Episode 21: Waleed Abdalati - NASA Chief Scientist and how to live a life led by your curiosity

Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) (06:00) One of ten people to be ’NASA Chief Scientist' Being led around by your curiosity ‘Pulls' from our earliest ages in life (07:30) The Arctic from space (10:00) The ’space-based perspective' ’No better compass than your emotions’ (11:30) Constructive emotions Opportunities to connect mind and body (14:00) Love of career and love of family (23:30) “It has to give you energy and not drain energy from you" (25:00) What he tells his students (28:00) Think about the act of learning The goal: learn, grow, have new experiences (30:00) Becoming comfortable with discomfort - not that hard if you believe in it and if you believe you can contribute meaningfully to it (34:00) Existing in little space (35:00) Antidisciplinary (36:00) NASA = ‘bureaucratic manifestation of all that makes us human’ (38:00) Study the far off places that only exist in our imagination Takes our humanity and our human spirit to the limit Communicating difficult things (44:00) It is our responsibility to understand why others feel and think the way that they do (50:45) Physics is better behaved than social science (58:00) Put yourself in a place of understanding why someone may feel differently than you (59:00) Put the energy into understanding a divergent perspective from yours Lightning Round (1:02:00): Book: Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! and What Do You Care What Other People Think?Marriage of cerebral and emotional sides Passion that helped set your path: theater and his children Making your heart sing now: glimmers of hope in the tragedies of this era’s events Screwed up: education and career path (1:07:00) Enjoy the challenge to think differently 'Five-Cut Fridays’ series  Guest’s list