Podcast appearances and mentions of stephen pinker

We enter the ontological in-between to try and spin up our paradigms to understand the next stage in relationship technology, the horrific damage of modern medicine, how Lucifer connects with wokeness, and the joys of bonding over outgroup hate. This one is a doozy...Supplementary Material 2800:00 Introduction - On Dogs and Dough04:37 Next Required Reading: The Buddhism Book!07:50 Jordan Peterson, James Lindsay & Woke Lucifer15:06 Aubrey Marcus' Sensual Sensemaking34:10 Jordan Hall's Sensemaking Origin Story39:09 Bret and Heather discuss cancer cures44:10 The Miracle Cure of Ivermectin46:07 Bret denounces ALL of modern medicine49:26 Community Notes has Fallen to Goliath!50:11 Theo Von, GSP, and the conspiratorial hell world58:04 Dan Bongino gets what he deserves01:05:57 Scott Adams has prostate cancer01:07:20 Joe Biden's Cancer and Taylor Lorenz's Edgy Responses01:09:13 Does Joe Biden hate affordable health care?01:13:31 Hasan joins the fray01:19:36 Genetically Modified Skeptic denouncing outrage mongering and radicalisation01:22:38 The totally hinged Zei Squirrel01:24:25 Owen Jones vs Zei Squirrel01:27:15 Unmasked by the Subreddit01:31:42 The Heterodox Social Science Conference 202501:33:16 Stephen Pinker making bad choices01:37:03 Jordan Peterson gets OUTRAGED over Harvard01:41:13 The Anti-Establishment Two-Step01:47:13 OutroThe full episode is available for Patreon subscribers (1hr 47 mins).Join us at: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingTheGurusSources- Next Required Reading- Buddhism: A Journey through History- Jordan Peterson: When the Right Goes Too Far | Dr. James Lindsay | EP 544- Jordan Peterson: A Dialogue So Dangerous, It Just Might Bring You Wisdom | John Vervaeke and Jordan Hall | EP 532- Bret and Heather discussing cancer treatments- Bret denounces all of modern medicine and conspiracy hypothesises about community notes- Aubrey Marcus: A New Pattern Of Sacred Relationship Emerges | Vylana, Alana Beale, Dr. Marc Gafni- The Hill: Patel, Bongino dismiss Epstein conspiracy theories: ‘He killed himself'- Genetically Modified Skeptic: The Alt-Right Pipeline Almost Got Me. Here's Why It Failed- Taylor Lorenz's Biden cancer tweet- Vice: Joe Biden: It Would Be an Insult to My Dead Son for Everyone to Have Healthcare-

In deze extra aflevering van Leaders in Finance is Edward Feitsma te gast, Senior Economist bij VNO-NCW. Samen met Jeroen Broekema bespreekt hij het bedrijfsleven en de visie van VNO-NCW op de financiële sector. We bespreken hoe de financiële sector wordt overvraagd door regelgeving en toezicht, maar ook hoe deze juist kansen kan creëren voor economische groei en brede welvaart, en de rol van VNO-NCW in het stimuleren van een sterke financiële infrastructuur. Hoe kan de sector beter bijdragen aan groei en innovatie? Luister nu!   *** Meer weten? Over Edward Feitsma Over bijdrage VNO NCW en MKB NL aan kamerdebat Financiële markten, en daaropvolgend artikel, en bijdrage kosten toezicht Draghi Rapport en Letta Rapport Over vooruitgangsdenkers: Maarten Boudry, Stephen Pinker, Hans Rosling *** Op de hoogte blijven van Leaders in Finance? Abonneer je dan op de nieuwsbrief.   ***  Vragen, suggesties of feedback? Graag! Via email: info@leadersinfinance.nl en check de website leadersinfinance.nl   *** Eerdere gasten bij de Leaders in Finance podcast waren onder andere: Klaas Knot (President DNB), Robert Swaak (CEO ABN AMRO), Frank Elderson (directie ECB), David Knibbe (CEO NN), Janine Vos (RvB Rabobank), Jos Baeten (CEO ASR), Nadine Klokke (CEO Knab), Gita Salden (CEO BNG Bank),  Annerie Vreugdenhil (CIO ING), Geert Lippens (CEO BNP Paribas NL), Karien van Gennip (CEO VGZ), Maarten Edixhoven (CEO Van Lanschot Kempen), Jeroen Rijpkema (CEO Triodos), Chantal Vergouw (CEO Interpolis), Simone Huis in ‘t Veld (CEO Euronext), Nout Wellink (ex DNB), Onno Ruding (ex minister van financiën), Maurice Oostendorp en Martijn Gribnau (CEOs Volksbank), Olaf Sleijpen (Director DNB), Allegra van Hövell-Patrizi (CEO Aegon NL), Yoram Schwarz (CEO Movir), Laura van Geest (Bestuursvoorzitter AFM) Katja Kok (CEO Van Lanschot CH), Ali Niknam (CEO bunq), Nick Bortot (CEO BUX), Matthijs Bierman (MD Triodos NL), Peter Paul de Vries (CEO Value8), Barbara Baarsma (CEO Rabo Carbon Bank), Jan van Rutte (Commissaris PGGM, BNG Bank, vml CFO ABN AMRO), Marguerite Soeteman-Reijnen (Chair Aon Holdings), Annemarie Jorritsma (o.a. Voorzitter NVP), Lidwin van Velden (CEO Waterschapsbank), Don Ginsel (CEO Holland Fintech), Mary Pieterse-Bloem (Professor Erasmus), Jan-Willem van der Schoot (CEO Mastercard NL), Tjeerd Bosklopper (CEO NN NL), Joanne Kellermann (Chair PFZW), Steven Maijoor (Chair ESMA), Radboud Vlaar (CEO Finch Capital), Karin van Baardwijk (CEO Robeco) en Annette Mosman (CEO APG).  --> tussen haakjes de functie ten tijde van het interview  

How psychologist Dan Gilbert went from high school dropout to Harvard professor, found the secret of joy, and inspired Steve Levitt's divorce. SOURCE:Daniel Gilbert, professor of psychology at Harvard University. RESOURCES:"What the Data Says (and Doesn't Say) About Crime in the United States," by John Gramlich (Pew Research Center, 2020).Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress, by Stephen Pinker (2018)."Mistakenly Seeking Solitude," by Nicholas Epley and Juliana Schroeder (Journal of Experimental Psychology, 2014)."Just Think: The Challenges of the Disengaged Mind," by Timothy D. Wilson, David A. Reinhard, Erin C. Westgate, Daniel T. Gilbert, Nicole Ellerbeck, Cheryl Hahn, Casey L. Brown, and Adi Shaked (Science, 2013)."The End of History Illusion," by Jordi Quoidbach, Daniel T. Gilbert, and Timothy D. Wilson (Science, 2013).Happy Money: The Science of Smarter Spending, by Elizabeth Dunn (2013)."If Money Doesn't Make You Happy Then You Probably Aren't Spending It Right," by Elizabeth W. Dunn, Daniel T. Gilbert, and Timothy D. Wilson (Journal of Consumer Psychology, 2011).This Emotional Life, by Daniel Gilbert (2010).Stumbling on Happiness, by Dan Gilbert (2006)."Affective Forecasting," by Timothy D. Wilson and Daniel T. Gilbert (Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 2003). EXTRAS:"Drawing from Life (and Death)," by People I (Mostly) Admire (2023)."Who Gives the Worst Advice?" by People I (Mostly) Admire (2021)."Sendhil Mullainathan Thinks Messing Around Is the Best Use of Your Time," by People I (Mostly) Admire (2021)."Am I Boring You?" by Freakonomics Radio (2015).

