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The Lavin Agency is a speakers bureau, based in New York City and Toronto. We exclusively represent leading thinkers, writers, and doers who inspire ideas and dialogue that make the world a better place. |
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Notes"Thought for the day: A good idea not turned into action stays confined to the tiny, poor neurons that spend all their energy on it."Neuroscience speaker David Eagleman, from his Facebook page.
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Notes"Countless ingenuities have been sparked by taking baths or drinking beer, or both…It’s important to escape the white noise in our world, to step back and let the big picture wash over us. There’s no excuse for not putting the work in. However, it’s just as crucial that we make time to waste time."Neuroscientist, author and Lavin speaker Jonah Lehrer, speaking at the University of California Santa Barbara’s “Innovation Matters” Series.
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David Eagleman, Lavin speaker and author of Incognito, will unveil an exciting new talk, entitled “The Science of Hatred and Dehumanization”, at Intelligence Squared in London on May 24th. Here’s the official talk description:
Which side were you on? The Jets or the Sharks? The Capulets or the Montagues? The Greeks or the Trojans? Antony or Caesar? William or Harold? And so the list goes on…Indeed, maybe the whole of human history is the story of group-making and group-breaking. The passions of loyalty and love for the in-group are matched by the de-humanising indignation and hatred for the out-group.
But what’s actually going on in the chemical soup of the brain when Agamemnon gathers his heros-to-be and sets sail after Helen? Will peering into that soup – as neuroscientist David Eagleman is now doing – actually give peace a chance? Maybe utopia can come out of the lab. Will a scientific understanding of love and hate deliver social programmes that undermine the nastiness without sacrificing the good?Photo courtesy of Christine ™
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Notes"Creativity is not magic, and there’s no such thing as a creative type. Creativity is not a trait that we inherit in our genes or a blessing bestowed by the angels. It’s a skill. Anyone can learn to be creative and to get better at it."Jonah Lehrer, author of Imagine: How Creativity Works, in a recent essay for The Wall Street Journal.
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Notes"We open our eyes and we think we’re seeing the whole world out there. But what has become clear—and really just in the last few centuries—is that when you look at the electro-magnetic spectrum we are seeing less than 1/10 Billionth of the information that’s riding on there. So we call that visible light. But everything else passing through our bodies is completely invisible to us."Neuroscientist and author David Eagleman, in recent interview with Lifehacker.
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Notes"Rather than trying to make people laugh, it eventually morphed into me talking to the audience about the things I thought were important. The skills I learned paid off though, in terms of giving an engaging scientific talk."Neuroscientist David Eagleman, talking to New Scientist, about the year he spent as a stand-up comedian.
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NotesHere’s Jonah Lehrer, neuroscience speaker and author of Imagine: How Creativity Works, performing some “Brain Games” on The Ellen Degeneres Show. His experiments show how easily the brain can be tricked, and just how oblivious of our surroundings we can be on a daily basis.
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Notes"You live in the past. About 80 milliseconds in the past, to be precise. Use one hand to touch your nose, and the other to touch one of your feet, at exactly the same time. You will experience them as simultaneous acts. But that’s mysterious — clearly it takes more time for the signal to travel up your nerves from your feet to your brain than from your nose. The reconciliation is simple: our conscious experience takes time to assemble, and your brain waits for all the relevant input before it experiences the “now.” Experiments have shown that the lag between things happening and us experiencing them is about 80 milliseconds."David Eagleman speaking at Setting Time Aright conference. Via Boing Boing.
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NotesWhere does innovation come from? Here’s neuroscience speaker Jonah Lehrer weighing in, as part of a Wall Street Journal panel. Lehrer’s upcoming book, Imagine: How Creativity Works, examines this very question.
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Notes"If music confers no survival advantage, where does it come from and why does it work? I suspect that music is auditory cheesecake, an exquisite confection crafted to tickle the sensitive spots of at least six of our mental faculties."Steven Pinker, quoted in the New York Times article “Pinkerisms: Selections from Steven Pinker’s writings on language, evolution and the mind.”
