Interview with Maureen Seaberg

Maureen Seaberg, author of "Fearfully and Wonderfully Made: The Astonishing New Science of the Senses"

Maureen Seaberg's Website

Maureen Seaberg is the coauthor of Struck By Genius: How a Brain Injury Made Me a Mathematical Marvel, the story of Jason Padgett, who acquired synesthesia and savant syndrome from a brain injury sustained in a brutal mugging fifteen years ago in Tacoma, Washington.

A polysynesthete, she has higher and lower synesthesias: her sensory experience of the letter K is teal, the number 8 aubergine, and she would have to become a glass artisan to describe what she sees when listening to Yo-Yo Ma. Her experience includes mirror touch synesthesia and as a result she is highly empathic and intuitive.

The native New Yorker also experiences the behaviors of functional tetrachromacy, or the presence of a fourth cone class for color vision. Vogue magazine called her “Girl With Kaleidoscope Eyes” in a feature in 2014. She tested positive on a DNA test for tetrachromacy and is awaiting functionality testing. She is honored to have inspired and served as the color consultant on MAC Cosmetics’ hugely successful line of highly pigmented lipstick called “Liptensity”.

Ms. Seaberg has presented on the senses at the Toward a Science of Consciousness conferences in Tucson and Stockholm, Yale Divinity School, the American Synesthesia Association conference at Vanderbilt University, Science Writers in New York (SWINY) and at Tibet House and NYU. She has written for the New York Times, National Geographic, Vogue, Glamour, O, the Oprah Magazine, ESPN the magazine, Huffington Post, The Daily Beast and has appeared on NPR, CNN’s “Great Big Story”, MSNBC, MTV News, TEDWeekends and PBS. She is at work on multiple book and screenplay projects. She is Mensa-qualified.

In 2016, scientists proved that humans could see light at the level of a single photon. We are living in historic times when humans may look at the very fabric of the universe in a laboratory setting. Around the world, other recent discoveries about the senses are just as astounding. It turns out we can hear amplitudes smaller than an atom, smell a trillion scents, have a set of taste buds that can discern molecules of fresh water, and can feel through the sense of touch the difference of a single molecule.

Fearfully and Wonderfully Made takes readers through their own bodies, delving into the molecular and even the quantum, and tells the story of our magnificent sensorium and what it means for the next wave of human potential. From the laboratories to the ordinary homes where these breakthroughs are taking place, the book explores our current sensory Renaissance and shows readers how they, themselves, can heighten their own senses and experience the miraculous.

Michael Carter, Co-Host

Michael Carter's Website