I am thrilled to announce that our new book, the Kindness Daily Reader: Season One, is now available on Amazon. (See Link Below)  Secondly, we are embarking on a new chapter with Season Three of the One Kind Moment podcast. In Season One, we primarily focused on broad topics of kindness and compassion, while in Season Two, we explored areas such as self-compassion, self-help, and self-care. Now, in Season Three, we're shifting our focus to a specific area of self-care that we call Practical Spirituality for Everyone. We'll be delving into topics like spirituality in nature, spiritual intelligence, everyday mindfulness, the science of consciousness, the mystery of life, the science of awe, and managing uncertainty. We're excited to take this new direction and are grateful for your continued support and interest in the One Kind Moment podcast. EXPLORE OUR NEW BOOK! Kindness Daily Reader: Season One https://a.co/d/04RvXldy #onekindmoment #spirituality Yesterday by John Hobart - Music Design by Jason Inc. https://brucewaynemclellan.com/  

a brand building master class like you've NEVER head before Botivo Drinks | B corp are one of my fave brands The level of DEPTH Imme Ermgassen and Sam Paget Steavenson have gone into to build BOTIVO is CRAZYYou're in for an ABSOLUTE TREAT ON THE MENU:1. How BOTIVO was Born out of a Unusual Request at Lavish Parties like Calvin Harris, Ellie Golding, Prince Harry & Megan 2. Always Go Against the Category: Be a pleasure brave brand in a sea of moderation3. Make something your CONSUMERS ACTUALLY WANT “there's a difference between TASTY and IMPRESSIVE4. The 4 Brand tensions to brand (this is GENIUS)- cultural tension: the zeitgeist - category tension: white space + counter opportunity - consumer tension: who are they and why are they different - What can you do no one else can do6. Why BOTIVO created 21 characters for a dinner party with actual names who are their mates 7. Seth Godin's Psychographic vs Demographic “STOP Targeting Gen Zzzzzz” 8. Ray Dailio Brand Building Principles “In life think about 2nd, 3rd, 4th order consequences of decisions making” BUT in brand building “ think of 2nd, 3rd, 4th brand touch points to build real depth9. 2nd, 3rd, 4th order brand touch ponts = Slowwwwwlyyyyy introduce more touch points = increase occasions = increase consumption frequency = increase Rate of Sale 10. Stephen Pinker's Strawberry Cheesecake Principle: Priming people for perfect experience 11. Why BOTIVO act like a Theatre House = Set the stage = Theatrical tone of voice = Great brand = stories 12. Why hard is an unfair advantage + you need insane amounts of stamina ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Curious about the secrets behind sustainable high performance in organizations? Discover the insights of Amy Brand, a leading neuro and behavioral scientist, who has been named HR's Most Influential Thinker on LinkedIn for 2023. In this episode, Amy shares her remarkable journey from medicine to neuroscience, driven by her fascination with human behavior and brain science. Learn how her observations of underperforming professionals inspired her to combine neuroscience with organizational behavior, and hear about her early influences, including thought leaders like Stephen Pinker and Antonio de Macio.Explore the fascinating intersection of neuroscience and psychology as Amy discusses the importance of evidence-based approaches to understanding human behavior. Find out how neuroscience can provide concrete data to validate everyday experiences, prompting us to rethink traditional work environments and practices. She delves into the role of individual differences and neurodiversity in shaping our interactions with the world. Amy also shares practical habits that can enhance productivity and creativity, such as taking breaks and engaging in activities like showering strategically.Gain valuable insights into the complexities of change readiness within organizations, especially amidst technological advancements. Amy highlights the mental and physical energy required for adapting to change and underscores the crucial role of leadership in aligning teams with new visions. Discussing concepts like "mind frames" and the influence of our environment on behavior and emotions, Amy offers a comprehensive look at fostering sustainable high performance through intentionality. Tune in to learn how pro-social behaviors like trust and generosity can enhance psychological safety and optimal brain function, and connect with Amy for more resources on enhancing organizational performance.Episodes are available here https://www.thecpo.co.uk/ To follow Zircon on LinkedIn and to be first to hear about podcasts, publications and news, please like and follow us: https://www.linkedin.com/company/zircon-consulting-ltd/ To access the research white papers mentioned in this and other podcasts, please go to: https://zircon-mc.co.uk/zircon-white-papers.php For more information about the BeTalent suite of tools and platform please contact: TheCPO@zircon-mc.co.uk

Kate Raworth (“renegade” economist; inventor of the “doughnut” systems model) has one of the most dynamic and controversial theories for “fixing” or adjusting to the planetary mess we're in. Back in 2017 she released her book Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st Century Economist and it became a cult read – the Pope, Extinction Rebellion and the UN General Assembly praise it. It designs an economy that allows humans to flourish while ALSO not destroying the planet – existing within the planetary boundaries. In this chat, Kate, an Oxford professor and Club of Rome member, and I talk about how the current economic model is fundamentally flawed (all those supply/demand and growth models have never been peer-reviewed!), how to debunk a Stephen Pinker disciple and how to balance the reality of looming (locked-in) collapse and living fully (the two are actually connected). Kate is a brilliant delight of a human – this chat is fun.SHOW NOTESFind visuals of a “rational economic man” and her doughnut head here You can find out if your city has or is taking part in the Doughnut Economics Action Lab If you're from Melbourne, check out Regen Melbourne and Kate also mentions Takethejump.orgHere's the chat with Nate Hagens on energy collapseHere's my Wild episode with Jason Hickle on degrowth economicsHere's my chat with Gaya Harrington about the Limits to Growth report--If you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" pageFor more such conversations subscribe to my Substack newsletter, it's where I interact the most!Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious LifeLet's connect on Instagram and WeAre8 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Many people offer predictions about the future of work, but only a handful are trained futurists who know how to influence that future effectively. Reanna Browne stands out by making the future of work her specialty. With a thorough academic background and a decade of experience in strategic foresight, Reanna guides public, private, and start-up companies in navigating change, cultivating resilience, and using the present to shape a more promising future of work. Reanna Browne is an academically trained futurist, former elite athlete, and the founder of Work Futures, a global consultancy firm specializing in strategic foresight. She is a leader in her field and has earned recognition as one of the “World's Top Female Futurists” among fellow practitioners.In this episode, Dart and Reanna discuss:- The field of futures and foresight and the job of a trained futurist- The largest misunderstandings we have about the future- How to use the present to change what lies ahead- What led Reanna to study the future of work- The largest changes we see emerging around work- Steps we can take today to change the future of work- And other topics…Reanna Browne is an academically trained futurist, former elite athlete, and the founder of Work Futures, a global consultancy firm specializing in strategic foresight. With over a decade of experience in strategic workforce planning, Reanna guides public, private, and start-up organizations in navigating change, cultivating resilience, and using the present to shape a more promising future of work. She has been recognized as one of the “World's Top Female Futurists” by fellow practitioners. Presently, Reanna serves on the Future of Work Advisory Panel for the Australian HR Institute, drawing on her extensive academic background. She holds an MA in Strategic Foresight from Swinburne University and a post-graduate qualification from the University of the Sunshine Coast in Australia. She is also a distinguished graduate of the Finland Futures Academy and the Shillington School of Graphic Design.Resources mentioned:Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned, by Kenneth O. Stanley: https://www.amazon.com/Why-Greatness-Cannot-Planned-Objective/dp/3319155237 “The Bitter Lesson,” by Rich Sutton: http://www.incompleteideas.net/IncIdeas/BitterLesson.html Enlightenment Now, by Stephen Pinker: https://www.amazon.com/Enlightenment-Now-Science-Humanism-Progress/dp/0525427570 Connect with Reanna:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/reannabrowne Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/futurist_reanna/ Work Futures: https://workfutures.com.au/ 

Do you have free will?  In this video, Rabbi Daniel Rowe discusses the notion that free will is an illusion, popularized by Aperture.  Watch the video to see why their argument does not hold water.   Subscribe for more videos about Judaism, Jewish Mysticism and Kabbalah. Rabbi Daniel Rowe is a popular Rabbi, philosopher and educator in the UK, who uses deep knowledge of Judaism, science and philosophy to captivate and educate audiences on a daily basis. Follow Rabbi Rowe on Social media for regular new uploads and updates: YouTube: https://youtube.com/@RabbiDanielRowe?si=dLtRunDWpW0GbOkx Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1qPQn7TIWdQ8Dxvy6RfjyD Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/rabbi-daniel-rowe/id1721139516 Instagram: https://instagram.com/rabbidanielrowe?igshid=OGQ5ZDc2ODk2ZA%3D%3D&utm_source=qr Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/share/LHRiZdB5EL2VdNaA/? Amazon Music: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/cd5debfe-684c-411d-b0bc-223dcfa58a39/rabbi-daniel-rowe LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rabbi-daniel-rowe-23838711?utm_source=share&utm_campaign=share_via&utm_content=profile&utm_medium=ios_app TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@rabbi.daniel.rowe?_t=8i87VmPNE7V&_r=1 #jew #jewish #judaism #philosophy #torah

