Creating encounters with flourishing: A 'salon' at the National Academy of Sciences

Flourishing is not a fixed state; it is an unfolding. In this time of rupture we need encounters with flourishing, to know it in our lived experiences individually and collectively. In this transformative event on December 12, 2024, Ryan McGranaghan, host of the Origins Podcast and founder of the Flourishing Salons, engaged in a moving conversation with four profound provocateurs and a wider community of artists, designers, engineers, scientists, educators, and contemplatives. The event was co-hosted by Flourishing Salons and the Cultural Programs of the National Academy of Sciences (CPNAS) DC Art and Science Evening Rendezvous (DASER).

On this show we drive our discourse toward flourishing, to who we are to and for each other. This is a conversation and an encounter with those ideas. And it is an living conversation. We invite you to be part of this community dedicated to exploring how flourishing is not only a personal endeavor but a collective, creative, and scientific pursuit.

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Flourishing is not a fixed state; it is an unfolding process of growth and transformation. As anthropologist James Suzman puts it, flourishing involves using our resources to enrich ourselves spiritually, mentally, and in service to the greater good. Political philosopher Danielle Allen describes it as empowerment not only in our personal lives but also in our shared, public spaces.

While ideas of flourishing have deep roots in philosophy, art, and social thought, we lack a contemporary, scientifically grounded understanding—one that integrates new data, ethnographic research, and emerging analytical tools. This new conception must draw upon the rich history and ongoing conversation about what it means to live well and live well together, about who we are to and for each other.

In this transformative event on December 12, 2024, Ryan McGranaghan, host of the Origins Podcast and founder of the Flourishing Salons, engaged in a moving conversation with four profound provocateurs and a wider community of artists, designers, engineers, scientists, educators, and contemplatives. The event was co-hosted by Flourishing Salons and the Cultural Programs of the National Academy of Sciences (CPNAS) DC Art and Science Evening Rendezvous (DASER). DASER is one of the nation's longest-running interdisciplinary forums, a seat of conversation about the intersections of art, science, and culture.

The evening opened with a description of the Flourishing Salons and a framing for 'creating encounters with flourishing' by Ryan McGranaghan followed by provocations given by (bios below) Susan Magsamen, Julie Demuth, Jennifer Wiseman, and Dan Jay. It concluded with an open discussion with the wider community.

Susan Magsamen is the founder and executive director of the International Arts + Mind Lab (IAM Lab), Center for Applied Neuroaesthetics, a groundbreaking neuroaesthetics initiative at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. In addition to her role at IAM Lab, she is the co-director of the NeuroArts Blueprint project in partnership with the Aspen Institute. She is also the author of Impact Thinking, an interdisciplinary translational research model, and co-author of the New York Times Bestseller, Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us written for the general public. Susan’s work focuses on how the arts and aesthetic experiences measurably change the brain, body and behavior and how this knowledge can be translated to inform health, wellbeing and learning programs in medicine, public health and education. 

Julie Demuth is a research scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in the Mesoscale and Microscale Meteorology (MMM) Lab with the Weather Risks and Decisions in Society (WRaDS) research group. She has a background in both atmospheric science and risk communication, and she has been working for nearly 20 years on integrating social science research with the meteorological research and practitioner communities. She also leads NCAR's Convergence Science Program and is a leader in conducting Convergence Research, the approach to scientific discovery for our most pressing challenges that involves deep integration across disciplines.

Jennifer J. Wiseman is an astrophysicist at NASA, and Director-Emeritus of the AAAS Dialogue on Science, Ethics, and Religion (DoSER) program. She studies the formation of stars and serves as the Senior Project Scientist for the Hubble Space Telescope. Public speaker, science evangelist, and author, she is a brilliant articulator of the beauty of science and how it shows up in society. 

Dan Jay has a mission to inspire where art and science meet. Jay is an Emeritus Professor of Developmental, Molecular, and Chemical Biology at Tufts University focused on cancer biology and was until recently the Dean of its Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences. He is also an adjunct lecturer of Drawing and Painting at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts (Boston) where he teaches a course on How the Brain Perceives Art dedicated to his past mentor David Hubel. In recent years, he has combined art and science with a unique perspective of a scientist’s mind and an artist’s eye. Dan develops new art media from scientific materials such as liquid nitrogen, magnetic fields, and elements of the Periodic Table to express inspiration in his science from childhood to the present day. His solo shows include at Harvard University, Massachusetts State House, Boston Convention Center, Aidekman Arts Center (Slater Concourse), the French Cultural Center, Whitehorse Cultural Center (Yukon), the Museum of the National Center for Afro-American Artists, the Ontario Science Centre, the Peabody Essex Museum, the Boston Museum of Science and the Advanced Research Centre, Glasgow., Dan is working with The Burroughs Wellcome Fund to address the benefits, challenges, and sustainability of an Art-Science Nexus.

Video of the event (link). Event page (link).

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