Green Porno: Isabella Rossellini Celebrates Animal Biology

How dolphins do it, or what the first rule of advertising has to do with expanding the market for biology.

This Saturday, the great Isabella Rossellini — actor, filmmaker, author, philanthropist and one of the very few people in the world I’d qualify as a “role model” — is turning 59. I’ve been a longtime fan of her Green Porno series for Sundance Channel and her birthday is lovely invitation to revisit Green Porno: A Book and Short Films by Isabella Rossellini — a fascinating, humorous, kooky and illuminating book-and-DVD based on the project, in which Rossellini, clad in various bodysuits, offers a wildly entertaining and scientifically accurate reenactment the sex lives of animals as biologically far from us as possible — bugs, slugs, marine life and other peculiar creatures.

Each film is about two minutes long and an absolute gem of edutainment. From anchovy orgies to the squid’s ten-arm embrace to the makeup-sex routine of whales, the endearingly odd short films and accompanying visuals reveal a lively and wonderful world in the depths of the ocean.

I always wanted to make films about animals – there’s not an enormous audience. But there’s an enormous audience for sex.” ~ Isabella Rossellini

Revisiting Green Porno is particularly timely after last week’s World Oceans Day and the release of the 2011 State of the Oceans report, which revealed the devastating impact of human activity — an impact in large part due to mankind’s inability to see marine life as anything more than a source of food and commerce. Rossellini’s films

What’s perhaps most fantastic about the series is the deep thought with which Rossellini approaches it, looking beyond the immediate message of science literacy to think about the broader issues of where culture and human communication are going, and how the web lends itself to new models of storytelling.

The Internet is the future. And it was fun to make these videos. Just as my father, who remembered the times of silent cinema, I feel like I am assisting to a revolution” ~ Isabella Rossellini

Charming, funny and surprisingly articluate, Green Porno is the kind of cross-pollinator between pop culture and serious science that opens new doors for the understanding of our world and, in the process, fosters a deep appreciation for the precious and intricate ecosystems we’ve done such a disgraceful job of protecting and preserving. Because underpinning Rossellini’s goofiness is nothing less than an impassioned invitation to treat our fellow creatures with a little bit more understanding, empathy and respect.

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La Figa: Visions of Food and Form

Humanity’s greatest appetites together at last, or what the farmer’s market has to do with the boudoir.

Food is fundamental. It’s sustenance, it’s comunity, it’s a global economy. But for Italian artist Tiberio Simone it’s all that and much more: It’s a medium of creative expression, a sensory portal to truth, beauty and sensuality. His La Figa: Visions of Food and Form is nothing short of a feast for the senses, celebrating two of the most primal human hungers and pleasures while elevating both through the artistic lens of a true creative visionary using the human body as his canvas and food as his paintbrush. Simone’s edible masterpieces, which remained ephemeral until he collaborated with photographer Matt Freedman, spring to life from the page, extending an alluring come-hither invitation to reconnect with our own understanding of food, sexuality, and how the two feed one another.

Alongside the luscious and playful images are imaginative essays and delicious, uncommon recipes that amplify the experiential delight of Simone’s work.

‘Only those who will risk going too far can possibly know how far one can go,’ wrote T. S. Eliot. In La Figa, Tiberio and Matt transport us with their provocative and mesmerizing photographs to a place where a simple fruit, combined with the basic human form, explodes our senses – from a pomegranate bikini to rolling hills of ingredientcovered hips. I, for one, will never think of seaweed or avocado in the same way. La Figa invites us to pierce through mundane living and savor the basic ingredients of life.” ~ Nassim Nassefi, M.D.

Filmmaker Dan McComb has created a handful of wonderful, artful, poetic segments on Simone and the La Figa project that bespeak the incredible passion with which Simone approaches his work.

But what makes Simone all the more interesting as a creator and someone filled with such exuberant positivity is the grim story that led him there. After a childhood of abuse and grueling work on his father’s farm, he became a prostitute, until he finally found solace in the kitchen and eventually discovered food art as his true calling and his salvation. Watch him tell his remarkable story in this excellent talk from TEDxRainier:

With over 160 lavish full-color images, 20 mouth-watering recipes and 40 essays on food, love and life, La Figa is a genuine treat for the senses and an invitation to approach something that’s been overly functionalized and commodified with a little bit more playfulness, poignancy and poetry.

Thanks, Nassim

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5 Must-Read Books by TED Global 2011 Speakers

What the pursuit of pleasure has to do with lie-detection, the history of money and the sorrows of work.

