In this episode, we talk about creative origins. Tom veers off into wanting a grand unified theory of everything, for any topic, and we talk about storytelling, how much it has created the time we’re in now. Wondering if people ever got along.
This episode hits its peak I think, with Tim’s reading from Jean Guéhenno, an writer/activist/diarist who kept an amazing diary during WWII from German-occupied Paris. It’s remarkable; here’s an excerpt:
I remember being deeply shocked by the inadequacy of creation and vowing to correct it. I toiled for 30 years.
I was hard and full of anger. I looked at my contemporaries as so many enemies every time I found them inclined to accept the world in which all I could see was poverty and injustice. … I strove to frighten people, as if that were a good way of persuading them…
I condemned as cowards those who did not commit themselves to the battle with the same heart. I wore out the best of myself and those battles. It was not enough. I almost forgot to live.
And then Tim talks about the “Ladies of Lockerbie”, who washed, ironed and packaged for return, all the clothes from the downed airliner in 1988.
Timestamps:
00:10 Creative origins, where people come from before they are famous 1:40 - Writing, reading and making maps3:50 - Timelines of History book8:45 - Grand Unified Theories12:20 Carl Sagan and superstition15:00 Humans telling stories17:25 - Confederate statues, beliefs, etc.22:30 - The history of Jews in other civilizations27:00 - Yugoslavia30:00 - The world is ____. What are you going to do? 31:15 - Pessimistic cycle31:55 - Political cartoons33:20 - Believing in America36:30 Prehistoric brains trying to solve global problems37:45 Passage from Jean Guéhenno, from Occupied Paris, WWII41:10 The "laundry ladies of Lockerbie"47:06 Connecting to smaller gestures and stories51:00 Reading corner: Tim gives an introduction to reads a poem about Mary Wollstonecraft.
Thanks to Tim for his wise thoughts in this conversation, and to you for listening.
