Pitch List – Ouroboros

1. Worms, Snakes, and Octopi
   • C. Elegans. What are they? Why are biologists and philosophers obsessed with them?
   • Very little scientific evidence shows that snakes eat their tails. What are other myths about snakes that’s not scientifically true? What are some weird but true facts about snakes?
   • Unbeknownst to most, octopi are very developmentally advanced and neurologically complex. What are they capable of doing and understanding? What are the ethics behind eating and hunting octopi?
2. Around and Around: The Feedback Loops of Climate Change
   • Today, our planet’s climate is dominated by positive and negative feedback loops: Factors that either amplify global warming or counteract it, creating a chain reaction in Earth’s system that repeats again and again. A balance of negative and positive feedback loops is required to regulate the climate. What hidden loops could already be in motion? How would these invisible loops affect things like the weather, food supply, and sea levels? And what does this tell us about the fragility of our planet — that miniscule events can have such large consequences?
3. Stem cells and immortalized cell lines
   • Explain HeLa cells. How have these cells played incredibly important roles throughout scientific history and how are they a product of systemic oppression of Black peoples?
   • Talk about stem cells. Talk about how they were discovered by two U of T scientists. What has made them the scientific spotlight since the 19th century? What are the ethical debates around stem cells and IVF embryos? Are they founded in some truth or completely tainted by religious and/or anti-abortion rhetoric?
4. The Science of Timekeeping
   • While seemingly simple, the mechanics behind clocks and timekeeping is considered one of the marvels of engineering and science. One of the most important components of the clock is the oscillator: A system that repeats over and over again. Explore the different types of oscillators used in clocks (pendulum, quartz crystal, etc.), and its other components involved in timekeeping. What about watches? Cuckoo clocks? Go back in time and discuss ancient methods of timekeeping, like sundials and water clocks.
5. The Death of Scientific Unity
   • Sciences and scientific discoveries have always been founded by international collaborations and diversity. Now this culture is dying away due to executive orders from President Trump. When did scientific unity start to die? How did people kill scientific unity?
   • The aftermath of reduced collaboration. What are they? How have they been manifesting in our lives?

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1. Eating Your Own Tail
   • The image of the ouroboros implies self-consumption or destruction. In what ways do you consume yourself or eat your own tail? You can also consider consumption and its different sets of imagery in the different mythologies, religions, and traditions the ouroboros appears in.
2. Form as Cyclical
   • How can you play with form to mirror the cyclical symbolism of the ouroboros? You might start and end with the same line, or you might write a poem that can be read from the top down as well as the bottom up.
3. Deja Vu
   • Immense sensation of nostalgia,  longing or remembrance for that which you have never known. The sensation of a foreign familiarity. Are you perhaps returning to something you’ve simply forgotten, or starting something new you will return to later?

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1. The Vicious Cycles of University Life
   • As the snake consumes its own tail, so too do the most painful routines of campus life tend to repeat. You cram for exams in the hope that you do well enough to do more exams next year, and you wait for TTC construction to end just for it to start again a week later. Write about the vicious cycles of U of T life, and perhaps provide some tips for breaking out of them.
2. How To Suck Your Own Dick
   • I don’t have to euphemise this, do I? We all know what an ouroboros reminds us of. Write about it, and be able to tell your friends that you put a guide to autofellatio in the school paper.
3. Actually Achievable New Year’s Resolutions
   • Just as the calendar repeats in an ouroboros-like cycle, so too does the yearly tradition of obeying one’s New Year’s Resolutions for exactly one week and then giving up. To combat this cycle, write us some resolutions that set their expectations a little lower. “Lose 10 pounds and find them again?” “Keep my GPA a positive integer?” The choice is yours.
4. A Guide to the Snakes of U of T
   • The cosmic, tail-consuming ouroboros is far from the only snake you’re likely to encounter during your time at university. From group project partners who write precisely two sentences to so-called friends who take the last spot in a seminar you want, write about the (metaphorical) snakes you’re likely to run into on campus. 
5. Is My Professor a Demiurge?
   • The ouroboros is strongly associated with Gnosticism, a group of sects that believe that the work of an uncorrupted supreme God is being hidden by a malevolent demiurge who creates physical reality. Have you ever wondered during a particularly abstruse and pointless lesson whether or not your professor was in fact a demiurge, tasked with hiding actual knowledge from you via a thick layer of technical terminology and posturing? Write a guide on how to tell if your professor is, in fact, attempting to withhold you from enlightenment.

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