Dani Bassett and Perry Zurn - Understanding curiosity, nourishing a life, and how thoughts move

Twins Dani Bassett and Perry Zurn are curious. Their work, individually and together, gives new conception and language to what curiosity is, the work that it does in the world. These are human beings of intelligence and integrity and deep care, and their reification of curiosity might just be a generative narrative of our time. 

Origins Podcast Website

Flourishing Commons Newsletter

Show Notes:

• Homeschooling (05:00)
• Epistemology (09:00)
• multiple discovery (16:30)
• foregrounding bravery (21:00)
• Curious Minds(25:00)
• Julio Ottino on Origins (28:30)
• Hope in the Dark by Rebecca Solnit (32:00)
• Power of curiosity for social movements (34:30)
• Three types of curiosity (40:30)
• David Lydon-Staley University of Pennsylvania (44:00)
• Cognitive flexibility and the discovery of neuroplasticity (45:30)
• Talking to Strangers by Danielle Allen (47:00)
• Amartya Sen - democracy is a knowledge and a process of social discovery (53:00)
• How thought moves (54:00)
• Dani's course 'the goals of scientific inquiry (55:15)
• Hippocampal system and mapping conceptual spaces (56:30)
• Networks as the lingua franca of complex systems (58:00)
• Lightning round (59:00)
  • Book: Dani - Follow My Leader by and A Room of One's Own by Virginia Wolff; Perry - Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll and books that make him slow down
    • Susan Sontag 'I no longer trust novels which fully satisfy my passion to understand.'
  • Passion: Perry - methods, ways of asking questions; Dani - analogical power
  • Heart Sing: Dani - Spring; Perry - punctuation marks
    • On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong 
  • Screwed up: Dani - leaving nursing school; Perry - some breakups
• Find Dani online:
  • Website
  • Twitter: @DaniSBassett
• Find Perry online:
  • Website
  • Twitter: @perryzurn
• 'Five-Cut Fridays’ five-song music playlist series  
  • Dani and Perry’s playlist

Logo artwork by Cristina Gonzalez

Music by swelo on all streaming platforms or @swelomusic on social media