Author: Toronto OASIS

This will be an online Zoom meeting.  Please RSVP on our Meetup for this event to get access to the Zoom link.  See our online meeting instructions at: https://torontooasis.org/online-meeting-instructions

Our program will run from 11 am to 12:30 pm. You can join the meeting starting at 10:30 am for our open social. After 12:30 pm, we will also have an extended discussion for half an hour, until 1:00 pm.

We will be listening to and then discussing a TEDx talk by Dr. Lee Bartel, Professor Emeritus of Music and Health and Music Education at the University of Toronto and Founding Director of the Music and Health Research Collaboratory (MaHRC) at the University of Toronto. This talk is about how music as sound and vibration impacts the body and brain. The topic and video were selected and will be introduced by Tanya Long, a Toronto Oasis participant.

We will also be having live music! Our featured musician will be William Beauvais. He has written music for harpist Sharlene Wallace, baritone Doug MacNaughton and has performed with New Music Concerts, and Tapestry New Opera. You can check out William Beauvais’ music here: https://soundcloud.com/william-beauvais.

Please RSVP on Meetup to get access to the Zoom link:

https://www.meetup.com/toronto-oasis/events/299990845/

Looking forward to seeing familiar faces and perhaps some new ones!

The guest musician was recorded: GMT20240421-153225_Recording_640x360.mp4

This will be an online Zoom meeting.  Please RSVP on our Meetup for this event to get access to the Zoom link.  See our online meeting instructions at: https://torontooasis.org/online-meeting-instructions

Our program will run from 11 am to 12:30 pm. You can join the meeting starting at 10:30 am for our open social. After 12:30 pm, we will also have an extended discussion for half an hour, until 1:00 pm.

We will be listening to and then discussing a YouTube PBS video of an interview of Thomas Friedman, a weekly columnist for The New York Times and author of the 2017 book: Thank You for Being Late: An Optimist’s Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations. The topic and video were selected and will be introduced by Tania Akon, a Toronto Oasis organizer.

Please RSVP on Meetup to get access to the Zoom link:

https://www.meetup.com/toronto-oasis/events/299990843/

Looking forward to seeing familiar faces and perhaps some new ones!

This will be an online Zoom meeting.  Please RSVP on our Meetup for this event to get access to the Zoom link.  See our online meeting instructions at: https://torontooasis.org/online-meeting-instructions

Our program will run from 11 am to 12:30 pm. You can join the meeting starting at 10:30 am for our open social. After 12:30 pm, we will also have an extended discussion for half an hour, until 1:00 pm.

How can liberals understand human evil? Most of us have a positive view of human nature. Few of us have brushed up against a serial killer. However, we all encounter, and some of us work with, people who consistently leave turmoil and destruction in their wake. Interpreting such people has long been the province of moral theology but recently empirical psychology has made some progress in understanding destructive people in terms of what is now known as the Dark Triad of psychopathy, narcissism and Machiavellianism.

Psychopathy is technically an indifference to human suffering, especially a lack of concern (or remorse) for how one’s own actions affect others. Narcissism is an inflated sense of the esteem and deference that others owe to oneself. Machiavellianism is cunning manipulation of other people’s perceptions and emotions in order to advance one’s own agenda.

This talk will outline current thinking in personality psychology about these three traits, and how to deal with them. They all range over a spectrum, and most of us exhibit some of these traits from time to time. Current estimates are that somewhere over 5% of people are consistently high enough in one or more of these traits to cause serious trouble for their friends, co-workers and family.

Our featured speaker on this topic will be Dr. Mark Reimers, a quantitative neuroscientist at Michigan State University working to elucidate how dynamic brain activities give rise to mental functions and moods. Dr. Reimers has worked at the US National Institutes of Health, the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, and at the Virginia Institute for Psychiatric and Behavioral Genetics.

We will also be featuring some live music! Our guest musician will be cellist George Crotty: https://www.georgecrotty.com/

Please RSVP on Meetup to get access to the Zoom link:

https://www.meetup.com/toronto-oasis/events/299869960/

Looking forward to seeing familiar faces and perhaps some new ones!