“Utopian ideologies invite genocide for two reasons. One is that they set up a pernicious utilitarian calculus. In a utopia, everyone is happy forever, so its moral value is infinite. Most of us agree that it is ethically permissible to divert a runaway trolley that threatens to kill five people onto a side track where it would kill only one. But suppose it were a hundred million lives one could save by diverting the trolley, or a billion, or—projecting into the indefinite future—infinitely many. How many people would it be permissible to sacrifice to attain that infinite good?"  -Stephen Pinker   According to my rough calculation, 50 million people were killed by their non-government countrymen in the 20'th century.  According to RJ Rummel, about 250 unarmed people were intentionally killed by governments over the same span.  5:1   "The failure of technological determinism as a theory of the history of violence should not be that surprising. Human behavior is goal-directed, not stimulus-driven, and what matters most to the incidence of violence is whether one person wants another one dead."  -Stephen Pinker

This Thanksgiving Brian Brushwood joins to discuss the many ways an average American's life is more comfortable, affluent, and magical than the vast majority of human history--including that of pharaohs and kings.   BOOKS: This episode relies heavily on "The Rational Optimist" by Matt Ridley, "Ten Global Trends Every Smart Person Should Know" by Ron Bailey, and "The Better Angels of Our Nature" by Stephen Pinker, and "Abundance: The Future is Better Than You Think" by Peter H. Diamandis. All great books that present convincing stats on the positive trajectory of the world. They're all linked to at www.mightyheaton.com/featured   RELATED INTERVIEWS: Matt Ridley on Rational Optimism Ron Bailey on Positive Trends

War in Ukraine. Global poverty on the rise. Hunger, too. Not to mention a persistent pandemic. It doesn't feel like a particularly good time to be alive. And yet, Harvard psychologist Stephen Pinker argues that things are getting better today than ever across the world, based on the metrics that matter. Like laundry.   In 1920, the average American spent 11.5 hours a week doing laundry (and that average American was almost always a woman, dudes just wore dirty clothes). By 2014, the number had dropped to 1.5 hours a week, thanks to what renowned public health scholar Hans Rosling called "greatest invention of the Industrial Revolution”: the washing machine. By freeing people of washing laundry by hand, this new technology allowed parents to devote more time to educating their children, and it allowed women to cultivate a life beyond the washboard.   The automation of laundry is just one of many metrics that Pinker, uses to measure human progress. But how does his optimistic view of the state of the world stack up against the brutality of the modern world? Ian Bremmers asks this "relentlessly optimistic macro thinker" to share his view of the world on the GZERO World podcast.

War in Ukraine. Global poverty on the rise. Hunger, too. Not to mention a persistent pandemic. It doesn't feel like a particularly good time to be alive. And yet, Harvard psychologist Stephen Pinker argues that things are getting better today than ever across the world, based on the metrics that matter. Like laundry.   In 1920, the average American spent 11.5 hours a week doing laundry (and that average American was almost always a woman, dudes just wore dirty clothes). By 2014, the number had dropped to 1.5 hours a week, thanks to what renowned public health scholar Hans Rosling called "greatest invention of the Industrial Revolution”: the washing machine. By freeing people of washing laundry by hand, this new technology allowed parents to devote more time to educating their children, and it allowed women to cultivate a life beyond the washboard.   The automation of laundry is just one of many metrics that Pinker, uses to measure human progress. But how does his optimistic view of the state of the world stack up against the brutality of the modern world? Ian Bremmers asks this "relentlessly optimistic macro thinker" to share his view of the world on the GZERO World podcast. Subscribe to the GZERO World with Ian Bremmer Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your preferred podcast platform, to receive new episodes as soon as they're published.

This is a recording of my Twitter Space with linguist Dr. Caitlin Green (@caitlinmoriah) from Aug 26, 2023. This is a live event, on a broken hellsite, so pls excuse the sound quality. Join us for a fun filled conversation about all sorts of RW nonsense! We briefly chat about Trump's mugshot, Peterson's increasingly ridiculous custom suits, language in the era of Trump, RW influencer Richard Hanania who was recently found to have written for white supremacist sites in the past, Stephen Pinker, Granola N*zis & fetishization of ‘naturalness', the function of dogwhistles, the reactionary view that society/institutions have become too feminized, and much more! If you'd like to participate in a future Space, pls subscribe via patreon.com/NiceMangos or follow me on Twitter (yes I'm still calling it that) (@nicemangos), where I announce upcoming Spaces.

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: On what basis did Founder's Pledge disperse $1.6 mil. to Qvist Consulting from its Climate Change Fund?, published by Kieran.M on March 27, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum. Disclaimer: I am totally agnostic regarding the reasonableness of this funding decision, and am merely noting that it appears to me impossible to make any assessment of reasonableness based on the information at hand. I have not conducted more than 1-2 hours research/thinking on this topic, so am uncertain of whether this is true, and am happy to be corrected. Also, the question is posed but I make no comment on whether Founder's Pledge needs answer it. Perhaps the donors to this fund are provided with some private information with regards to these causes, or Founder's Pledge reasonably believes their donors are happy to trust them a priori with respect to the efficacy and value set behind their decisions. In the last 12 months (March 2022 to present), Founder's Pledge (FP) has (publicly) dispersed approximately $4.3 million from its Climate Change Fund (CCF): Of this, $1.6 million has been given to Qvist Consulting Ltd. (QCL), for the reason shown above. Unlike the other recipients, QCL does not contain any external link to resources in which you are able to discover more about this organisation's operation/mission. Above this table, FP states that more information regarding their rationale is available here, however this document does not discuss QCL. As far as I have discovered, the only other mention of QCL is in a retrospective of the CCF after two years, which contains a minute video from Staffan Qvist (henceforth Staffan, for clarity). There is little/no new information about their mission, aside from the suggestion that "repowering" coal plants is particularly important because of the possible emissions from current coal plants in their remaining life cycle. What, then, is repowering coal? Curiously, another grantee, TerraPraxis, is the first Google result. The basic principle seems to be to try and refit those current coal plants for a non-carbon emitting form of energy production. So how does Qvist consulting fit into this effort? One might reasonably expect a search of their company to shed some light. This, however, turns out not to be the case. The company's first Google result is for their company listing on the UK gov. registry. The second is for their website, but it is merely a wordpress template totally devoid of information. So what about their founder? Staffan has, as per his LinkedIn, a PhD in Nuclear Engineering, and has written academic and popular press (including with Stephen Pinker in the NYTimes) articles advocating for nuclear energy. Staffan appears to be prolific - his LinkedIn lists him as a managing director/director at two other companies: Deepsense , an "intelligence platform", and QuantifiedCarbon, a decarbonisation consultancy, both of which appear to have little web presence (the former is difficult to search, as it is a common company name). Curiously, Staffan does not list QCL on his LinkedIn - perhaps this is an oversight? He is listed as a consultant for the Clean Air Task Force, another grantee of FP interested in nuclear advocacy. I have no reason to believe Staffan is not an excellent academic researcher and passionate advocate for a cause that seems plausibly very important (though I am no expert). Given the scale of the grant, however, it seems reasonable to wonder what in particular led FP to believe Staffan is the best contributor to this cause, and why he and QCL required such a large first grant to begin work on this. Postscript: There are other reasonable questions to be asked, including why FP believes their near-exclusive funding to organisations that appear (arguably) primarily dedicated to nuclear power advocacy is the most effective use ...

