Blind Spots: Rethinking Your Reality

This event took place on Monday, November 4, 2019
at the Vancouver Playhouse, (Map)
In partnership with alumniUBC

This series is made possible with the generous support of the R & J Stern Family Foundation

Media Partner: The Georgia Straight

About the Talk:

Our naked eyes see only a thin sliver of reality. We are blind in comparison to the X-rays that peer through skin, the mass spectrometers that detect the dead inside the living or the high-tech surveillance systems that see with artificial intelligence. And we are blind compared to the animals that can see in infrared, or ultraviolet, or in 360-degree vision. These animals live in the same world we do, but they see something quite different when they look around.

In this talk, science journalist Ziya Tong reveals a hidden world by taking us on a journey to examine some of humanity’s biggest blind spots. The author of The Reality Bubble: Blind Spots, Hidden Truths, and the Dangerous Illusions that Shape Our World, Tong will speak about how significant parts of our global food, energy and waste systems are purposely hidden. There are cameras everywhere, she reminds us, except where our food comes from, where our energy comes from, and where our waste goes. Yet science, and the curiosity that drives it, can help civilization flourish when we understand that there is more to the world than meets the eye.

About the Speaker:

Award-winning broadcaster Ziya Tong anchored Daily Planet, Discovery Channel’s flagship science program, until its final season in 2018. Tong also hosted the CBC’s Emmy-nominated series ZeD, PBS’s national prime-time series, Wired Science, and worked as a correspondent for NOVA scienceNOW alongside Neil deGrasse Tyson on PBS.

Tong’s first book, The Reality Bubble, was published in spring 2019. It has earned praise from luminaries including Naomi Klein, who notes that “in a time of mounting global crisis, the kind of radical curiosity that fills this book—a commitment to probing the unseen, unknowable and unthinkable—has  become essential to our survival.” David Suzuki calls Tong’s book “required reading for all who care about what we are doing to the planet.”