Video: Jonah Lehrer
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Filmed on: October 24, 2008
About this
video
Jonah Lehrer wows the audience with this presentation on
what science can learn by studying human creativity, and intrigues with
comments such as, “We’re all sacs of water and protein, anyhow.” Using
discoveries in modern cooking and music as examples he explains how what
may initially be shocking gets assimilated into the mainstream as the
mind finds patterns over time. Therefore, the best creations walk the
line between breaking new ground and channeling the familiar.
Speaker bio
Jonah Lehrer is editor-at-large for Seed magazine. He is also a contributing editor at Radio Lab and Scientific American Mind.
A graduate of Columbia University and a Rhodes scholar, Lehrer has
worked in the lab of Nobel Prize–winning neuroscientist Eric Kandel and
studied with Hermione Lee at Oxford University. He has co-authored a
peer-reviewed paper in genetics and worked as a line cook at Melisse in
Los Angeles, Le Cirque 2000 in New York, and as a prep cook at Le
Bernardin. As a journalist he has profiled Brian Greene and Elizabeth
Gould, spent several days in the kitchen of the Fat Duck, recorded bird
songs and ruminated on Stravinsky for National Public Radio. He has
written for Nature, New Scientist, Best Life, NPR, NOVA and the MIT Technology Review, and he writes the highly regarded blog The Frontal Cortex.