Creativity and the Brain is the topic for discussion at Moment magazine’s symposium dinner on Sunday. The Washington-based Jewish publication of politics, culture and religion has assembled a creative and brainy group to discuss it.
“Creativity is what makes us tick. It’s what makes life exciting and makes change in the world,” says Moment Editor and Publisher Nadine Epstein. “And now we know so much more about the science behind this.”
The panel will include pianist and conductor Leon Fleischer, who lost the use of his right hand for many decades and more recently relearned how to play with two hands, and Barton Rubenstein, a Chevy Chase sculptor and neuroscientist.
Also joining the discussion will be Steven Pinker, the linguist, cognitive psychologist and author of The Better Angels of Our Nature and How the Mind Works, and his wife, Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, author of The Mind-Body Problem and Betraying Spinoza. “She thinks about creativity from a philosophical point of view,” Epstein says.
National Public Radio will be represented by Peter Sagal, host of the brainy, creative Wait Wait … Don’t Tell Me! quiz show, and Robert Siegel, senior host of All Things Considered, who will moderate.
Ambassador Stuart Eizenstat is scheduled to receive the magazine’s International Humanitarian Award and Ambassador Peter Ammon of Germany will receive the Ambassador Award. Moment staffers Amy Schwartz and Eileen Lavine will also be cited.
This is Moment’s fourth annual benefit symposium dinner. Proceeds will go to the magazine’s Daniel Pearl Investigative Journalism Initiative “to encourage young journalists to write in-depth stories about a modern manifestation of anti-Semitism or another deeply ingrained prejudice,” Epstein says.
The Moment Magazine Symposium Dinner will be held 6:30 p.m. Sunday at Washington Hebrew Congregation. For information, go to momentmag.com/symposium-2013
