Two physicists, a mathematician, an ecologist, and a book artist, walked into a zoom room to try understand what creativity means.

As a physicist, I tend to think of looking at complex phenomena and try to find some underlying framework or model that allows us to understand nature. But in understanding a more nuanced concept like creativity, I found my positions challenged by other minds whose processes and experience aren't entirely identical to mine.

In this episode, we touched upon the following ideas:

• What kind of environment makes one's own creativity thrive?
• The intangible qualities of great works of art, a sophisticated mathematical proof or equation and a well-designed experiment.
• On the ideas of alienation, the "efficiency" goal and producing at the pace of the "market"
• On originality, open-source software/hardware, copyrights and patents
• What would we choose to do if we had infinite resources?

These are the only things that we had time to talk about, but I wish I was able to ask more questions. Take part in the conversation! If you feel like you've got some thoughts on what we've discussed and want to try out the rest of the questions click on this link for more!

The people:

• Jillian Sico - Paper maker and Book Artist. Recently graduated with a MFA in Book Arts University of Alabama (UA) working. You can see more of her cool work in her website!
• Anton Hilado - PhD in Mathematics at the University of Vermont. Writes a fascinating blog about his musings on Math and Physics.
• Roel Ruzol - PhD Biological Sciences at UA. Studies plants and their elaborate scheme for world domination. You can read an overview of his work in the Starr Lab Website.
• Pecier Decierdo - Physicist, Science Communicator at the Mind Museum. He is also the Resident Astronomer and recently talked for Science Center Observatory in Singapore.
• Uzziel Perez - Physics PhD candidate from UA and is now based at CERN working on detector online software and Standard Model stuff.

On our last two episodes:Our last two episodes are on "Comedy and Improv" and "Utopia and on our desire to contribute to society". We'll be talking to people from the Large Improve Collider and leaders who've deviated from their original career paths to contribute something back home. Coming in June and July. (Update: Due to unavailability of guests and timing constraints these will be released before the year ends! Surprise!)