Last Tuesday, a smart and merry group gathered in the High Line Room at The Standard for another installment of Sunny Bates' Standard Talks series. The subject of this evening's panel was "The Heart's Desire: Aphrodisiacs and the Magic of the Heart in Love". Guiding the conversation were two beautiful and accomplished women, one an artist, the other a scientist.
After the crowd had enjoyed a Jalapeño infused cocktail on the terrace, The Talks began in ernest with the brilliant Nina Tandon, a tissue engineer at Columbia University and professor at Cooper Union. Her research involves the use of electrical signalling for directing cell differentiation (i.e. she grows actual organs in test tubes). She enlightened the room about the incredible physiology of the heart. It beats roughly 2.5 billion times a lifetime. It never rests. It responds to virtually everything that happens around you. She also spoke about some new research that may prove that heart has more power over our actions than we may realize as it can (as the theory goes) actually send neurons back to the brain, instead of the other way around. Science may come to prove that our hearts really do control our actions.
Photo by Emilie Baltz from your forthcoming book, “L.O.V.E FOODBOOK”
Next up came Emilie Baltz, a "creative omnivore" working at the intersection of food, sex and design. She is presently working on a fine art cookbook based on the relationship between love, food and aphrodisiacs titled “L.O.V.E FOODBOOK”, to be released in the US this year. She asked her chef friends to make a dessert that represented love, love as they have experienced it personally. The results are a dazzling array of imagery. She also delved into food's correlation with desire and got to the bottom of the whole, "Do oysters really make you horny?" The answer is ... kind of.
If you're insterested in attending the next Standard Talks please email: Talks@StandardHotel.com
