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Origins Podcast with Ryan McGranaghan

Ryan McGranaghan
Origins Podcast with Ryan McGranaghan
Latest episode

85 episodes

  • Origins Podcast with Ryan McGranaghan

    Guru Madhavan - Systems consciousness, repairing what is worn, and life-instilling creations

    03/03/2026 | 1h 13 mins.
    Guru Madhavan reverences the world and all that is in it. Guru is an engineer, but his conception of engineering is more vast than we typically assign to the role. To it he brings a systems consciousness that widens the field in recognition of its entanglement with the social and cultural.
    Origins Podcast Website
    Flourishing Commons Newsletter

    Show Notes:
    David Sloan Wilson on Origins (02:05)
    systems consciousness (06:40)
    problematizing the term 'technology' (11:00)
    jirnoddhara - 'repairing what is worn' (13:30)
    Charles Vest (15:20)
    Applied Minds Guru's first book (21:20)
    'lessons from the scrapheap' (24:00)
    Spanning Space by Claude Claremont (25:00)
    Cloaca Maxima (29:00)
    Wicked Problems by Guru (31:00)
    "How to be a poet" by Wendell Berry (31:00)
    "The Grind Challenges" by Guru (33:00)
    Evolution for Everyone by David Sloan Wilson (41:50)
    Flourishing Salons and the event Guru referred to (43:00)
    FOCUS (45:20)
    Elinor Ostrom (46:30)
    The Disuniting of America by Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. (55:20)
    Paul Virilio's 'inverted miracle' (56:30)
    What does it mean to flourish? (57:30)
    Why War? letters between Einstein and Freud (01:00:30)
    Lightning round (01:05:10)Book: The Faraway Nearby by Rebecca Solnit
    Passion: cubist painting
    Heart sing: latest bookThe Wisdom of the Desert by Thomas Merton

    Screwed up: communication

    Find Guru online: LinkedIn
    'Five-Cut Fridays’ five-song music playlist series  Guru’s playlist

    Logo artwork by Cristina Gonzalez

    Music by swelo on all streaming platforms or @swelomusic on social media
  • Origins Podcast with Ryan McGranaghan

    Francesca Samsel - Vulnerability, making a new language, and pursuing the irrational

    20/01/2026 | 58 mins.
    Francesca Samsel is crafting a new language for our world. That is, she crosses art, science, and visualization to open new ways of understanding and engaging with the natural world, not just visually but across the sensorial spectrum. She recognizes the inextricably social element to this, too, and her work raises our capacity to collaborate, and in the process, alters our sense of what scientific inquiry is and can (and perhaps needs to) be. Her work as her life are teachers we need for the world we are walking into. 

    Origins Podcast Website
    Flourishing Commons Newsletter

    Show Notes:
    vulnerability (11:30)
    problem with the 'follow your passion' path (14:20)
    Ganymede (15:00)
    what she tells her students (15:50)
    art-science collaboration (16:00)
    Santa Fe Institute (21:20)
    James (Jim) Ahrens (24:00)
    Craig Tweedie (25:20)
    visual structure to see the complexity in data (29:00)
    Isaac Asimov 'that's funny' (30:20)
    the need for scientific breakthrough (31:20)
    Lia Halloran - your hand will physically guide you the way to breakthrough (31:30)
    the only mark that you determine as an artist is the first one (33:00)
    delivery-oriented society (34:30)
    "Stewardship of Global Collective Behavior" by Joseph Bak-Coleman et al. (40:00)
    visual vocabulary work (42:00)
    Art-Sci-Vis Lab at UT Austin (43:20)
    flourishing (47:00)
    Gilead by Marilynne Robinson (51:45)
    lightning round (48:00)Artist: Jon McCormick (work called "Fifty Sisters")
    Passion: geoscience and the complexity you find when you walk out of the door
    Heart sing: fused glass, ice, and rock
    Screwed up: obliviousness to colleagues

    Find Francesca online:Website 
    UT Austin

    Logo artwork by Cristina Gonzalez
    Music by swelo on all streaming platforms or @swelomusic on social media
  • Origins Podcast with Ryan McGranaghan

    Malka Older - Worldbuilding creativity

    25/11/2025 | 1h 13 mins.
    Malka Older makes a life at the crossroads of our existing and future worlds. Between research into the sociology of organizations, on-the-ground work in humanitarian aid and disaster risk reduction, and acclaimed writing of speculative and science fiction, Older brilliantly, beautifully, uncommonly lives the great paradox in front of us all: to hold at once the two truths of lived experience and imagined future. 