This meeting and the guest musician have been recorded: GMT20240407-152235_Recording_1920x1080.mp4

This will be an online Zoom meeting. Please RSVP on our Meetup for this event to get access to the Zoom link. See our online meeting instructions at: https://torontooasis.org/online-meeting-instructions

Our program will run from 11 am to 12:30 pm. You can join the meeting starting at 10:30 am for our open social. After 12:30 pm, we will also have an extended discussion for half an hour, until 1:00 pm.

Our featured speaker will be Ann Norman. Ann will be speaking on this topic not as an expert but as a layperson who has learned a lot about how AI art models work. Ann describes herself as “totally an amateur at art and AI art”, but for about a year she has spent almost an hour a day doing AI art, and she has some interesting observations to share.

Please RSVP on Meetup to get access to the Zoom link:

https://www.meetup.com/toronto-oasis/events/298831863/

Looking forward to seeing familiar faces and perhaps some new ones!

This meeting was recorded: GMT20240331-153454_Recording_1920x1080.mp4

This will be an online Zoom meeting. Please RSVP on our Meetup for this event to get access to the Zoom link. See our online meeting instructions at: https://torontooasis.org/online-meeting-instructions

Our program will run from 11 am to 12:30 pm. You can join the meeting starting at 10:30 am for our open social. After 12:30 pm, we will also have an extended discussion for half an hour, until 1:00 pm.

We will be listening to and then discussing a TEDx talk by Garry Gray, a University of Victoria Sociology professor and a Network Fellow at the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University. The video was selected and will be introduced by Tim Mt. Pleasant, a Toronto Oasis volunteer. After we watch the TEDx talk, Tim will do a 15-minute presentation putting the talk into a Canadian context.

We will also be having live music! Our featured musicians will be the Ugly Bug Band. Here is how they describe themselves:

“The Ugly Bug Band got together in the 1990s out of a desire to write the songs that happy and sometimes cranky hoboes might want to sing in a world where the moon had a tendency to fall out of the sky, pirates were the heroes of any stories they were in, and the world was always already in the process of ending. Over the past thirty years, members have come and gone but that mission hasn’t changed, and the Bugs have brought their gnostic folk songs full of monkeys, angels, and rewritten bible stories to audiences from Roncesvalles to the Annex – and back! The members of the Ugly Bug Band are Michael Kaler (bass), Martin Loomer (guitar), Arnd Jurgensen (guitar and banjo), Wendy Banks (stylophone, kalimba, bowed ukelele, accordion, music box), and Mark Blaauw-Hara (percussion). Everyone sings, and the Bugs hope that you will too!”

Please RSVP on Meetup to get access to the Zoom link:

https://www.meetup.com/toronto-oasis/events/298831862/

Looking forward to seeing familiar faces and perhaps some new ones!

The guest musician was recorded: GMT20240324-152947_Recording_640x360.mp4

This will be an online Zoom meeting. Please RSVP on our Meetup for this event to get access to the Zoom link. See our online meeting instructions at: https://torontooasis.org/online-meeting-instructions

Our program will run from 11 am to 12:30 pm. You can join the meeting starting at 10:30 am for our open social. After 12:30 pm, we will also have an extended discussion for half an hour, until 1:00 pm.

Our featured speaker will be Leslie Rosenblood, host of the Podcast for Inquiry (https://centreforinquiry.ca/podcast-for-inquiry/), a biweekly podcast produced by the Centre for Inquiry Canada (CFIC).

Please RSVP on Meetup to get access to the Zoom link:

https://www.meetup.com/toronto-oasis/events/298831861/

Looking forward to seeing familiar faces and perhaps some new ones!

This meeting has been recorded: GMT20240317-153901_Recording_1856x1024.mp4

This will be an online Zoom meeting. Please RSVP on our Meetup for this event to get access to the Zoom link. See our online meeting instructions at: https://torontooasis.org/online-meeting-instructions

Our program will run from 11 am to 12:30 pm. You can join the meeting starting at 10:30 am for our open social. After 12:30 pm, we will also have an extended discussion for half an hour, until 1:00 pm.

