108 - Nadja Oertelt on Humanizing The Stories of Science

FUTURE FOSSILS

This week’s guest is Nadja Oertelt – research scientist turned film-maker and founder of Massive Science, a science communication community that cares about restoring care to the storytelling of scientific discovery. Not only is the website wonderfully both rigorous and easy on the eye, the writing takes you on a journey. Clearly she and her colleagues are doing something right by teaching scientists it’s not just okay, but vital to the meaning-making of their work, to have a story and not just solutions.

Here’s her amazing publication:

https://massivesci.com/

And an interview she did with Forbes:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/catescottcampbell/2017/04/10/the-limit-does-not-exist-nadja-oertelt-has-a-massive-take-on-science/

Super cool short film series Nadja did for HarvardX Neuroscience:

https://vimeo.com/channels/972301

We Discuss:

How working with scientists was a revelation into the social process of knowledge production and translation.

Anna Wexler & DIY brain interfaces.

http://www.annawexler.com/

David Cox, Director MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab.

https://researcher.watson.ibm.com/researcher/view.php?person=ibm-David.D.Cox

The erasure of the subject in academic writing.

Integral psychology and the application of psychometric information to the addressing of truth claims.

How do psychedelics change the way we understand and practice science?

Alex & Allyson Grey’s Chapel of Sacred Mirrors.

https://cosm.org

https://evolution.bandcamp.com/album/technologists-of-attention-at-the-chapel-of-sacred-mirrors

The Fundamentalism-Zen Continuum in the thermodynamics of computation.

Creating a new neural ecology of science by including more kinds of people in the investigations.

“We’re approaching some sort of memento mori for reality.”

The “black box” of AI is not as big of a problem as the “black box” of why we feel the need to create these technologies in the first place.

The human reality and personal sacrifices of science and knowledge production.

The pain of becoming a storyteller for so many who have been trained as scientists.

How social media has changed the subjectivity of young researchers.

The importance of care in all of this.

Allison Parrish - artist & programmer.

https://tisch.nyu.edu/about/directory/itp/853082171

Irreversible Dictation: Gertrude Stein and the Correlations of Writing & Science - Steven Meyer

https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=750

This episode is backed by Mike Schwab of KnowYourMeme.com, a fascinating living document/community exploring memes and their effects.

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