Podcast of the Weekend #4: Growing Up to be a Professional Dancer…or an Astronaut

Photo Credit: Wikipedia

Photo Credit: Wikipedia

As a child, Mae Jemison wanted to be a professional dancer. In 1992, she became the first African-American woman in space. One year later, she resigned from NASA to explore how the “social sciences interact with technologies.” And in 2002, she gave a TED talk on this interdisciplinary idea again: the arts and the sciences. She is incredibly passionate in this 15-minute speech about better integrating the arts and the sciences, thereby ending the schism that divides them. The two feed off of each other. “The arts and the sciences are avatars of human creativity,” she states boldly. She believes that there are analytical components to art, just as there are creative components to science. We here at the Creative Arts Across Disciplines Initiative are more than inclined to agree with her. Jemison gave this talk 12 years ago, if you can believe it; 2002 doesn’t seem like it was that long ago. Back then, she called for the revitalization of the arts and sciences to leave a foundation for people way down the line in “2015” to benefit from. It’s been 12 years. How do you think we’ve done? Have we created the future that Jemison speaks about? Listen to the podcast below to decide for yourself and to fully experience the passion that Mae Jemison has for interdisciplinarity. Hopefully it inspires that same passion in all of you!

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