    Origins Podcast Website
    Flourishing Commons Newsletter

    Show Notes:
    the immigrant sensibility (05:00)
    belonging (07:20)
    exile (09:00)
    Danielle Allen's theory of justice (15:00)
    A Paradise Built in Hellby Rebecca Solnit (16:00)
    Malka's work in the international space (16:20)
    Global Voices (19:15)
    Where are you REALLY from? (19:40) 
    The Institute on Statelessness and Inclusion (20:30)
    'Great Asking' (22:30)
    Positionality (23:00)
    Mu - unask the question (23:20)
    the opportunity in disaster (27:10)
    2004 Boxing Day Indian Ocean Tsunami (31:00)
    psychological distance (34:40)
    Malka's book ...And Other Disasters(35:30)
    the importance of improvisation (43:00)
    David Whyte - the conversational nature of reality (46:30)
    Malka's book Infomocracy (49:00)
    the adjacent possible (53:45)
    The Crisis of Narration by Byung-Chul Han (59:15)
    The Sociological Imaginationby C Wright Mills (59:30)
    what does it mean to flourish? (59:45)
    the generative narrative of our time (01:08:30)
    Lightning round (01:02:00)Book: The Lord of the Rings
    Passion: Hearing a new language
    Heart sing: Global Voices
    Screwed up: relationship

    Find Malka online:Wikipedia
    Arizona State Profile
    LinkedIn

    Logo artwork by Cristina Gonzalez
    Music by swelo on all streaming platforms or @swelomusic on social media
  • Origins Podcast with Ryan McGranaghan

    Mette Miriam Böll - Insisting on compassion

    28/10/2025 | 1h 8 mins.
    Biologist, philosopher, educator, facilitator, and historian of science Mette Miriam Böll is embodiment of the kind of life that emerges when we accept, recognize, and revere our profound interconnectedness. Her scholarship as her life are nourishment for returning to the task we are all called to: to human well, at once simple and complex, individual and civilizational. 

    Origins Podcast Website
    Flourishing Commons Newsletter

    Show Notes:
    Tibetan Book of the Dead (04:20)
    Dzogchen - Tibetan Buddhist Teachings (05:00)
    John P. Milton (05:40)
    drawing her out on interconnectedness (12:30)
    Krishnamurti (17:00)
    Systems awareness and change processes (17:25)
    Polycrisis (17:35)
    life is a creative journey (18:20)
    John Paul Lederach on Origins (19:30)
    systems thinking (20:15)
    Jesper Hoffmeyer (20:30)
    Peter Senge (22:00)
    Why most systems change efforts fail (22:40)
    industrial PhD program Denmark (e.g., here) (32:10)
    Presence: An Exploration of Profound Change in People, Organizations, and Society by Peter Senge (34:00)
    compassionate systems framework (37:30)
    Otto Scharmer (37:30)
    compassionate systems workshops (42:40)
    generative social fields (44:00)
    Francisco Varela: The Logic of Paradise (53:00)
    "Keeping Quiet" by Pablo Neruda (59:00)
    Lightning round (58:30)Book: The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
    Passion: Regenerative futures field
    Heart Sing: Digital detox
    Screwed up: Practicality 

    Find Mette online:Center for Systems Awareness

    Logo artwork by Cristina Gonzalez
    Music by swelo on all streaming platforms or @swelomusic on social media
  • Origins Podcast with Ryan McGranaghan

    Dan Jay - Doubt, collectivity, and transformative creativity

    16/09/2025 | 1h 2 mins.
    Dr. Dan Jay has a mission to inspire where art and science meet. His life has been spent in the liminal and generative space between and among these domains of inquiry that are too often considered separate, distinct, even opposing. Yet, it is transformative creativity only possible from the co-mingling and conversation of art and science that we seem to be called to in the 21st century. 

    Origins Podcast Website
    Flourishing Commons Newsletter
    Show Notes:
    Falling Upward by Richard Rohr (05:20)
    Hinduism four stages of life (05:50)
    Society of Fellows (10:00)
    David Hubel (12:20)
    Will Ryman (13:00)
    Dan's hypercube series (20:00)
    self-emptying (24:30)
    Why we need an academic career path that combines science and art (27:00)
    Burroughs Wellcome Fund (28:00)
    Arthur Zajonc - 'something for the light to fall on' (31:00)
    Enfold initiative (32:00)
    collective over community (32:15)
    Ancient Greek symposium (35:00)
    Émile Durkheim - collective effervescence (38:30)
    Joie de vivre (38:30)
    vulnerability and frailty (41:30)
    compassionate leadership (42:40)
    flourishing (45:30)
    TS Eliot "The Four Quartets" (46:30)
    Souq al Arabi (48:20)
     "all flourishing is mutual" Robin Wall Kimmerer (52:00)
    encounters with flourishing (52:20)
    nuanced conception of flourishing (52:30)
    Lightning round (53:30)Book: Civilisation by Kenneth Clark 
    Passion: spirituality
    Heart sing: inspiration for his mission
    Screwed up: failed marriage 

    Find Dan online:http://www.danjayart.com/
    https://smfa.tufts.edu/directory/dan-jay

    Logo artwork by Cristina Gonzalez
    Music by swelo on all streaming platforms or @swelomusic on social media

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About Origins Podcast with Ryan McGranaghan

Origins are conversations with thought-leaders across an eclectic mix of disciplines (science, engineering, art, and design), crafted specifically for the category-defying society that we live in. We explore the thoughts, passions, and stories that defined these pioneers’ fascinating trajectories, arriving at the origins of the pivotal moments across their lives. Draw inspiration for your own trajectory from the intellectual and spiritual electricity of these eclectic conversations.
Podcast website

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