The great American actress Sally Field (Smokey and the Bandit, Norma Rae, Steel Magnolias, Forrest Gump, and so much more), in her recent speech accepting the Screen Actors Guild Lifetime Achievement Award, said “When I got off stage, I felt shy and careful and hidden.  I would think and rethink everything before I could say or do anything.  But on stage, I never knew what I would say or do.  I would surprise myself.  I wasn't looking for the applause or attention, even though that's nice, sometimes. It was never and it's never been about a need to hide myself behind the characters of other people.  Acting to me has always been about finding those few precious moments when I feel totally, utterly, sometimes dangerously alive.”

When do you feel totally, utterly, dangerously alive?

A day set aside to honor mothers exists in nearly all cultures and dates back thousands of years, but the modern incarnation dates back to 1887, when, according to The Old Farmer’s Almanac, Mary Towles Sasseen, a teacher from Henderson, Kentucky, led her class in the first known observance of mother’s day. She traveled the country and wrote a pamphlet to share her vision of a special day set aside to honor the matriarchy. Years later, The national day of recognition in the United States came to fruition through the work of Ann Reeves Jarvis, Julia Ward Howe, and Ann’s daughter Anna M Jarvis. We won’t get into the details here, but it did take a surprisingly long time for the idea to finally make it Congress. Finally, Woodrow Wilson signed a bill designating the second Sunday in May as a legal holiday dedicated “to the best mother in the world, your mother.”

What did you do to honor ‘the best mother in the world’ on her day?

Fewer than 1% of all known animals use tools, which equates to dozens of species exist, and not just primates. Depending on the definition of tool use (and even tool-making), the number is much larger than expected. Chimpanzees, orangutans, gorillas, crows, octopuses, otters, dolphins, the list goes on. But a recent entry into the shed, Veronika—a 13 year-old Austrian pet cow—is utterly changing what we know about animal intelligence. Raised in a supportive environment (a key factor in farm animal tool use), She learned to manipulate a deck brush with precision, using different parts of the brush to scratch different parts of her body, from thick hide, to the more sensitive underbelly, applying appropriate amounts of pressure where needed.

Have you ever witnessed an animal use a tool? and/or What tool would you like to see an animal use?

The Northern Lights. Aurora Borealis (or Australis, for all of our other-side-of-the-globe friends). An amazing atmospheric phenomenon. If you’ve never seen it, you’re going to be fine. But it is pretty cool. How it happens? That is not our quest today. Instead, let’s talk about STEVE. The Strong Thermal Emission Velocity Enhancement occurs…somehow. It’s different from, but adjacent to, the Borealis. For years, the University of Alberta has had cameras trained north, where the Northern Lights paint the sky, yet they were missing something. It wasn’t until a ragtag group of citizen scientist night owls (The Alberta Aurora Chasers)—armed the with the high quality photography of cell phones—began to document this other atmospheric wonder, that STEVE became a thing. So much so that NASA got involved. The result represents an amazing discovery built from the ground up.

What can we learn from this beautiful story?

Lightning Strikes. Three million times a day, globally. 90% of people, when struck, don’t die yet 20-40 are killed annually in the United States, 80% male. Fascinating, yes, but here’s the thing: one of the most elusive mysteries of atmospheric science is, essentially, why all this lightning? It turns out that air is a great insulator that doesn’t readily conduct electricity. So, theoretically, the size of the electrical field (known in the biz as the ‘breakdown threshold’) needed to produce even one lightning strike is much larger than what actually exists in even the most virulent thunderstorm or upper atmospheric disturbance.

It affects all of us. So…any good lightning stories?

The universe is unfathomably complex, and try as we might to understand the nature of this existence we inhabit, meaning is elusive. For centuries, human beings have comforted themselves with a belief that “when the time is right, everything will become clear” (or some version of this idea, often involving a divine being, or the revelations accorded to us when we leave this mortal coil.)

Does this seem plausible? Why or why not?

One of the great mysteries of cognitive archaeology is why Homo Sapiens developed a self-reflective awareness capable of abstract thought and the ability to (re)imagine past and future events and communicate those things with complex language. There is a wide range of opinions on how this happened. One of the theories put forth, articulated in the book The Singing Neanderthals, is that language grew out of music, and that our ancestor’s communication style was more like birdsong.  Elaborate, perhaps, but not ruminative, meditative, or capable of abstraction.   Until it was.

Why do you think our ancestors developed the ability to think symbolically about the nature of existence?

99.99 % of Earth’s atmosphere is composed of four gases. Of these four, nitrogen accounts for 78%.

What’s up with all the nitrogen?

The practice of handing out awards for achievement probably dates back to pre-agricultural societies, when a hunter responsible for a kill was rewarded with a bauble of some kind for making a kill that pleased the community. Modern society is awash in awards for excellence in intellectual, artistic, and athletic achievement.

With the prevalence of granting awards for just showing up (i.e. participation) reaching its apex sometime in first quarter of the 21st century, do you foresee a time when we will dispense with this practice?

This year’s Winter Olympics were held in Milan, near the famed  opera house Teatro alla Scala. Among the many design principles and material choices, the presence of 4 tiers  of 36 private boxes (typically owned by the region’s nobility) in a horseshoe configuration contributed greatly to the overall acoustic profile of the space, which produced clear sound even for the poorer loggionisti in the “general admission” section (loggione). 

What do think about that?

Chuck Klosterman, in his most recent book, suggests that football is probably the best way to understand the culture of the United States in the last half of the 20th century. For various reasons, he predicts it will go the way of boxing or horse-racing—still a part of the larger society, but not the  cultural monolith it is today. 128 million Americans watched the Super Bowl LX. What does this say about us now? And what do you think could play this role in the future as football’s power over our society recedes?

What does this say about us now? And what do you think could play this role in the future as football’s power over our society recedes?

There are 77 active weather predicting groundhogs in the United States, yet every year it’s the same thing: It’s all Punxsatawny Phil all the time.  Over and over.  And this despite the fact that he ranks 17th in accuracy. Seems a bit shady.

How do you feel about ‘Big Phil’ suppressing knowledge of the many independent weather groundhogs throughout the country?