Uncertain: A Sneak Peak into How Christie's New Podcast Was Made
The art (and science) of staying open to possibilities
“I always feel like at the beginning of a project I am not entirely sure what I need to ask because I don’t know yet what I don’t know … It’s an exciting part, but it’s kinda like I’m feeling my way here.” —Christie Aschwanden
Preview: Episode 109 Honoring Uncertainty as Part of the Path
How does the word uncertainty make you feel? Uneasy? Anxious? For more than a year, Christie Aschwanden (co-host of this podcast) has been working on a short run podcast series for Scientific American on this subject, and at last it’s here! A drum roll please for Uncertain, a series on the joys of not knowing—and how essential it is for science. “Science is our most powerful tool for gaining knowledge,” says Christie, “but uncertainty underlies it. Science has to be open to revision. One of my goals with this project was to help people understand uncertainty is not something to be afraid of—it’s a feature of science.”
In this week’s episode of Emerging Form (coming Thursday), we talk about the genesis of her project, plus when to tell people we are working on a longterm project, the importance of finding people who are also passionate about your project, being receptive to opportunities, how we can be smart about creating congruent projects, how trying new media can spark our creative practice, and the importance of encouragement.
“The magic really happens when you are open to things,” she says, and openness is only possible when we engage in, you guessed it, uncertainty.
What We’re Reading and Listening to:
Rosemerry:
After listening to Annabel-Abbs last week as she spoke about writing by hand, our friend and previous guest Susan Tweit (episode 53 on reflection) sent us this article from The New York Times talking about how handwriting and other complicated hand tasks (gardening, knitting, etc) are good for the brain … and it includes a link to a Norwegian study that shows handwriting, but not typing, leads to widespread brain connectivity.
I have long loved the poetry of George Bilgere, who has a penchant for making you laugh just before he punches you in the gut. Hard. And I love his new chapbook, Cheap Motels of My Youth, which came out from Rattle this month. It seems to be a kinder, gentler George, now happily married with young kids … still gritty, still playful, but somehow more thoughtful.
Christie:
I was deeply moved by Belonging, Nora Krug’s unforgettable graphic memoir on reckoning with her family’s ties to the Holocaust, and her latest graphic memoir/book, Diaries of War: Two Visual Accounts from Ukraine and Russia, also provides an intimate portrait of war, this time the one currently underway in Ukraine. The book tells the personal accounts of two people experiencing the war. There’s K., a Kyiv-based journalist who was born in Soviet Russia and moved to Ukraine as a teen. The other account comes from D., a Russian artist who’s lived in St. Petersburg since he was 20 and opposes the war. It’s a deeply personal and moving look at the war and I had to stop reading it before bed, because it was preventing me from sleep. Although K and D enjoy privileges that many caught in the war don’t, these are difficult stories that need to be heard.
I loved Lydia Millet’s novel, Dinosaurs, so much. The novel follows Gil, a man with material wealth who is trying to figure out how to live in our broken world. It’s about birds and nature, community and finding a place in the world. What I especially admired about the story is how Millet made me care so deeply about a character who could have so easily been unlikeable. Her descriptions of the natural world are beautiful and I love her writing so much that we invited her on the show (coming soon!)
Getting to I Don’t Know
Sometimes, too certain I know what love is,
I miss love.
It’s like thinking water is waves,
not seeing water is also the depths of ocean,
the muscle of river, the body, the air,
ice, snow, fog, clouds, mist.
Sometimes, longing to hear certain words,
I neglect to hear the words that are spoken.
Or craving a certain touch, I disregard
all other touch, and my skin believes it is starving.
There is beauty beyond beauty, love beyond love,
opening beyond opening, an apple inside apple.
Let my prayer be I don’t know.
Let me find the door inside the door,
the glimmer inside the glimmer,
the human inside this woman.
The god inside of god.
—Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
A Note About Paid Subscriptions:
First, we want to thank ALL our subscribers! We are so grateful you join us in this conversation about what it is to engage with yourself, the world and others in a creative way. And a BIG thank you to our paid subscribers. You make this podcast possible. Starting this month, only our paid subscribers will receive our bonus episodes as a thank you for their financial support.
This week, Christie shares part of her new podcast, Uncertain—a sneak peak into her incredible project on the thrilling and essential ways uncertainty shapes science. If you are not yet a paid subscriber, you can go now to our website, EmergingForm.substack.com, or by clicking the button below. Thank you!
Subscribed
Two Questions:
(share your answers with us here on Substack or in our FB group)
When you hear the word uncertainty, what do you feel/think?
At what point do you tell your friends/family about a longterm creative project you’re working on?
Thanks for reading Emerging Form! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support our work.
Emerging Form is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
Emerging Form is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.