What happens when we start listening again?

MEMBERS: Click this link to access your preferred ticket rates.

For centuries, Western culture has privileged certain ways of knowing—reason, analysis, measurement—while often treating others with suspicion: intuition, embodiment, emotion, relationship, story, and spiritual experience.

But what if these aren’t competing ways of understanding the world?

Across two nights, The Science of Woo brings together scientists, physicians, scholars, musicians, teachers, and practitioners to explore what we may have stopped hearing—and what becomes possible when we learn to listen again.

Night One asks us to practice listening. Night Two asks us to reconsider what—and whom—we’ve learned not to trust.

Attend either evening individually, or experience both as a two-night journey.

Night One: Deep Listening

September 15 · The Parthenon

Before we can hear differently, we have to learn to listen differently.

Inside one of Nashville’s most extraordinary spaces, we’ll explore the art and science of attention, presence, and connection—and what becomes possible when we listen more deeply to ourselves, to other people, and to the world around us.

Through cognitive science, embodied practice, conversation, and music, this intimate evening moves beyond listening simply to respond, judge, or solve. Instead, we ask what it means to become fully present.

The evening features:

• Ryoko Suzuki, mind-body practitioner — The Override Epidemic
• Sarah Brown-Schmidt, cognitive scientist — The Science of Listening
• Chris & Laura Donahue, musicians and teachers — Listening for a Living
• Bekah Liechty, The Voice-winning artist — The Power of the Human Voice
• SONUS Choir, vocal collective — A More Harmonious Way of Listening

This is an intimate, immersive evening designed around floor seating. Guests are encouraged to bring a yoga mat, meditation cushion, or other comfortable floor cushion. A very limited number of reserved floor chairs will also be available.

If you require a standard chair for accessibility or comfort, please email us and we’ll be happy to accommodate you.

Night Two: The Divine Feminine

September 16 · Studio 615

What have we called “feminine”—and what might we have lost by learning not to trust it?

Intuition. Emotion. Receptivity. Embodiment. Care. Spirituality. Relationship.

Across history, qualities like these have often been associated with the feminine—and, at the same time, dismissed as less rigorous, less authoritative, or less trustworthy.

But why?

The Divine Feminine brings together voices from neuroscience, medicine, the ancient world, psychology, and lived experience to examine how our ideas about femininity have been constructed—and what those ideas continue to shape today.

Deboleena Roy, neuroscientist and feminist theorist, asks us to reconsider who gets to produce knowledge and which forms of knowledge we consider legitimate.

Chiara Sulprizio, classicist, takes us into the ancient world to explore the stories and ideas about femininity that continue to echo through modern culture.

Dr. Alaina Stochaj-Oman and Dr. Nishtha Sareen bring perspectives from medicine, asking how assumptions about women, bodies, health, and authority continue to influence the way care is understood and delivered.

And Lauren Russell, therapist and mystic, explores the territory where psychology, intuition, spirituality, and the unseen meet.

Importantly, this evening isn’t built around everyone agreeing on what “the Divine Feminine” means—or even whether it’s the right language.

We’ll question the idea itself.

What have we labeled feminine? Why? Who decided? What happens when those qualities are devalued? And are they actually feminine at all—or fundamentally human?

This isn’t about women versus men.

It’s an investigation into the ideas, qualities, and ways of knowing we’ve associated with femininity—and what we might discover by taking them seriously again.

Choose One Night—or Experience Both

Tickets are available for each evening individually or as a discounted Two-Night Pass.

TEDxNashville Members: One Night $45–$55 · Both Nights $85 GA

General Public: One Night $95 · Both Nights $165

Consider becoming a member for preferred pricing, early access, and exclusive experiences throughout the year.

Members Get More Access

Consider becoming a member to access preferred pricing, early access, and exclusive event experiences throughout the year.

MEMBERS: Click this link to access your preferred ticket rates.