Natasha Mitchell and David Eagleman — Photo: Jon Tjhia

Creativity and ingenuity are the qualities that set our species apart, argues neuroscientist David Eagleman. ‘Obviously, a little bit of credit needs to go to the opposable thumb and larynx, but fundamentally it’s about this massive mashup of ideas that we have … Most of them stink, but occasionally, something gets generated that works for our society.’

Eagleman has dedicated his life to understanding the inner workings of the brain, through his books The Brain: The Story of You and Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain and the television series The Brain with David Eagleman. For the past few years, the Stanford University professor has turned his attention to the link between the brain and creativity.

With composer Anthony Brandt he’s co-authored a book, The Runaway Species: How Human Creativity Remakes the World, which explores the key components and possibilities of creativity through the lens of neuroscience. The pair propose that there are three key elements to all acts of human creativity: bending, blending and breaking.

At the Athenaeum Theatre, Eagleman joins Natasha Mitchell to expand on these ideas, explaining how the human brain can remake the world.

Cory Doctorow joins author C.S. Pacat for an expansive conversation about the imperfect present and foreseeable future. 

C.S. Pacat and Cory Doctorow — Photo: Jon Tjhia

For Doctorow, the purpose of science fiction is not to predict the future – but to understand the present.

The latest book from the irrepressible Canadian activist, editor, journalist and novelist is set in an alarmingly plausible, post-scarcity near future. In Walkaway, all labour is automated, and human beings are either super-rich or surplus. Chaos, violence and catastrophe ensue. Yet, Doctorow asserts, the novel is utopian.

‘Stories of futures in which disaster strikes and we rise to the occasion are a vaccine against the virus of mistrust,’ he has written. ‘The [best] science fiction tells us better nations are ours to build and lets us dream vividly of what it might be like to live in those nations.’

The fixations of Walkaway are the fixations that have defined Doctorow’s career. Through his fiction and journalism – including as a co-editor of Boing Boing – he has sparked and steered debates on digital rights, surveillance, automation, inequality and biotechnology. In all his work, Doctorow brings optimism and imagination as well as hardcore intellect; his idea of utopia is something weird, cooperative, messy and in constant flux.