Probable Impossibilities with Smirti Keshari and Alan Lightman

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Acclaimed author and physicist Alan Lightman in conversation with artist Smriti Keshari, creator of a chilling new Pioneer Works exhibition, the bomb. Their conversation explores the nature of consciousness, science, art, and Lightman’s new book, Probable Impossibilities: Musings on Beginnings and Endings. Featuring music by Zoë Keating.

Probable Impossibilities is a deeply engaged consideration of what we know of the universe, of life and the mind, and of things vastly larger and smaller than ourselves. Lightman's new book takes us on a journey with questions around infinity, consciousness, and the origins of life. Is consciousness reducible to the material brain and its neurons? What came before the Big Bang? He explores these questions and more in conversation with Keshari, who also speaks about her recent multi-media installation the bomb, which was heralded as "a stunning avant-garde approach to a plea for nuclear disarmament".

Alan Lightman is a bestselling author with six novels, including Einstein’s Dreams, The Diagnosis, and Three Flames, and his latest book, Probable Impossibilities: Musings on Beginnings and Endings. He is a physicist and Professor of Practice of the Humanities at MIT.

Smriti Keshari is an Indian-American filmmaker and artist whose work covers a spectrum of the moving image from traditional, linear filmmaking to art installations. She brings an experimental approach to exploring under-represented themes and experiences outside the mainstream. Most recently, her film DIS | INTEGRATION premiered at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM). She is a former artist-in-residence at Pioneer Works and the National Theatre in London. Her work has been supported by the MacArthur Foundation, Carnegie Corporation, Ford Foundation, and others. She has spoken about art and social change at BAM, the United Nations, the BBC, SXSW, Bloomberg Philanthropy, and TED. She was a TED Prize finalist and a 2016 Foreign Policy's Global Creative Thinker.

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The Pioneer Works Broadcast is supported in part by Science Sandbox, a Simons Foundation initiative dedicated to engaging everyone with the process of science, and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Program in Public Understanding of Science and Technology, bridging the two cultures of science and the arts.