Speakers Emily Levine: Philosopher-comic
Humorist, writer and trickster Emily Levine riffs on science and the human condition.
Why you should listen to her:
Humorist Emily Levine works a heady vein of humor, cerebral and thoughtful as well as very, very amusing. Oh, she's got plenty of jokes. But her work, at its core, makes serious connections -- between hard science and pop culture, between what we say and what we secretly assume ... She plumbs the hidden oppositions, the untouchable not-quite-truths of the modern mind.
Her background in improv theater, with its requirement to always say "yes" to the other actor's reality, has helped shape her worldview. Always suspicious of sharp either/or distinctions, she proposes "the quantum logic of and/and" -- a thoroughly postmodern, scientifically informed take on life that allows for complicated states of being. Like the one we're in right now.
"I love to laugh and love a good mental workout. Rarely, if ever, have I had the two together. You have the rare gift of bringing philosophy to life AND of relating it to the major and mundane in our existence. AND of doing so with a wild and wonderful sense of humor."Los Angeles Women's Foundation
Quotes by Emily Levine
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“I thought narcissism meant you loved yourself. Then someone told me there is a flip side to it, it’s actually drearier than self-love: It’s unrequited self-love.”
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“So you’re six years old, you’re reading ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarves,’ and it becomes rapidly obvious that there are only two kinds of men in the world: dwarves and Prince Charmings. And the odds are seven to one against your finding the prince.”
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Emily Levine's theory of everything
- 22:52 Posted: Apr 2009
Emily Levine on the Web
Related Speakers
Conferences
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- TED2002