Creative Mornings is a global project with a simple, yet curious, concept: the listeners gather for a breakfast combined with a short talk on an interesting topic. The project began in New York and soon became the go-to place for intellectuals and creative youths. The idea was then picked up by other cities – today the morning meetings take place in 170 cities around the globe.

Creative Mornings in St. Petersburg 

The theme for all meetings in April is “Beyond” and so Andrey Kurpatov spoke about scientific paradoxes, how our brains are deceiving us every second and why our free will in making decisions is just an illusion. He debunked the idea of man as the “apex of creation”, described fascinating social experiments and talked about the modern view on the split-brain phenomenon.

“All understanding begins with realizing one’s own limitedness. Realizing that you don’t understand some things makes you many times more intelligent. It gives rise in you to an exploratory stirring and then you start seeing the facts, you turn on your brain’s right half that tries to correlate everything you think with your reality. And it is that exploratory stirring, that sense of something you don’t know and can’t understand but are still interested in – that’s the most important thing,” – says Andrey Kurpatov.