Origins Podcast with Ryan McGranaghan

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 work expand everyone around her. She also might be…

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 frontiers at the intersection of them all. Her 'music' i…

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 brighter data and technology future. He has an unco…

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 domain. For the past ten years in roles varying fro…

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 voice is a refreshing and inviting one that might j…

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 among creators. He's one of the most innovative minds I've c…

During two years spent at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, curiosity-driven coffee conversations every morning with people who surprised and inspired me sparked an endless fascination with the pivot…

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 fascination with processes of writers and he is amon…

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 development with technology, and for the activation of…

We find ourselves in a world that feels incongruent and unfamiliar, changing socially and technologically at paces that expose conventional explanations as inadequate. Climate change, pandemics, poli…

Tomas Björkman transcends science, business, philosophy, and social and personal change. Founder of the Ekskäret Foundation and coauthor of The Nordic Secret, Tomas’ story is a guide for anyone think…

Show Notes: 

• Storytelling (03:00) 
• Wonder Collaborative (04:30) 
• Jane Goodall (05:00) 
• Human Nature (CRISPR documentary) 
  • Nobel Prize Winner Jennifer Doudna
• Ron Vale (06:00) 
• "Cell Hell” - Cell Biology and …

Show Notes: 

• Small Arcs of Larger Circles (02:00) 
• Objectivity (05:45) 
• Relationships and interdependencies (07:00) 
• Smiling with your whole system (10:00) 
• Flip side of delight and seeing connections (11…

Show Notes: 

• National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) (02:00) 
• Rachel Carson’s words (03:30) 
• Scale of things and perspective 
• Pioneers of oceanography: Rossby and Montgomery (07:30) 
• Global…

Show Notes: 

• NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (05:15) 
• Mentors (07:20) 
• Building and leading teams (13:15) 
• Comfort with uncertainty (15:30) 
• Waleed Abdalati Origins episode (18:30) 
• What drew Nash to JPL (1…

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 demand excellence? 
• Musing on the competitive mentality (…

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) 
• Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Dougla…

Show Notes: 

• Data-driven design firm Accurat
• Data humanism
• When she realized design was going to be a part of her life (07:00) 
• A ’new chapter’ in her life to fuse data and design (07:30) 
• What teachers t…

Show Notes: 

• Marx Philosophic and Economic manuscript of 1844 (3:30) 
• Changed by exposure to systematic class privilege (7:10) 
• ‘Cubilcle’-ization revolution (8:10) 
• Normative aspects of economics and ma…

• Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) (06:00) 
• One of ten people to be ’NASA Chief Scientist' 
• Being led around by your curiosity 
  • ‘Pulls' from our earliest ages in life (…