Episode 27: Ed Kearns - Exploring the ocean, generosity, and a culture of data

Origins Podcast with Ryan McGranaghan

Show Notes:

• National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) (02:00)
• Rachel Carson’s words (03:30)
• Scale of things and perspective
• Pioneers of oceanography: Rossby and Montgomery (07:30)
• Global conclusions from small data (09:30)
• World Ocean Circulation Experiment (10:00)
• Eye-opening expeditions (12:00)
• All kinds of ways of ’seeing’ (14:00)
• Evolution of distributing data (15:00)
• Recording our experiences (17:00)
• Books (19:45)
  • Burr by Gore Vidal
  • Iron Coffins by Herbert Werner
• Mentors and lessons:
  • “Had to make mistakes myself to realize what they [were] trying to tell me all along”
• Thomas Rossby (25:00)
• Generosity of time and ideas
• Understanding of how people need to work together (28:00)
• Working across boundaries
• Curiosity-driven networks (29:50)
• NOAA Big Data Project (31:30)
• Establishing trust in group projects (34:45 and 37:45)
• The challenges of 2020 (37:50)
• Open Commons Consortium and Cancer Moonshot (49:20)
• The why and how of career shifts (52:00)
• First Street Foundation (54:00)
  • Changing people’s minds about climate change
  • More meaningful activities that just providing data
  • https://floodfactor.com/
  • Making effective data tools
• Not about prediction, but response (01:02:00)
• Humanity’s biggest advantage (01:07:00)
• Quantifying the risk due to and making decisions about climate change (01:12:00)
• Jenny Odell - art is being the orchestrator of attention (01:13:30)
  • Giorgia Lupi episode
  • Aoife Van Linden Tol episode
• What makes us human (01:14:00)
• Lightning round (01:15:00)
  • Book: The Information (James Gleick)
    • Chaos
  • Passion: family and outdoors together
  • Heart sing: fire risk
  • Screwed up: learning to say when he didn’t know something
• Find guest online:
  • LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/edwardkearns
  • Twitter: @edward_j_kearns
• 'Five-Cut Fridays’ five-song music playlist series
  • Ed’s playlist