We will be listening to and then discussing two YouTube videos on the topic of authenticity selected and introduced by John Shannon, a Toronto Oasis volunteer.

We will also be having live music! Our featured musician will be Reenie Perkovic. Reenie is a queer folk-pop artist. With a soulful edge, she composes heartfelt songs that are both fun and introspective. Infusing her classical background with jazz harmony, folk rhythms, and pop sensibilities, Reenie and her guitar weave together stories of the human condition, connection, and social justice.

Please RSVP on Meetup to get access to the Zoom link:

https://www.meetup.com/toronto-oasis/events/298831860/

Looking forward to seeing familiar faces and perhaps some new ones!

This will be an online Zoom meeting. Please RSVP on our Meetup for this event to get access to the Zoom link. See our online meeting instructions at: https://torontooasis.org/online-meeting-instructions

Our program will run from 11 am to 12:30 pm. You can join the meeting starting at 10:30 am for our open social. After 12:30 pm, we will also have an extended discussion for half an hour, until 1:00 pm.

We will be listening to and then discussing a TEDx talk by Julia Galef, speaker, podcaster and author of the book: The Scout Mindset: Why Some People See Things Clearly and Others Don’t. The topic and video were selected and will be introduced by Tanya Long, a Toronto Oasis participant.

Please RSVP on Meetup to get access to the Zoom link:

https://www.meetup.com/toronto-oasis/events/298339836/

Looking forward to seeing familiar faces and perhaps some new ones!

This will be an online Zoom meeting. Please RSVP on our Meetup for this event to get access to the Zoom link. See our online meeting instructions at: https://torontooasis.org/online-meeting-instructions

Our program will run from 11 am to 12:30 pm. You can join the meeting starting at 10:30 am for our open social. After 12:30 pm, we will also have an extended discussion for half an hour, until 1:00 pm.

We will be listening to and then discussing a TEDx talk by Malavika Varadan, who worked in radio and was host of a primetime breakfast show in Dubai. In this TEDx talk, Varadan challenges the societal norm that “we should not speak to strangers” by presenting 7 ways to make conversation with anyone. The topic and video were selected and will be introduced by Tania Akon, a Toronto Oasis organizer.

We will also be having live music this Sunday! Our featured musician will be Kathryn Merriam. Described by audiences as ‘other-worldly’ and ‘transcendent’, Kathryn Merriam’s songs interweave melismatic melodies with soaring lyricism, evoking flavours of Joni Mitchell and Kate Bush. Accompanying herself on the guitar and harp, Kathryn explores the intersections between folk song tradition and mystical music – making subtle observations of the human experience, and musing on reality, perception, meaning, healing, and purpose. You can check out her music here: https://soundcloud.com/kathryn-merriam

Please RSVP on Meetup to get access to the Zoom link:

https://www.meetup.com/toronto-oasis/events/298182481/

Looking forward to seeing familiar faces and perhaps some new ones!

The guest musician was recorded in two parts: Part 1: GMT20240225-170705_Recording_640x360.mp4 and Part 2: GMT20240225-173413_Recording_640x360.mp4

This will be an online Zoom meeting. Please RSVP on our Meetup for this event to get access to the Zoom link. See our online meeting instructions at: https://torontooasis.org/online-meeting-instructions

Our program will run from 11 am to 12:30 pm. You can join the meeting starting at 10:30 am for our open social. After 12:30 pm, we will also have an extended discussion for half an hour, until 1:00 pm.

We will be listening to and then discussing a TEDx talk by social scientist and PhD student, Genevieve Gregorich. The talk is about her research endeavor on Bullshit (the card game) and how that provided her with a life lesson. The topic and video were selected and will be introduced by Tim Mt. Pleasant, a Toronto Oasis volunteer.

Please RSVP on Meetup to get access to the Zoom link:

https://www.meetup.com/toronto-oasis/events/298182479/

Looking forward to seeing familiar faces and perhaps some new ones!