This Thanksgiving Brian Brushwood joins to discuss the many ways an average American's life is more comfortable, affluent, and magical than the vast majority of human history--including that of pharaohs and kings.  BOOKS: This episode relies heavily on "The Rational Optimist" by Matt Ridley, "Ten Global Trends Every Smart Person Should Know" by Ron Bailey, and "The Better Angels of Our Nature" by Stephen Pinker, and "Abundance: The Future is Better Than You Think" by Peter H. Diamandis. All great books that present convincing stats on the positive trajectory of the world. They're all linked to at www.mightyheaton.com/featured RELATED INTERVIEWS:  Matt Ridley on Rational Optimism  Ron Bailey on Positive Trends 

Roy Scranton, is the award-winning author of five books, including Learning to Die in the Anthropocene: Reflections on the End of a Civilization, Total Mobilization: World War II and American Literature, and We're Doomed. Now What? He has written for the NYTimes, Rolling Stone, The Nation, and other publications. He was selected for the 2015 Best American Science and Nature Writing, has been awarded a Whiting Fellowship, a Lannan Literary Fellowship, and other honors. He's an Associate Professor of English at the University of Notre Dame, and is director of the Notre Dame Environmental Humanities Initiative."Capitalism and technological innovation have brought a higher standard of living and greater health to the people of the world. That's inarguable. That's absolutely true. It's a combination of capitalism, imperialism, and technological innovation that have raised all boats in their way and increased standards of living and so on. People like Stephen Pinker make this argument. There are various kinds of Just So Stories about how we're all better off now because of capitalism and technological development than humans were in 1784. The thing that all these stories ignore, however, is two things. One is that this trendline parallels various other trend lines that measure our devastation and exploitation of the earth. This trendline is real, right? In terms of human wealth and general quality of life as measured in numerical terms. The costs for that are also manifest and have largely been externalized."http://royscranton.netNotre Dame Environmental Humanities Initiative sites.nd.edu/ehum www.oneplanetpodcast.org www.creativeprocess.infoPhoto by Ola Kjelbye

"Capitalism and technological innovation have brought a higher standard of living and greater health to the people of the world. That's inarguable. That's absolutely true. It's a combination of capitalism, imperialism, and technological innovation that have raised all boats in their way and increased standards of living and so on. People like Stephen Pinker make this argument. There are various kinds of Just So Stories about how we're all better off now because of capitalism and technological development than humans were in 1784. The thing that all these stories ignore, however, is two things. One is that this trendline parallels various other trend lines that measure our devastation and exploitation of the earth. This trendline is real, right? In terms of human wealth and general quality of life as measured in numerical terms. The costs for that are also manifest and have largely been externalized."Roy Scranton, is the award-winning author of five books, including Learning to Die in the Anthropocene: Reflections on the End of a Civilization, Total Mobilization: World War II and American Literature, and We're Doomed. Now What? He has written for the NYTimes, Rolling Stone, The Nation, and other publications. He was selected for the 2015 Best American Science and Nature Writing, has been awarded a Whiting Fellowship, a Lannan Literary Fellowship, and other honors. He's an Associate Professor of English at the University of Notre Dame, and is director of the Notre Dame Environmental Humanities Initiative.http://royscranton.netNotre Dame Environmental Humanities Initiative sites.nd.edu/ehum www.oneplanetpodcast.org www.creativeprocess.info

Tiffany was honored by Newsweek as one of the "Women Shaping the 21st Century. Tiffany is an Emmy-nominated filmmaker, founder of the Webby Awards, and author of the national bestselling book 24/6: Giving up Screens One Day a Week to Get More Time, Creativity, and Connection, which won the Marshall McLuhan Outstanding Book Award. She has received over 80 awards and distinctions for her films and work, including selection by the Albert Einstein Foundation's as one of the 100 visionaries who carry on his legacy, inclusion on NPR's list of Best Commencement Speeches, film premieres at the Sundance Film Festival and the US State Department selected Tiffany and her films to represent America at embassies around the world.Working across film, animation, video and performance, her new visual artwork recontextualizes images, sculpture, photography and collage to see new insights about perspective, scale, humans, nature and time. Tiffany is the Artist-in-Residence for 2022 at SHACK15 on the top of the San Francisco Ferry Building and will have a solo exhibition of the new artwork this fall.https://www.tiffanyshlain.com Tour - Catch East Forest LIVE - TICKETS: http://eastforest.org/tourJune 25 - Doubleblind Festival, CA July 1-4 - Retreat: Esalen Institute Hot Springs, Big Sur, CA (sold out)July 15-17 - Arkadia FestivalNov 15 - London, UKAugust 24-28 -  Retreat: Love Serve Remember Retreat, NC Dec 9-12 - Retreat: Esalen Institute Hot Springs, Big Sur, CA (coming soon)+ JOURNEY SPACE LIVE - Exclusive world premiere listening events of new East Forest psychedelic guidance music and online facilitation with JourneySpace.com, June 18. Join our East Forest COUNCIL on Patreon.  Monthly Zoom Council, podcast exclusives, live-streams, and more. Listen to East Forest music:  "IN" - the latest full album  release from East Forest - LISTEN NOW: Spotify / AppleListen to East Forest guided meditations on Spotify & AppleOrder a vinyl, dad hats, sheet music, original perfume oils, and more: http://eastforest.orgPlease rate Ten Laws with East Forest in iTunesAnd on Spotify★★★★★Sign up to learn about new retreats, shows in your area, and to join the community.Stay in the flow:Mothership:  http://eastforest.org/IG:  https://www.instagram.com/eastforest/FB:  https://www.facebook.com/EastForestMusic/TW:  https://twitter.com/eastforestmusicJOIN THE COUNCIL - PATREON: http://patreon.com/eastforest**Disclaimer: Please act responsibly - East Forest is not offering medical advice or condoning illegal activity.  Blessings.

Tai Lopez (IG: @TaiLopez) is an investor, partner, and advisor to over 20 multi-million dollar businesses. Tai has created some of the most successful advertisements in the history of YouTube. He's currently the owner of RadioShack, Pier 1, Ralph & Russo and Stein Mart. Tai has book club and hosts a podcasts The Tai Lopez Show. He has interviewed, Kobe Bryant, Hilary Clinton, Rihanna, Jordan Belfort, Steven Spielberg, Mark Cuban, Chris Paul, Caron Butler & more. Tai also owns the largest book shipping club in the world, Mentor Box. He's currently launching the Original Garage NFT. Michael's Men of Action program is a Master's course dedicated to helping people elevate their social lives by building elite social circles and becoming higher status. Click the link below to learn more: https://go.moamentoring.com/i/2 Subscribe on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/MichaelSartain Listen on Apple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-michael-sartain-podcast/id1579791157 Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2faAYwvDD9Bvkpwv6umlPO?si=8Q3ak9HnSlKjuChsTXr6YQ&dl_branch=1 Filmed at Sticky Paws Studios: https://m.youtube.com/channel/UComrBVcqGLDs3Ue-yWAft8w 0:00 Intro 1:24 Dr David Buss 2:30 Stephen Pinker 2:42 ***Tai's Father 5:21 Tai's family 7:02 **My grandpa killed a guy with a hammer 8:02 *Prof Martin D Burkenroad 10:11 Robert Frost 11:17 Ernesto Lopez stories 13:28 Narcissistic Personality Disorder 15:01 *A lot of people think I'm a narcissist 16:45 Confessions of a Sociopath 17:08 *Evolutionary Psychology 18:49 Tai's Book List, Central Limit Theorem 20:09 The One Thing by Gary Keller 27:03 The Happiness Hypothesis by Jonathan Haidt 28:57 Civilization and Its Discontents by Sigmund Freud 31:42 Everything is genetic 32:30 Racism 34:16 Satoshi Kanazawa 36:54 Not much you can do to make your kids smarter 39:26 Parental Investment Hypothesis 41:13 Dr Buss, hypothesis are falsifiable but not falsified 42:17 Evolutionary Psychology textbook by Dr David Buss 47:18 Why are you not celebrating her leaving? 49:08 **Hugh Hefner, friends with ex's 51:36 Nine months isn't a struggle 54:25 *The best man with women in the world 55:50 Allan Nation and other mentors 59:59 ***Here in my garage video, paid ads 1:03:27 **I think they all copied you 1:06:51 I was hypnotizing people to read books 1:09:10 **Amber Heard 1:12:36 *How do you choose which video to promote? 1:15:40 Crypto pizza video 1:19:00 Steps to hypnotize 1:22:38 MOAMentoring.com 1:23:34 Controversial people, OJ Simpson, Kim Jong ill, 1:25:40 *Jordan Belfort, dealing with haters 1:29:04 The donkey, the man and his son 1:32:17 Brad Lea Podcast 1:34:23 Dan Bilzerian at my bday 1:35:05 Multiple streams of income, 60% - 30% - 10% 1:37:42 ***Crypto cult 1:39:17 Creating a digital product 1:43:49 ***I may have created the most millionaires 1:45:57 Vegetables and Desert 1:49:13 Two pizzas for 100 bitcoin 1:50:50 Opinion on Crypto 1:52:30 ***Pseudo-smart people 1:56:37 *** 95% of tokens will be worthless 1:59:12 Greater sucker theory 2:01:18 Terra Luna Project 2:05:25 Bitcoin Course 2:07:56 Stick to the name brand stuff 2:10:01 Meeting Dr. Buss 2:11:04 ***Stupid People 2:13:54 Wealth to poverty disparity 2:18:06 Dr. Alex Mehr, RadioShack token 2:22:36 Centralized versus decentralized exchange is 2:27:12 Slippage, three way trades 2:27:45 Moved to Virginia 2:29:39 **Stalkers breaking into my house 2:31:59 I've never met a billionaire who I would've traded for his life 2:14:13 Living in Vegas 2:38:58 ***Board Apes 2:40:20 Original garage NFT 2:45:11 Dating Tai Lopez 2:48:39 Marriage 2:50:22 She almost divorced him for being my friend 2:53:09 **You killed somebody 2:57:45 The best guy in the world at social skills, Drago 3:02:08 **Colombian drug dealers 3:05:53 Not good looking 3:08:20 Women are fickle 3:13:37 Rhianna 3:22:47 Feminism and the patriarchy 3:29:02 Closing Program 3:30:00 Outro

