Being encompasses the internal and external; the solitary and communal; everydayness and timelessness; and the physical, spiritual, and cerebral, all at once. The fall 2015 Polymathic Pizza series explores being in all these dimensions, with the ultimate aim to be more fulfilled, to be more engaged, and to be more ourselves.
How and why do we feel emotion? Anger, love, hurt, compassion, empathy, regret, and happiness are just some of the feelings that a song, a scent, or an old photograph of someone can conjure inside of us. Emotion and emotional memory are fundamental to our lived experience as human beings....
You are what you eat! Eating and food are an integral part of our daily lives, whether we’re grabbing a quick meal on the run, sitting down for fine dining, or having a family meal. There has been an explosion of interest in food in the media—from books to reality TV competitions to travel...
A staggering amount of plastic trash circles the world’s oceans, propelled by gyres, or currents. The USC Fisher Museum puts this environmentally-damaging waste to thoughtprovoking use in their exhibit Gyre: The Plastic Ocean, in which twenty-five artists created works of art from refuse...
How do we really hear others—listen to, absorb, and consider the thoughts of the person in front of us? Our ideologies and moral values shape our identity and behavior, and they also possess the power to unite or drive us apart. In this fractured world, we could all benefit from listening with a...
Songwriters from George Harrison to the Zombies have written odes to how a person moves. From our gait to the lightest flickering of our fingers, our movements convey truths about our lives—our state of being, our cultural contexts, our likes and dislikes. Taken to a presentational level, dance...
As small children, play is often the first way we express ourselves imaginatively. We create fantastic imagined stories for ourselves, our family, our friends, even our stuffed animals. The recent rise in video games suggests a passionate desire to continue to play and express ourselves...
