Podcast: The Helix Center

As the first sense to engage the world “remotely”, beyond the boundary of an organism’s body, olfaction delivers news from “over there”. But whereas it adumbrates a space beyond, what kind of space, what sort of world does it proffer? Smell engages the world as a series of pathways laid out on gradients.… read more »

“Now the touch only is common to all animals.”  Agrippa

The very notion of sentience, with its root in feeling, cannot be understood without some reference to sensation. And sensation itself has at its bare core a “something” we feel. The response to that feeling is the mark of life: “quickening” upon touch is how we distinguish the animate from the inanimate. … read more »

Where life begins to distinguish the edible, the nutritious, the appealing, from the insipid, the poisonous, and the disgusting; this is where taste and discernment come into being. From a bag of Cheetos to Michelin 3-star fare we cover a lot of ground, yet financial means alone fails to account fully for the popularity of both ends of this culinary spectrum.… read more »

What are the effects of media today? What exactly is “social” about social media? How do media shape reality? Are developments in AI changing media as we understand communications technologies? Sixty years ago, the Canadian Professor of English and Media, Marshall McLuhan published the unexpectedly popular volume Understanding Media (1964), which would go on to establish a vocabulary addressing these questions — a vocabulary and set of ideas that scholars continue to grapple with to this day.… read more »

Fractured: Covid 19 – Memento Mori vs. Memento Vivere; “COVID-19 Betrays America’s Cult of Curdled Optimism”;  This Exquisite Loneliness; The Lonely Stories; 2020: One City, Seven People, and the Year Everything Changed; The Quarantine Tapes; these titles were all attempts by our panelists to endure and make sense of the Pandemic.  … read more »

What do you think of when you think of the number five?  Do you think of symbol like 5, a pattern like ⁙, or the fifth item on a list?  Today, the concept of number is fixed and eternal, unlinked to anything in the universe. … read more »

What is human life without emotion? Could the “dawn of humankind” even be imagined without emotion exerting its effects right there from the start? And across the millennia emotion has forever been at the heart of most matters. Human history has been shaped by emotion and reshaped by attitudes toward emotion; a powerful human force philosophers and theologians confront and reckon with again and again throughout history and in every culture.… read more »

What is memory? How does it determine our experience and identity? To what extent does memory influence our understanding of the future? Or of time itself? How do individual memories differ from collective ones? What happens to our sense of belonging and selfhood when our memories are externalized in digital devices?… read more »

The date of this Round Table is not a coincidence: William Shakespeare was born on or about April 23, 1564, and he died on April 23, 1616.  This is a particularly auspicious year for celebrating Shakespeare: 2023 is the 400th anniversary of the publication of the First Folio, the first collected printing of Shakespeare’s plays and one of the most important books in all of English literature. … read more »

Astrobiology is the study of life on the universe. It uses an understanding of the nature and history of life on this planet to frame expectations for biology beyond Earth. Starting in 1995, astronomers have discovered exoplanets: planets orbiting other stars. Over 5300 have been confirmed, and it’s likely there are more planets than stars in the universe.… read more »