity
09 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Alicia Juarrero is Professor Emerita of Philosophy at Prince George’s Community College and the author of Dynamics in Action, a text that many consi...
Brandon Ballengée - Biodiversity, muscular hope, and the persistence of life
12 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Brandon Ballengée has a unique quality of attention, one that is not constrained by traditional distinctions between art & science and working &a...
Origins Season Five Trailer
01 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Welcome back to Origins, listeners. After a few month hiatus, we're back with an exhilarating, generative, spacious season of the show--the hiatu...
Sara Hendren - Healthy relationality, how we meet the built world, and the curriculum of the future
22 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Subscribe to The Flourishing Commons - a newsletter to accompany Origins episodes and to build a community around a rich forum for exchange. Sara Hend...
Michael Hochberg - mystery and our pivotal moments, innovation, and science from cells to societies
15 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Michael Hochberg is Distinguished Research Director with the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (the French National Centre for Scientific R...
Dave Snowden - Sensemaking, complexity, and frameworks for living
04 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
For years Dave Snowden has helped me understand how to navigate a complex world better than perhaps any other thinker. He draws so widely from all sch...
Katy Börner - Networks, noticing what we don't expect, and an atlas for navigating our world
07 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Katy Börner is one of the great mappers of our age. Her maps tell the history of science, trace how communication has evolved from the stone age to m...
(Best Of) Cecilia Conrad - Steward of the MacArthur Genius Grants, 100 million dollars, and transcendent empowerment
16 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
This episode originally aired on June 4, 2020. There are new episodes coming to you soon, so stay tuned. But now is a good time to revisit wise word...
Jessica Flack - Finding the right questions, the wisdom of complexity, and deep physical and cognitive fitness
19 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Dr. and professor Jessica Flack has been a dream guest for Origins since the beginning - the kind of generous intellect and polymath whose words and w...
JoAnn Kuchera-Morin - The AlloSphere, a deeper integration of art and science, and the new senses we need now
05 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
JoAnn Kuchera-Morin is a composer. But the music she writes is more than mere notes; it embraces art and science and engineering and finds new frontie...
Paco Nathan - Thinking in "graphs", a data and tech pioneer on living in a complex world
14 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
I have trouble wrapping any adequate labels around this episode’s guest, Paco Nathan. Paco is a technologist, data scientist and an evangelist of a ...
Caitlin McShea - Meeting places of art and science, interplanetary thinking, and an imaginative life
31 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Caitlin McShea is that special kind of curious that you cannot help but be inspired by, and she has the intellect to spread that curiosity over any do...
Anima Anandkumar - Artificial Intelligence and a flourishing society
17 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Professor Anima Anandkumar is a meteor in the field of artificial intelligence or AI. Her rise in the space has been a phenomenon to behold and her vo...
Dan Goods - design at NASA, life's throughlines of wonder, and the museum of awe
03 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Dan Goods is a leader among the community of creatives at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, so he's an imaginer among imaginers. A creator a...
Origins Season Four Trailer
26 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
During two years spent at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, curiosity-driven coffee conversations every morning with people who surprised and ins...
Peter Turchi - Maps of the creative process and designs for life
04 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Peter Turchi takes the art and act of writing as an irresistible analog for the art and the act of living. His work is part of a long tradition of fas...
Ethan Zuckerman - A master-course in how to connect and a syllabus for a spacious life
20 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Ethan Zuckerman is a voice that you need to know. He’s a pioneer for the use of media as a tool for social change, for cultivating international dev...
Richard D. Bartlett: Meaningful work, social fabric, and flourishing
06 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
We find ourselves in a world that feels incongruent and unfamiliar, changing socially and technologically at paces that expose conventional explanatio...
Tomas Björkman - Nature, the Nordic Secret, and what is emerging
02 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Tomas Björkman transcends science, business, philosophy, and social and personal change. Founder of the Ekskäret Foundation and coauthor of The Nord...
Sarah Goodwin - How we need to communicate science in our changing world
09 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Show Notes: Storytelling (03:00) Wonder Collaborative (04:30) Jane Goodall (05:00) Human Nature (CRISPR documentary) Nobel Prize Winner Jennifer ...
Episode 28: Nora Bateson - Interconnectedness, warm data, and the vitality of things
05 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Show Notes: Small Arcs of Larger Circles (02:00) Objectivity (05:45) Relationships and interdependencies (07:00) Smiling with your whole system (1...
Episode 27: Ed Kearns - Exploring the ocean, generosity, and a culture of data
08 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Show Notes: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) (02:00) Rachel Carson’s words (03:30) Scale of things and perspective Pioneer...
Episode 26: Alfred Nash - Insatiable curiosity, NASA and Team X, and the return of the Renaissance Man
23 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Show Notes: NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (05:15) Mentors (07:20) Building and leading teams (13:15) Comfort with uncertainty (15:30) Waleed Abd...
Episode 25: César Hidalgo - Information and complexity, learning and leading, rethinking technology in society
29 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Show Notes: Spiritual background of his childhood (05:30) Discipline to do good work (06:10) Mentor: Albert-László Barabási (09:30) How do you ...
Episode 24: Melanie Mitchell - The nature of intelligence and following your curiosity
17 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Show Notes: Santa Fe Institute (2:00) Alexander Hamilton biography by Ron Chernow (4:30) The Universe and Dr. Einstein by Lincoln Barnett (5:45) G...
