Watch Talks About Nothing

2010
1 Season

What can be said about ... nothing? Plenty. Invited by New York's Rubin Museum, a museum of ideas, some of the world's most active minds came to discuss a concept central to countless works of art, philosophy, science, and spirituality. With neurologist Oliver Sacks, filmmaker Ken Burns, performance artist Laurie Anderson, theater director Peter Sellars, actress Fiona Shaw, and other big thinkers.

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Seasons

10. Peter Sellars and Raj Patel

January 1, 2010

Celebrated theatre director Peter Sellars joins economist and author Raj Patel (The Value of Nothing) for a lively conversation about economic collapse, climate change, the perniciousness of big philanthropy, the value of nothing to artists, the incineration of the self on stage, art as social action, and the power of activism to reveal hidden worth.

9. Fiona Shaw and Simon Critchley

January 1, 2010

Actress Fiona Shaw (the Harry Potter films) and philosopher Simon Critchley have a warm, wide-ranging exchange about nothingness in life, art, today's language, and the works of Shaw's favorite writers: Ibsen, Brecht, Beckett, and T.S. Eliot.

8. Laurie Anderson and Charles Seife

January 1, 2010

Performance artist Laurie Anderson meets with journalist and bestselling author Charles Seife (Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea) to explore the beginning of memory, the connection between morality and mathematics, the origins of zero, and why the ancient Greeks feared the number that means both nothingness and the infinite.

7. Patsy Rodenburg and Christopher Potter

January 1, 2010

What does it mean to be fully present? Famed voice and acting coach Patsy Rodenburg talks with writer Christopher Potter about being present on stage and off, the connection between presence and breath, finding the proper breath, and how actors confront nothing. Spontaneous lessons with audience members demonstrate her transformative techniques.

6. Marie Howe and Christopher Potter

January 1, 2010

Are words enough to talk about nothing? Poet Marie Howe and writer Christopher Potter look for answers in a dialogue about Bible stories; the challenge of filling the nothingness in one's work; proteins as three-dimensional poems; the transparency of the physical world; the poetry of Seamus Heaney, Robert Frost, and Emily Dickinson; and Howe's own writing.

5. Rick Moody and Melissa Franklin

January 1, 2010

Physicists love nothing. Literary types love Samuel Beckett, whose Waiting for Godot is a play in which nothing happens. So when Harvard physicist Melissa Franklin and American novelist Rick Moody meet to talk about nothing, they have much to discuss--including how Beckett's writings can help us understand the relationship between physics and emptiness.

4. Ken Burns and Traleg Rinpoche

January 1, 2010

Documentarian Ken Burns has made three short films about his close friend William Segal, a self-taught Buddhist painter and philosopher who sought meaning and identity in our distracted times. Burns speaks with Tibetan Buddhist teacher Rinpoche about Segal, emptiness, enlightenment, the unity of being and doing, and the spiritual relationship between artists and their creations.

3. Andrew Cohen and Lama Surya Das

January 1, 2010

Andrew Cohen, a defining voice in the field of evolutionary spirituality, joins Bronx-born Lama Surya Das for a heady discussion about nothingness. Cohen argues that our spiritual self-confidence emerges when we acknowledge the undying nature of everything. Surya Das maintains that nothing is a marvelous, fertile openness in which everything is possible.

2. Brian Cox and Alison Gopnik

January 1, 2010

Although children know nothing about the Bard, Shakespearean actor Brian Cox has taught a toddler Hamlet's "To Be or Not to Be" soliloquy. In this engaging discussion, Cox and developmental psychologist Alison Gopnik explore the similarities between two-year-olds and actors and revisit the existentialist questions within King Lear.

1. 1. Oliver Sacks and John Dugdale

Nearly blinded by a stroke at age 32, photographer John Dugdale sees almost nothing. Neurologist and bestselling author Oliver Sacks has lost the sight in his right eye. Yet Dugdale sees an aurora borealis, while Sacks perceives a kind of amorphous radiance. Does the mind run the brain, or the other way around?

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