Zachary Ugolnik - Science & spirituality, heightened states of community, and new conceptions of flourishing
- Author
- Ryan McGranaghan
- Published
- Tue 29 Jul 2025
- Episode Link
- None
Zachary Ugolnik has for years been charting a new path that refuses the tired and inanimate narrative about the separateness of science and spirituality, reason and religion. In his life we find rich possibility when those old illusory dichotomies are discarded, and from that possibility perhaps new wisdom for creating a society full of care and flourishing, one that embraces our inherent needfulness and borrows from theology, ecology, and the social sciences.
Flourishing Commons Newsletter
Show Notes:
- locate shared spaces of curiosity across disciplines (11:50)
- Émile Durkheim and collective effervescence (13:45)
- Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS) at Stanford University (14:10 and 16:20)
- through lines between religion and social science (13:45)
- Victor and Edith Turner communitas (15:00)
- Simone Weil decreation (18:30)
- re-membering (22:00)
- Zach's book: The Collective Self (18:30)
- Theater of War (24:00)
- Byzantine iconography and perspective (26:00)
- Picasso "Le Taureau" (26:20)
- The Social Science of Caregiving (27:30)
- Flourishing Knowledge Commons (27:45)
- Margaret Levi communities of fate (27:50)
- "Mobilizing in the Interest of Others" by Levi and Ugolnik (30:00)
- Buddhism and interdependence (31:50)
- Collective action problems (34:40)
- flourishing systems (37:30)
- Ilya Prigogine and dissipative structures (39:30)
- Danielle Allen (42:15)
- philanthropy (44:30)
- Strother School of Radical Attention (52:30)
- Andrei Rublev (52:50)
- Daniel Kahneman (53:50)
- Syriac term Iḥidāyā (55:00)
- Lightning Round (57:30):
- Book: The Way of the Pilgrimand The Narrow Road to the Deep North and Other Travel Sketches by Matsuo Bashō
- Passion: travel
- Heart sing: swimming with my kids
- Screwed up: eulogy
- Find Zach online:
Logo artwork by Cristina Gonzalez
Music by swelo on all streaming platforms or @swelomusic on social media