TED is among the highlights of my year and, every time before the big event, I like to prepare by reading or re-reading books by that TED season’s roster of speakers. (Previously: Long Beach 2011 in two parts and TED Global 2010.) Last week, TED revealed next month’s TED Global speakers and I was delighted to find, as always, some of my favorite thinkers, writers and doers on the list. Here are five fantastic books by some of them.

HOW PLEASURE WORKS

We’ve previously looked closely at the art and science of happiness, and one of the simplest ways in which we humans grasp after happiness is through the pursuit of pleasure. What is pleasure, exactly, and is it really just a simplistic, false substitute for happiness? That’s exactly what Yale psychologist Paul Bloom explores in How Pleasure Works: The New Science of Why We Like What We Like — a fascinating look at the complex cognitive and sociological elements of what we find pleasurable. Bloom looks at common pleasure sources across the entire spectrum of social conduct — food, sex, art, video games, drugs, saunas, crossword puzzles, reality TV — through a hybrid lens of developmental psychology, evolutionary science, philosophy, neuroscience, behavioral economics and sociology to examine the mechanisms and ultimate function of pleasure.

Bloom explores the prevalent theory of “essentialism” — the idea that things in the world, including other people, have invisible, distinct essences that make them what they are, and we are born with a predilection for subscribing to this worldview. Bloom uses essentialism to explain the mysterious pleasures of everyday life, from our attachments to objects like celebrity memorabilia to our hunger for art to the pleasures of the imagination to the appeal of science and religion, examining pleasure through both its developmental origin in us as individuals and its evolutionary roots in our species.

If you look through a psychology textbook, you will find little or nothing about sports, art, music, drama, literature, play, and religion. These are central to what makes us human, and we won’t understand any of them until we understand pleasure.” ~ Paul Bloom

What makes Bloom’s argument most interesting, perhaps, is that it centers around two seemingly conflicting claims: That pleasure is deep and transcendent, which implies it must be socialized, cultured and learned, and that pleasure is a byproduct of evolution, which implies that it should be simple, superficial and a knee-jerk response to environmental stimuli. The truth, however, is a marriage of the two — we have evolved essentialism to help us make sense of the world, but it now pushes us to desire things that have nothing to do with survival and reproduction. (Pornography, for instance, is enjoyed by a great deal of people, and while we’re biologically inclined to have an interest in real-life attractive naked people, there’s absolutely no reproductive advantage associated with watching attractive naked people get it on on the screen.)

Gracefully dancing across everything from Shakespeare to cannibalism to IKEA furniture, Bloom more than lives up to his reputation as one of modern psychology’s deepest thinkers, crispest writers and most eloquent storytellers. Besides, as Newsweek‘s Mary Carmichael put it, “Is there anyone who could resist a book about sex, food, art, and fun?”

THE ASCENT OF MONEY

Historian Niall Ferguson is a prolific and relentlessly fascinating author, so choosing just one of his excellent books is no easy task. His most recent masterpiece, The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World, makes a compelling case for banking and the development of currency as a central force behind how civilization has evolved. As we’re just beginning to barely emerge from the financial crisis that swept the Western world four summers ago, Ferguson offers a timely and timeless reminder of one of the greatest truths in financial history and, I would add, human psychology at large: Sooner or later, every bubble bursts. What makes the book even more interesting is that Ferguson completed his research for it prior to the actual economic recession in the U.S., yet many of his insights and conclusions presage what was about to happen with uncanny accuracy.

Behind each great historical phenomenon there lies a financial secret, and this book sets out to illuminate the most important of these. For example, the Renaissance created such a boom in the market for art and architecture because Italian bankers like theMedici mad fortunes by applying Oriental mathematics to money. The Dutch Republic prevailed over the Habsburg Empire because having the world’s first modern stock market was financially preferable to having the world’s biggest silver mine. The problems of the French monarchy could not be resolved without a revolution because a convicted Scots murderer had wrecked the French financial system by unleashing the first stock market bubble and bust.” ~ Niall Ferguson

Above all, the book is an admirable effort to break down what Ferguson calls “the dangerous barrier which has arisen between financial knowledge and other kinds of knowledge,” a celebration of the holistic, cross-disciplinary curiosity I so firmly believe is the key to a richer, more creative, more intelligent life.

Ferguson’s latest book, Civilization: The West and the Rest, comes out in November and looks to be very much worth a read.