We've all experienced the flood of negative emotions when someone says or does something triggering. It can often be difficult to remain calm when faced with attacks on our personal character. Sometimes criticism has less to do with us and more to do with the lens through which someone is looking—in light of their own values, hardships, and experiences. Before we rush to defend ourselves in the heat of the moment, we might consider the following:Man in the MirrorThe self-serving bias describes our tendency to attribute positive events and successes to our own character traits but blame negative results on external factors unrelated to our character. Thinking this way can place your self-esteem on an emotional roller coaster, bobbing up and down with the ebb of the tide.When things are going well, you're God's gift to humanity and deserve praise. When things fall apart, you're the victim who deserves better. This constant sense of deserving is mentally draining and unconducive to personal growth. If we don't acknowledge our shortcomings, we're less likely to learn from our mistakes and avoid repeating them in the future.Besides affecting individual behavior, self-serving bias presents with systemic effects on a global scale as well. A study conducted by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University examined the role of self-serving bias in climate change negotiations and found that college students in both China and the United States held nationalistic beliefs about which countries should reduce greenhouse gas emissions and by how much.However, when researchers disguised the problem and the identity of the parties involved, students in both countries had similar ideas about what constitutes a fair distribution of burdens. Similarly, if we try to judge situations more impartially by removing ourselves from the equation, we can come up with more equitable solutions.A similar but closely related concept is the actor-observer bias. The main difference is that the actor-observer bias focuses on both our behaviors as well as the behaviors of others while the self-serving bias only addresses our own behaviors. Fundamental attribution error, which we discussed last week, similarly addresses just one half of the equation, the behavior of others, while actor-observer bias incorporates both.Actor-observer bias explains our tendency to judge others by different standards than we judge ourselves. The hypocrisy of actor-observer bias means that if you run a red light, it's an honest mistake, but if someone else runs a red light, they are recklessly endangering the lives of others. Your actions are always justified, and your motives are always pure. But if someone else exhibits the same behavior, they are malicious and corrupt.We tend to attribute our negative behaviors to external forces outside our control and assume that the negative behaviors of other people are the result of internal factors under their conscious control. If you fail a test, it's because the teacher didn't explain the material properly. If someone else fails, it's because they didn't study hard enough.Stephen Pinker describes a phenomenon known as the “moralization gap.” During conflicts, we tend to unconsciously inflate perceptions of ourselves and underestimate the goodwill of others. Psychology studies have shown that both victims and perpetrators distort the facts of a situation to fit their respective narratives. Moreover, close friends of victims (third parties) are usually less forgiving than victims themselves (first parties).Keeping cognitive biases in mind can help us reorient our perspective and remind us that the things we experience are not necessarily personal. When you fail at something, it doesn't mean you are a failure as a person; it simply means you are a person who happens to fail sometimes. Criticisms can be seen as opportunities for improvement rather than personal attacks on our character.Putting Perspective Into PracticeNow that we understand the psychology behind how we think, how can we practically apply this knowledge in our daily lives? Neuroscience offers a couple of techniques that might help us out during times of stress. The first is called affect labeling.Affect LabelingOn The People's Scientist podcast, neuroscientist Stephanie Caligiuri of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai explains that the logical part of our brain can inhibit more emotional reactive parts like the amygdala (involved in fear, aggression, and anxiety) and the medial zone of the hypothalamus, which regulates defensive behaviors.The prefrontal cortex, responsible for decision making and judgment, can be engaged by the simple yet effective practice of affect labeling, which consists of several steps:Stop and take a deep breath to inhibit autonomic arousal and reduce stress.Label the emotion you are feeling, and be as specific as possible, e.g. “I feel angry” or “I feel afraid.”Identify the source of the emotion, and ask yourself, “Why do I feel this way?”Going through this exercise helps inhibit emotional reactivity. In studies, the practice of affect labeling has been shown to reduce the intensity of negative emotions as well as heighten the experience of positive emotions.Physiological SighNeuroscientist Andrew Huberman of the Stanford School of Medicine takes this advice a step further and advocates using the “physiological sigh” to reduce autonomic arousal and impulsive reactivity. The physiological sigh consists of two deep inhales in a row (without exhaling in between) followed by a full exhale through the mouth to empty the lungs.The action of the double inhale serves to “pop” the air sacks, or alveoli, in the lungs open, allowing oxygen to enter and carbon dioxide to be exhaled during the sigh out. Our bodies naturally perform this pattern of breathing every 1-5 minutes during sleep and waking hours.A brain region called the retrotrapezoid nucleus is responsible for triggering these sighs whenever carbon dioxide builds up in the brain or blood. Huberman explains that meditation practices also help create a gap between external stimuli and our impulse to respond to them.Stay NourishedPaying attention to our nutritional status can also help modulate our stress response. Up to 86% of us may not be getting adequate amounts of magnesium in our diet despite normal plasma levels. Magnesium insufficiency can present with irritability, fatigue, anxiety, muscle weakness, and a lowered ability to cope with stress.Magnesium counteracts stress responses by antagonizing NMDA receptors, increasing GABA release, reducing cortisol levels, and facilitating the production of serotonin. Lack of sufficient dietary magnesium can therefore perpetuate the stress response signal in the brain. Consuming too much alcohol or caffeine can further exacerbate the problem by causing rebound hyperexcitability and increasing anxiety.Magnesium-rich foods include pumpkin seeds, dark chocolate, cashews, spinach, and black beans. During times of physical or psychological stress such as prolonged fasting, sleep deprivation, or intense exercise, our demand for magnesium may be higher than normal. Supplementation may sometimes be necessary to meet our daily requirements.Used in conjunction, these strategies of affect labeling, physiological sigh, and magnesium replacement can help us to respond more rationally when provoked. Now, I'm not saying we need to be as Stoic as Spock or perfectly in control at all times, but implementing these simple tools can go a long way towards better understanding and more fruitful conversations. Next week, I'll cover tips for more productive disagreements. Until then!

