UCSC Profs Win Chopra Award

Nancy Ellen Abrams and Joel Primack, photographed in April 2011.

The message came last fall from a secretary at the Chopra Foundation in Carlsbad, Calif. Deepak Chopra wished to speak to them. Would it be all right if he called? UCSC lecturer Nancy Ellen Abrams and professor Joel Primack—she’s a philosopher, he’s an astrophysicist—aren’t your standard readers of Chopra, whose 60–odd published books include titles like Ageless Body, Timeless Mind and Manifesting Good Luck Cards: Growth and Enlightenment.  Chopra, however, had become a reader of Abrams and Primack. Their books on cosmology, The View from the Center of the Universe  and The New Universe and the Human Future , had made an impression on him, and he wanted to get the word out.

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David Arora Demystified

Mycologist David Arora, a former Santa Cruzan, relaxes on his Mendocino County property. Photo by Christian Schwarz.

The moon has just set behind a curtain of 100-foot redwood trees, and David Arora is on his first mushroom hunt of the new year. It didn’t take him long to get around to it. It’s 12:15am on Jan. 1, and the mycologist is craving a large basket of matsutakes to bring home, soak in a rich marinade and eat for dinner the next night. “I’m trying to find at least one matsutake,” says Arora, scanning the path in front of him. “They’re amazing.”

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