LIESPOTTING

Years ago, I did a thesis largely on the work of psychologist Paul Ekman, who pioneered the study of emotion through facial expression. He devised a system for coding and interpreting facial “microexpressions,” which has since been used by everyone from the FBI to financial loan officers to actors, and has become instrumental in assisting lie detection. My longstanding fascination with the field led me to the work of Pamela Meyer, who uses visual cues and psychology to detect deception. In Liespotting: Proven Techniques to Detect Deception, Meyer reveals some of the most reliable techniques for detecting and, in turn, protecting ourselves against dishonesty.

Calling myself a liespotter — a human lie detector — might suggest that I live in anticipation of being deceived, wary and suspicious of everyone with whom I come into contact. Actually, becoming a trained liespotter allows you to do the opposite. You’ll know you have the tools you need to protect yourself in situations in which you might encounter falsehood or obfuscation. Becoming a liespotter doesn’t inspire paranoia — it frees you from it.” ~ Pamela Meyer

Though Meyer’s work isn’t nearly as rigorously scientific as Ekman’s and at times calls for a grain of salt, it nonetheless offers the foundation of a skill few of us have and most of us desire.

Liespotting will introduce the [basic] method, which combines facial recognition with advanced interrogation techniques. It will show you how to read the map of the human face and body, as well as how to decode human language and vocal tone, exposing the myriad signs people inadvertently leave behind when they are working to hide the truth about something that really matters.” ~ Pamela Meyer

While the techniques in Liespotting can be tremendously valuable in an ideal, neutral scenario, the thing I find most important to remember — and most difficult to accept — is that even if we worked ourselves into the perfect, most accurate human lie detectors, when it comes to the dishonesty of those we care about the most about the things that most matter to us, we have a remarkable ability to ignore, dismiss and disregard any intuitive or factual evidence of deception. In order for Meyer’s techniques to be of practical value in those most crucial situations, we need to couple them with a keen awareness of this bigger, fundamental human bias and an actionable desire to change.

THE PLEASURES AND SORROWS OF WORK

Sure, I’ll take any excuse to sing the praises of Alain de Botton, dubbed the creator of the “literary self-help genre” and a master of philosophical social criticism through an eloquent blend of wit and wisdom. (His will change your life.) There’s no better way to celebrate his second TED Global appearance than with The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work, about which he spoke in his first:

One of the interesting things about success is that we think we know what it means. A lot of the time our ideas about what it would mean to live successfully are not our own. They’re sucked in from other people. And we also suck in messages from everything from the television to advertising to marketing, etcetera. These are hugely powerful forces that define what we want and how we view ourselves. What I want to argue for is not that we should give up on our ideas of success, but that we should make sure that they are our own. We should focus in on our ideas and make sure that we own them, that we’re truly the authors of our own ambitions. Because it’s bad enough not getting what you want, but it’s even worse to have an idea of what it is you want and find out at the end of the journey that it isn’t, in fact, what you wanted all along.” ~ Alain de Botton

One of the reasons we might be suffering is that we are surrounded by snobs. A snob is anybody who takes a small part of you and uses it to come to a complete vision of who you are. That is snobbery. And the dominant form of snobbery that exists today is job snobbery — you encounter it within minutes at a party when you get asked that famous, iconic question of the 21st century: ‘What do you do?’ The opposite of a snob is your mother.” ~ Alain de Botton

THE PHILOSOPHICAL BABY

Children are at once profound and enigmatic vessels of the human mind, and yet the first 2,500 years of philosophy contain almost no reference to or study of children. But the scientific revolution of the past 30 years has led philosophers and scientists to take children seriously for the first time. That’s exactly what psychologist and philosopher Alison Gopnik addresses in The Philosophical Baby: What Children’s Minds Tell Us About Truth, Love, and the Meaning of Life — an ambitious look at how babies, in many ways, are more conscious than adults in that they don’t operate on the kind of autopilot that often drives us. In the process, Gopnik explores philosophical questions about the nature of love, the relativity of truth, and various facets of the human condition.

Childhood is a profound part of the human condition. But it is also a largely unexamined part of that condition — so taken for granted that most of the time we hardly notice it at all. Childhood is a universal fact, but when we do think about it, it is almost always in individual first-person terms: What should i do, now, about my child? What did my parents do that led me to be the way I am? Most books about children are like this, from memoirs and novels to the ubiquitous parenting advice books. But childhood is not just a particular plot complication of Irish autobiographies or a particular problem to be solved by American self-help programs. It is not even just something that all human being share. It is, I’ll argue, what makes all human beings human.” ~ Alison Gopnik

If you missed last year’s roundup, it’s never too late to catch up with these 7 must-read books by TED Global 2010 speakers, as well as these two sets of must-reads by this year’s TED Long Beach speakers.

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