Today's ID the Future features the second half of a recent webinar spotlighting historian Richard Weikart and his new book, Darwinian Racism: How Darwinism Influenced Hitler, Nazism, and White Nationalism. Here Weikart fields questions from the webinar audience. Along the way Weikart touches on the connection between Darwinism and scientific racism, the objection that Darwinism, properly understood, doesn't support scientific racism (much less Nazi racism), the racism inherent in Darwin's own writings and those of prominent early Darwinists such as Ernst Haeckel, and more recent manifestations of Darwinian-inspired scientific racism both academic and populist. This and much more is explored in Weikart's new book, available here. And for scientific reasons to reject Darwinism along with its racists implications, jump over Read More › Source

When we can identify specific cancer mutations, we can give them a name and a treatment plan, and help make them less scary. This week, Shawn & Ivan welcome Dr. David Haworth of Vidium Animal Health to discuss cancer genomics and molecular diagnostics. David recommends Enlightenment Now by Stephen Pinker (amzn.to/3HEJwGG). Learn more about David at vidiumah.com.

Enlightenment and the Pursuit of Happiness. The puritanical Left takes down the Thomas Jefferson statue in NYC, signaling its strident opposition to human happiness. Regressive History. Presenting perspectives on happiness from Locke, Leibniz, Mencken, Nietzsche and Oxford Professor Ritchie Robertson. Philosopher Immanuel Kant defined Enlightenment as "the courage to use your own intellect." A mandatory prescription, especially in this dark age of propaganda. Joe Rogan pushes Stephen Pinker on trust in media. Zen Dukkha and Nirvana. Christian closeness to God. Notes on pre-enlightenment "witch hunting" in Western Civilization, still curiously relevant today. Meanwhile, trust in the US Military is plunging, the result of Leftist power plays. Trump describes Woke General Milley as a blanking "idiot." IRS data says Trump Tax Cuts helped the middle and working classes. Investor Ray Dalio excuses authoritarian CCP as the "strict parent" approach to governing. MSNBC suddenly sanitizing the death of Rosanna Boyland -- expecting more movement soon on the official January 6th Narrative. Salvation Army drops its CRT efforts. Sure was fast, but still too late? Plus, the Sankta Lucia. Family Vignettes on a Swedish Christmas. With Listener Calls. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This episode was recorded on June 6th, 2021.Dr. Peterson, Steven Pinker, and Jonathan Haidt sit down to discuss truth, how societies function, utopias, the role of religion, & more.Steven Pinker is a psychology professor at Harvard. He's the author of Enlightenment Now and The Blank Slate. His 12th book, "Rationality," is out now. Dr. Pinker has received many awards and often writes for The Guardian and The NY Times.Jonathan Haidt is a social psychologist at NYU Stern. His research focuses on the intuitive foundations of morality across cultures. He's the author of The Righteous Mind and The Coddling of the American Mind. His next book, "Three Stories about Capitalism," is expected by 2022.Follow Steven's Twitter:https://twitter.com/sapinkerRead Steven Pinker's book:https://stevenpinker.com/publications/rationality-what-it-why-it-seems-so-scarce-and-why-it-mattersFind more Jonathan Haidt here:https://www.thecoddling.com/Read Jonathan's book:https://www.amazon.com/Coddling-American-Mind-Intentions-Generation/dp/0735224919Jonathan's most recent essay:https://www.persuasion.community/p/haidt-monomania-is-illiberal-and____[0:00] Intro[00:18] Jordan introduces guests Dr. Stephen Pinker and Dr. Jonathan Haidt[02:47] Catching up with the recent research and endeavors of Jonathan Haidt. Elaborating on the framework of moralism versus true and false when viewing the world[07:00] How cognitive biases lead to a more pessimistic view of the world[10:30] The problems with the idea of utopia and its beneficial uses when properly inserted into a society's belief (religious) structure[18:00] Examining the role group religions play in bringing people together[24:30] Jordan highlights the role he believes Christianity had in turning people's attention to the evil within us all[29:30] Reflections on Enlightenment Now. How do you engage people towards a higher set of goals without religion as a backbone?[38:00] Is the world we live in a new frontier based on the expanding influence of the internet and social media on individuals' decision-making?[48:00] Discussion on the dangers posed by the new world to the endurance of liberal democracies[56:00] Finding truth in the post-2012 social media revolution[1:06:00] The rate of change in modern life[1:07:00] The Righteous Mind, Haidt's interpretation of the religious instinct/impulse and why he gets a positive reaction from religious crowds[1:06:00] Saying goodbye to Dr. Pinker due to time constraints[1:17:30] The human ability for imitation through learning or exploring[1:25:30] Religion as a social function? Or an inherent impulse inside us all to find higher states?[1:29:30] Comparing views on the central uniting principle of groups, societies, or human beings for that matter[1:33:00] Is the extreme claim that power is the central driving factor of western European civilization grounded in reality?[1:37:52] Is having a common purpose or shared beliefs a more powerful way of bringing people together?[1:45:00] Recounting Haidt's research on disgust in both humans and animals[1:52:00] Exploring any correlation to disgust levels and political beliefs/alliance[02:02:30] Wrapping up Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity by David Graeber and David Wengrow does a great job at debunking the big histories of figures like Noah Yuval Harari and Stephen Pinker, but at a cost that ultimately undermines their argument.In this discussion and critique of a wonderfully disruptive book, I outline their case and some of the evidence, argue that they are implicitly advocating a state of nature myth, based on reason not Eden or violence, and suggest that this, unwittingly, recolonises the past with modern secular reason.But it's a book very much worth engaging with!0:44 Why they are right about retelling our back story.4:50 Why they are right about emerging evidence for its endless complexity.10:44 Tasters of the alternative Homo sapiens prehistory they tell.18:20 And yet, what is crucially missing in their retelling.28:22 How it recolonises the past with notions of secular reason, freedom and will.33:19 The first cities as ritual sites and what that says about consciousness.37:33 Why a demythologised past isn't enough for our future.

This episode was recorded on June 6th, 2021. Dr. Peterson, Steven Pinker, and Jonathan Haidt sit down to discuss truth, how societies function, utopias, the role of religion, & more. Steven Pinker is a psychology professor at Harvard. He's the author of Enlightenment Now and The Blank Slate. His 12th book, "Rationality," is out now. Dr. Pinker has received many awards and often writes for The Guardian and The NY Times. Jonathan Haidt is a social psychologist at NYU Stern. His research focuses on the intuitive foundations of morality across cultures. He's the author of The Righteous Mind and The Coddling of the American Mind. His next book, "Three Stories about Capitalism," is expected by 2022. Follow Steven's Twitter: https://twitter.com/sapinker Read Steven Pinker's book: https://stevenpinker.com/publications/rationality-what-it-why-it-seems-so-scarce-and-why-it-matters Find more Jonathan Haidt here: https://www.thecoddling.com/ Read Jonathan's book: https://www.amazon.com/Coddling-American-Mind-Intentions-Generation/dp/0735224919 Jonathan's most recent essay: https://www.persuasion.community/p/haidt-monomania-is-illiberal-and ____ [0:00] Intro [00:18] Jordan introduces guests Dr. Stephen Pinker and Dr. Jonathan Haidt [02:47] Catching up with the recent research and endeavors of Jonathan Haidt. Elaborating on the framework of moralism versus true and false when viewing the world [07:00] How cognitive biases lead to a more pessimistic view of the world [10:30] The problems with the idea of utopia and its beneficial uses when properly inserted into a society's belief (religious) structure [18:00] Examining the role group religions play in bringing people together [24:30] Jordan highlights the role he believes Christianity had in turning people's attention to the evil within us all [29:30] Reflections on Enlightenment Now. How do you engage people towards a higher set of goals without religion as a backbone? [38:00] Is the world we live in a new frontier based on the expanding influence of the internet and social media on individuals' decision-making? [48:00] Discussion on the dangers posed by the new world to the endurance of liberal democracies [56:00] Finding truth in the post-2012 social media revolution [1:06:00] The rate of change in modern life [1:07:00] The Righteous Mind, Haidt's interpretation of the religious instinct/impulse and why he gets a positive reaction from religious crowds [1:06:00] Saying goodbye to Dr. Pinker due to time constraints [1:17:30] The human ability for imitation through learning or exploring [1:25:30] Religion as a social function? Or an inherent impulse inside us all to find higher states? [1:29:30] Comparing views on the central uniting principle of groups, societies, or human beings for that matter [1:33:00] Is the extreme claim that power is the central driving factor of western European civilization grounded in reality? [1:37:52] Is having a common purpose or shared beliefs a more powerful way of bringing people together? [1:45:00] Recounting Haidt's research on disgust in both humans and animals [1:52:00] Exploring any correlation to disgust levels and political beliefs/alliance [02:02:30] Wrapping up Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/links-for-october [Remember, I haven't independently verified each link. On average, commenters will end up spotting evidence that around two or three of the links in each links post are wrong or misleading. I correct these as I see them, and will highlight important corrections later, but I can't guarantee I will have caught them all by the time you read this.] 1: Our World In Data - we are winning the war on oil spills: 2: @incunabula: “Cheese is one of the 5 things the Western book as we know it depends on. The other four are snails, Jesus, underwear and spectacles. If even one of these things was absent, the book you hold in your hand today would look completely different. I'll explain why…” 3: Mansana de la Discordia (“the block of discord”) is a city block in Barcelona where four of the city's most famous architects built houses next to each other in clashing styles: It's also a pun on manzana de la Discordia, “Apple of Discord” 4: As late as the 1930s, most upper-middle-class American families had servants. By the end of World War II, almost nobody did. The transition was first felt as a supply-side issue - well-off people wanted servants as much as ever, but fewer and fewer people were willing to serve. Here's an article on the government commission set up to deal with the problem. I first saw this linked by somebody trying to tie it in to the current labor shortage. 5: Harvard Gazette reviews Stephen Pinker's new book on rationality. Someone sent this to me for the contrast with Secret Of Our Success - Pinker argues that hunter-gatherer tribes use critical thinking all the time, are skeptical of arguments from authority, and “owe their survival to a scientific mindset”. I'd love to see a debate between Pinker and Henrich (or an explanation of why they feel like they're really on the same side and don't need to iron anything out). 6: It's hard to talk about IQ research without getting accused of something something Nazis. But here's a claim that actually, Nazis hated IQ research, worrying that it would “be an instrument of Jewry to fortify its hegemony” and outshine more properly Aryan values like “practical intelligence” and “character”. Whenever someone tells you that they don't believe in IQ, consider calling them out on perpetuating discredited Nazi ideology.