Episode 23: Giorgia Lupi - Harmonizing life and data through design
31 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Show Notes: Data-driven design firm AccuratData humanismWhen she realized design was going to be a part of her life (07:00) A ’new chapter’ in h...
Episode 22: Elizabeth Anderson - A new equality and the philosopher for this moment in American life
17 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Show Notes: Marx Philosophic and Economic manuscript of 1844 (3:30) Changed by exposure to systematic class privilege (7:10) ‘Cubilcle’-ization...
Episode 21: Waleed Abdalati - NASA Chief Scientist and how to live a life led by your curiosity
30 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) (06:00) One of ten people to be ’NASA Chief Scientist' Being led around ...
Episode 20: Cecilia Conrad - Steward of the MacArthurs Genius Grants, 100 Million Dollars, and Transcendent Empowerment
04 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Show Notes: Privilege brings with it a sense of responsibility (4:00) Empowering others - "nurturing, supporting, and uplifting" (5:30) “...
Episode 19: Kristian Lum - Lifelong curiosity and Criminal Justice Reform through data
17 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Show Notes: Human Rights Data Analysis Group (HRDAG) (1:40) The contagious nature of imprisonment paper (1:50) Value of community colleges (6:30) ...
Episode 18: José Cotto - Creator, inspirer, and cultural entrepreneur across scales
15 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Show Notes: Grew up knowing possibility and that people create things (8:30) Being around art, there was always another reality that could be made (...
Episode 17: Brian Janosch - Redefining creativity in all spaces
25 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Show Notes: Cultivate Wit (03:00) New Glarus Spotted Cow Beer (03:40) Lambeau Field - Green Bay, Wisconsin (04:00) Pausing in your activities to r...
Episode 16: Martin Storksdieck - Visionary of lifelong learning
13 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Show Notes: Institute for Learning Innovation (02:20) Those that have given language and expression to Martin in his life (15:00) Art - Die Brücke...
Episode 15: Rachel Young - Designing cultures of learning
13 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Show Notes: Breakthrough Collaborative (3:10) Education as a vehicle for exploring the edges of social justice (6:00) Passion to give people what t...
Episode 14: Antti Pulkkinen - The art of explosive learning and blazing new trails in science
28 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Show Notes: Weather in outer space (1:30) Explosive learning through taking advantage of breadth and depth of knowledge (2:20) NASA Goddard Space F...
Episode 13: Aoife Van Linden Tol - Explosions of art in science, and science in art
01 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Show Notes: Christine Atha (10:30) “Dropping bombs on the landscape” (13:30) Land art (14:30) Michael Heizer “Displaced Replaced Mass” (...
Episode 12: Rajesh Gupta - The Didactic Data Scientist and Tireless Change Maker
18 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Show Notes: Halıcıoğlu Data Science Institute (2:11) IEEE Computer Society 2019 W. Wallace McDowell Award (3:30) “Trying to do things in the w...
Episode 11: Bill Diamond - The nexus of Silicon Valley and science
07 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Show Notes: The SETI Institute (1:15 and 6:10) FDL program (NASA Frontier Development Lab) (4:30 and 36:00) Jesuit thinking (5:00) Brother Guy J. ...
Episode 10: Nicky Fox - Trailblazer of Trans-disciplinary at NASA
29 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Show Notes:Polar mission, Solar-Terrestrial Physics Science Initiative, Van Allen Probes mission, and Parker Solar Probe mission (01:05)NASA Heliophys...
Episode 09: Andrés Muñoz-Jaramillo - Science's Humanist Entrepreneur
08 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Show Notes: Andrés’ first website: “a small trip through Columbian music” (04:10) Cosmos (TV Show and Book) by Carl Sagan (05:50) Jesuit Ign...
Episode 08: Kirk Borne - Data science storyteller and influencer
31 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Show Notes: Geodesics (12:40) Booz Allen Hamilton (21:00) Kirk ’surprised’ himself through the cognitive ability test at a job interview - the...
Episode 07: Matt Russo - DJ to the Cosmos
17 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Show Notes: Matt’s bands (1:30): Tiny Danza and RVNNERS Being singularly focused versus pursuing multiple curiosities. Tim Ferriss blog on one way...
Episode 06: Chris Mattmann - NASA's data scientist
04 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Show Notes: Apache Open Source Software Foundation (4:00) Apache projects: Tika (26:30), Nutch (15:10), Hadoop (36:05) Chris’ resume and the ‘w...
Episode 05: Kerry Larkin - Making space for a beautiful life
12 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Show Notes: Kerry’s quilt kickstarter (~3:00)Vipassanā mediation/retreats (~5:30) Sitting practice meditation (~12:55) We discuss morning routin...
Episode 04: Professor Jayachandran - The ionosphere entrepreneur
04 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Show Notes: The Canadian High Arctic Ionospheric Network (CHAIN) - http://chain.physics.unb.ca/chain/Jay’s research group: http://radio.physics.un...
Episode 03: Jacob Bortnik - Pioneer of space physics
04 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Show Notes: Work-Life balance vs. alignment (7:00) Link to follow-up on: https://bit.ly/2SnMPIzTED talk about the silent man (31:30): John Francis (...
Episode 02: Lika Guhathakurta - Space Visionary
04 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Show Notes: STEREO (Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory) mission: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/stereo/main/index.htmlLiving With a Star Pro...
Trailer - Origins - Origins Series
04 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Origins are conversations with thought-leaders across an eclectic mix of disciplines (science, engineering, art, and design), crafted specifically for...