About the event
We live plugged in from daybreak to bedtime, constantly receiving, managing, and reacting to information. Rarely are we given the space to let our minds drift and wonder.
Dr. Cassandra Vieten calls this "the Great Flattening," a slow erosion of our capacity to wonder, imagine, and be surprised.
Her antidote is to return to a tool we all have but may have lost touch with: imagination. Not as a frivolous daydream or a gift some people have and others don't, but as a working skill of the brain: one you can train like a muscle.
For this Big Idea Night, Dr. Vieten, a clinical psychologist and Director of Research at UC San Diego's Arthur C. Clarke Center for Human Imagination, invites us into the neuroscience and practice of imagination, and how re-claiming it can re-enchant both our inner lives and the world around us.
Imagination, it turns out, is threaded through far more than creativity, it shapes memory, empathy, and problem-solving, often without us noticing. Your brain, she argues, distinguishes far less than you'd think between what you imagine and what you actually experience. And your own imagination has a fingerprint all its own.
Come ready to play! You'll leave with practical tools for strengthening a part of your mind that could become one of your greatest advantages. And hopefully also reconnect with a deeper sense of meaning and purpose, and how you can worldbuild the next chapter of your life.
Venue: Bivouac Cidery Adventure Lodge in North Park.
Doors open at 6. Talk begins at 7.
Help support our host venue by arriving early to get a drink, something to eat and meet fellow attendees. Registration includes a free drink ticket.
We'll have some interactive points of discussion out too.
Parking Pro-Tip: Use the parking garage on 29th & North Park Way. $5 parking for the night and only two blocks from the venue.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Cassandra Vieten, PhD is Clinical Professor and Director of the Center for Mindfulness at the Centers for Integrative Health in the Department of Family Medicine at UC San Diego. She is also Director of Research at the Arthur C. Clarke Center for Human Imagination and Clinical Psychology Director at the Center for Psychedelic Research at UCSD.
She is Senior Advisor of the John W. Brick Mental Health Foundation, where she served as Executive Director from 2019–2023, and a Senior Fellow at the Institute of Noetic Sciences, where she served as President from 2013–2019.
Her research focuses on spirituality and health, transformative experiences and practices, mindfulness-based interventions for emotional well-being, and media technologies that inspire awe.
She is the author of the forthcoming book Imagine That: Transform How You Think, Feel, and Live with the Science of Imagination (Simon and Schuster, August 2026).