From The Financial Times: It’s hard to believe now, but when the global financial crisis started in spring 2007 there were many people who did not see the severity of what was to come. Even in late 2008, after the troubles at Merrill Lynch and Lehman Brothers, many were still in denial (especially those who…
Read MoreNicole Krauss, author of international bestseller The History of Love, reads from her latest National Book Award nominated novel, Great House. Via KQED
Read MoreAndrew Park illustrates Denis Dutton’s provocative theory on beauty — that art, music and other beautiful things, far from being simply “in the eye of the beholder,” are a core part of human nature with deep evolutionary origins. About the Speaker: Denis Dutton is a philosophy professor and the editor of a popular blog.…
Read MoreIn war we often see only the frontline stories of soldiers and combat. AT TEDGlobal 2010, Zainab Salbi tells powerful “backline” stories of women who keep everyday life going during conflicts, and calls for women to have a place at the negotiating table once fighting is over. About the Speaker: Iraqi-born Zainab Salbi founded…
Read MoreDinaw Mengestu reads a passage from How to Read the Air about a young Ethiopian immigrant couple who set off on a road trip in search of a new identity. Via KQED
Read Moreby Russell Bennetts Simon Ferrari is a doctoral student in digital media at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He recently co-authored Newsgames: Journalism at Play with Ian Bogost and Bobby Schweizer. Simon blogs about gaming at Chungking Expresso. Berfrois What are Newsgames? Are they closer in nature to journalism or video games? Ferrari …
Read MoreDoug Dorst reads the title story from The Surf Guru about an old surfing champion who sits on his oceanfront balcony watching a new generation of surfers come of age on the waves. Via KQED
Read MorePlants behave in some oddly intelligent ways: fighting predators, maximizing food opportunities. But can we think of them as actually having a form of intelligence of their own? Italian botanist Stefano Mancuso presents intriguing evidence. About the Speaker: Stefano Mancuso is a founder of the study of plant neurobiology, which explores signaling and communication…
Read MoreFrom The New Yorker: The story of cancer as a distinctively modern—and even specifically American—entity starts with the marriage, in 1940, of Albert Lasker, a wealthy and well-connected advertising executive whose accounts included Lucky Strike cigarettes, and Mary Woodard, a dress designer and Radcliffe graduate, who had social aspirations. Mary Lasker needed a philanthropic cause,…
Read MoreFrom The New York Review of Books: The Republican opposition has been highly successful in turning “stimulus” and “bailout” into dirty words that cannot be used. The opposition narrative blames the crash of 2008 and the subsequent recession and persistent high unemployment on the ineptitude of government and claims that the 2009 stimulus package was…
Read MoreIn a series of witty punchlines, Patrick Chappatte makes a poignant case for the power of the humble cartoon. His projects in Lebanon, West Africa and Gaza show how, in the right hands, the pencil can illuminate serious issues and bring the most unlikely people together. About the Speaker: Using clean, simple pencil…
Read MoreTo the Swedish Friends: Latvia’s hope in 1990 was that advice from Western Europe would be to help Latvia emulate its successful mixed economies and embark on the same path that had raised living standards and a balanced international trade and payments. And by opening the economy to Swedish and other Western European banks,…
Read Moreby Michael Azar From Eurozine: In The Myth of Sisyphus Albert Camus seeks his own answer to the question that Kierkegaard, Dostoevsky and Nietzsche have bequeathed to us: is it possible to live without God, without any hope of salvation as death looms? At first sight the outlook is bleak: we are, says Camus, thrust…
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