Heute geht's um das Manifest der kommunistischen Partei, Privatinsolvenzen von Milliardären, die Erbsünde, sowie um die Natur der Menschen und der Waren, genauer um ihre metaphysischen Grillen und theologischen Mucken. Es treten auf: Michael Jordan, Abba, Astrid Lindgren, Thomas Hobbes, Stephen Pinker, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, C. G. Jung, Sigmund Freud, Reinhold Messner und Eva, also die aus dem Paradies. Folge abspielen

I interview Roy Speckhardt, Executive Director of the American Humanist Association and author of Justice-Centered Humanism: How (and Why) to Engage in Public Policy for Good. We talk about how Humanists can expand their concerns from separation of church and state to current issues like race, class, gender, and sexuality; his impending retirement from AHA after 16 years; and the controversial decisions by the AHA Board to withdraw the Humanist of the Year Awards from Richard Dawkins (1996 recipient) and Lawrence Krauss (2015). [Former Humanist of the Year Award recipients Stephen Pinker and Rebecca Goldstein issued a letter of criticism against the decision on Dawkins.] For more about Roy and his work visit RoySpeckhardt.com. For more about the American Humanist Association visit AmericanHumanist.org. To buy a copy of Justice-Centered Humanism click here. Plus: I discuss the troubling pro-Trump consolidation of power within the Republican Party, and the recent "Call for American Renewal" by a group of about 100 conservatives seeking reformation of the Republican Party or (failing that) formation of a rival third party. Theme music courtesy of Body Found. Follow American Freethought on the intertubes: Website: AmericanFreethought.com  Twitter: @AMERFREETHOUGHT Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/21523473365/ Libsyn Classic Feed: https://americanfreethought.libsyn.com/rss Contact: john@americanfreethought.com Support the Podcast: PayPal funds to sniderishere@gmail.com  

"That’s such a hard question,” Gina Neff, a sociologist at the Oxford Internet Institute, responds when asked what social science research or thinker most influenced her. “It’s like a busman’s holiday for an academic, because so many things have influenced my thinking.” Her answer, by the way, was Ulrich Beck’s concept of the risk society, as explained in this 1986 book. In this montage drawn from the last two years of Social Science Bites podcasts, interviewer David Edmonds poses the same question to 25 other notable social scientists. For many of the guests, the answer proves difficult to pin down to just one person or work (“That’s like asking who’s your favorite kid,” was David Halpern’s first response). For a few guests, the response is instant. “A simple answer, really,” replies Rupert Brown, naming a fellow social psychologist, Turkish-American Muzafer Sherif, and his work in the 1950s. And sociologist Les Back, too, answers instantly: “Don’t even have to think about it: WEB DuBois’s The Souls of Black Folk. DuBois is the writer who captures both the heat and the passion of life and also the cool historical perspective and analysis in the most extraordinary compound of literary expression.” Back, in turn, was mentioned by one scholar: Kayleigh Garthwaite as her great influencer. A number of the guests cited titans from the early days of social science – Max Weber, Karl Marx, Pierre Bourdieu, Emile Durkheim, while others named modern-era titans like Stephen Pinker, Daniel Kahneman, Jonathan Haidt or Jean Piaget. And many named creators of the new canon – Jim Scott cited A.P. Thompson’s Making of the English Working Class, Alondra Nelson picked Troy Duster’s Backdoor to Eugenics, and Gurminder  Bhambra tabbed Danielle S. Allen’s Talking to Strangers: Anxieties of Citizenship since Brown v. Board of Education. And no such list would be complete without a wild card, and for that we turn to Michelle Gelfand, who turned to Herodotus’ The Histories and the lessons a 2,500-year-old post-mortem of an ancient war can teach us today: “He was a brilliant cross-cultural psychologist … he also had a really interesting observation — that all humans are ethnocentric. They don’t just think that their culture is different, they think it’s better.” This is the fourth collection in this series (and the 100th Social Science Bites podcast).

While excellent newsletters on specific themes within public policy already exist, this thought letter is about frameworks, mental models, and key ideas that will hopefully help you think about any public policy problem in imaginative ways.Audio narration by Ad-Auris.  - RSJBy now many of you must have seen the pictures from the Kumbh at Haridwar. Till last evening, almost 3 million devotees had congregated at the Har ki Pauri for the shahi snaan (how long before we change the word ‘shahi’ there?). A lot has been made about the Covid protocols that were put in place for the Kumbh. It is safe to say it is almost impossible to maintain those protocols for such a crowd. Like always this has drawn predictable responses. The ‘liberals’ have compared the way media and many from the current dispensation demonised a markaz that was organised by the Tablighi Jamaat last March and how differently they are covering the Kumbh today. A lot of commentary in the early days of the pandemic last year was about the irresponsible members of the Jamaat who congregated at the time of a pandemic and then blamed them for the spread of the virus in the country. The ‘liberals’ contrast that with the cautious, almost benign, coverage of the Kumbh that has millions risking their lives in a likely ‘superspreader’ event. The defenders of the Kumbh (right-wing, conservatives or any other label you might apply to them) have their arguments ready. The parallels with the Jamaat event are false. This is a planned event with the administration taking all precautions. Also, the devotees are out in the open which is safer than the enclosed markaz event. I will leave you to see the pictures and draw your own conclusions. Also, there’s the classic conservative defence that’s put up. This is a matter of an individual and their faith. Nobody is coercing them to go to the Kumbh. Our traditions and our culture are our inheritance. These are important for our well-being and they keep us going as a society. As Burke would have put it, some illusions and prejudices are socially necessary. I’m not interested in the arguments of either side. These are mostly transient and change depending on the context. For instance, I’m almost certain there will be instances of Covid violations during the month of Ramzan which is upon us and during Eid. Then these arguments will flip. And yada yada yada. What Explains Irrational Behaviour?The question that interests me is what is the underlying impulse that prompts devotees, adherents of a cult or fanatics of any kind to put the interests or customs of that group over their personal safety and evolutionary instinct for survival? Why do we do stupid things in groups? For a moment leave aside the the sagacity of the government that allows for an event like Kumbh during a pandemic. Ask why have over three million people supposedly taken leave of their senses and gone there? And that brings me to a topic that sets off evolutionary biologists, sociologists and philosophers on the warpath. The question of Group Selection or what’s has been updated to be called Multilevel Selection Theory. The overwhelming consensus till the 90s was that natural selection acts on genes. Each gene, or ‘selfish gene’ as Richard Dawkins would put it, tries to perpetuate itself. An individual is the result of the selection of many such selfish genes. Natural selection, therefore, acts in the domain of an individual. Nature selects those genes that are adaptable and individuals with those genes carry them forward for future generations. Others fall by the wayside.But there was always a separate strand of thinking that stayed in the shadows of evolutionary biology - Group Selection. Darwin himself had hinted at it in The Descent Of Man: “Now, if some one man in a tribe, more sagacious than the others, invented a new snare or weapon, or other means of attack or defence, the plainest self-interest, without the assistance of much reasoning power, would prompt the other members to imitate him; and all would thus profit. The habitual practice of each new art must likewise in some slight degree strengthen the intellect. If the new invention were an important one, the tribe would increase in number, spread, and supplant other tribes (emphasis ours). In a tribe thus rendered more numerous there would always be a rather greater chance of the birth of other superior and inventive members. If such men left children to inherit their mental superiority, the chance of the birth of still more ingenious members would be somewhat better, and in a very small tribe decidedly better.” The Wilsons And Their Russian DollsAnyway, as I said, group selection was not considered seriously by biologists for most of the last century. In the last two decades, however, there’s been a renewed interest no thanks to the works of E.O. Wilson (Harvard U.) and David Wilson (Binghampton U.). For them, evolution is as much a team sport as it is a battle for survival among individuals. An individual with favourable traits passes their genes to the next generations. But this could happen at more aggregated levels of biological hierarchy as well. Simply put this means there could be certain group-level traits that enable a group to survive or thrive better than other groups. These groups adapt better and perpetuate over generations while others fall away. The ‘Wilsons’ explained the multilevel selection using the Russian matryoshka dolls (extract below from the American Scientist Sep-Oct, 2008): “To think clearly about group selection, it is important to compare the survival and reproduction of individuals in the right way. The problem with "for the good of the group" behaviors is that they are locally disadvantageous. A prudent member of the herd might gain from conserving resources, but cheaters within the same group gain even more. Natural selection is based on relative fitness. If solid citizens are less fit than cheaters within their own group, then something more is required to explain how they can evolve in the total population. That something is a positive fitness difference at a larger scale. Groups of solid citizens are more fit than groups of cheaters.These interacting layers of competition and evolution are like Russian matryoshka dolls nested one within another. At each level in the hierarchy natural selection favors a different set of adaptations. Selection between individuals within groups favors cheating behaviors, even at the expense of the group as a whole. Selection between groups within the total population favors behaviors that increase the relative fitness of the whole group—although these behaviors, too, can have negative effects at a still-larger scale. We can extend the hierarchy downward to study selection between genes within a single organism, or upward to study selection between even higher-level entities. The general rule is: Adaptation at level X requires a corresponding process of selection at level X and tends to be undermined by selection at lower levels.This way of thinking about evolution is called multilevel selection (MLS) theory. Although the term "multilevel selection" is newer than the term "group selection," the Russian-doll logic has been present from the beginning, going back to the works of Darwin.”Back To KumbhI have my scepticism about multilevel selection theory. Stephen Pinker wrote a terrific essay - ‘The False Allure Of Group Selection’ - refuting the theory in The Edge (June 2012). The essay and the comments that followed are quite simply the best debate you can read on this topic. It is also a good example of how good the internet can be.I agree in large parts with Pinker but there are days when I see the events around me and I think this must be group selection at work. That we humans reached where we are today because of certain group traits that worked for us. Empathy, solidarity, the ability to forge a common belief, to work for a unitary purpose or have a shared slate of intentions - these are what made us unique and accelerated our evolution. Maybe religion works that way for people. It is the most cohesive of groupings (atleast monotheistic religions are). It is coded within us that coming together and sharing common, deeply held beliefs - about a supreme being, about how the world works or how to lead our lives - all help perpetuate our group. We thrive through these communitarian traditions and practices that are passed down to us over generations than staying apart, fending for oneself alone and letting selection play out at an individual level. We are programmed to preserve our group traits because intuitively we know they have helped us come this far. They might or might not take us from here to wherever we want humanity to go. But our instincts won’t allow us to abandon what has worked for us so far. As David Wilson famously put it:“Selfishness beats altruism within groups. Altruistic groups beat selfish groups. Everything else is commentary.” That alone can explain why people act in ways that go against their own survival instinct. There is a broader instinct to perpetuate at play. That’s what drives millions to the Kumbh. That is what will drive many to community Eid prayers later this month. That’s why your mom still wants to attend that family wedding in the middle of the pandemic. They aren’t being foolhardy. They know their importance. They can’t explain it to you. They just can feel it in their bones. HomeWorkReading and listening recommendations on public policy matters[Video] Jonathan Haidt on The Groupish Gene: Hive psychology and the Origins of Morality and Religion. Haidt is simply a brilliant explainer of multilevel selection theory (as he is of other things). Get on the email list at publicpolicy.substack.com

Heute geht‘s um die ideologische und militärische Verteidigung und Bekämpfung des Kapitalismusses. Und alle, alle sind gekommen: Es treten auf: Ulrike Meinhof, Rudi Dutschke, Andreas Rosling, Stephen Pinker, Ulrike Herrmann, Karl Marx, Josef Stalin, Leo Trotzki, die Arbeiter von Wisconsin, Axel Cäsar Springer, Heinrich Albertz, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Jürgen Habermas, Mao, Ho Tschi Minh, Margaret Thatcher, Donald Trump, Sigmund Freud, Georg Schramm und nicht zuletzt: Helene Fischer. Folge abspielen

Did you know the can opener was invented 50 years AFTER the tin can? So how did they open cans before that? That’s one of the interesting stories about product packaging that kicks off this episode of the podcast. Source: Thomas Hine author of The Total Package (https://amzn.to/3mlNoC1). If you watch the news, you would think the world falling apart and going to hell. Yet it is totally NOT true. Sure, the world has problems not the least of which is the corona virus but when you look at all the indicators of well-being in the world, things are actually going pretty well. . In fact we are living in an age of enlightenment according to Harvard professor Stephen Pinker. Author of the book, Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science Humanism and Progress, (http://amzn.to/2FKuhNb). Listen as Stephen reveals why things are much better than you probably think. What he says will make you feel great! We all have our own musical tastes and preferences. Where do they come from? What do they say about us. That’s what Nolan Gasser is here to discuss Nolan is a composer and musicologist who was the chief architect of the Music Genome Project, which powers Pandora Radio. He is also author of Why You Like It: The Science and Culture of Musical Taste (https://amzn.to/31BCtfy) What’s the difference between flammable and inflammable? It’s weird because they are two words that sound as if they are opposites but actually mean the same thing. Listen as I explain why one of the words is 400 years older than the other and where it came from. https://www.thoughtco.com/difference-between-flammable-and-inflammable-607314 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Episode 14 Season 4 Integrity Radio - Cancel Culture & MGTOW Z and Johan talk about air quality and wild fires in Colorado and California, fire tornado’s, touring with bands Tinklepotty. Just finished shooting video for pickingadaisy.com featuring the Crosman 392ps multi-pump pellet rifle. Aliens visit and play Mexican terrorist music. Talking about being viewed as both a minority and a racist. Growing up in Mississippi as a kid, cancel culture and the imbalance that is being experienced, confusion over what political left and right is. Being hopeful of a progressive future where conservatives and liberals actually represent the term they define themselves as. The left is banning the right for not being left enough which is very right wing. Suppression of the word is what gives it power. Lenny Bruce. Creating imbalance by suppressing bad ideas. Like Hitler being rejected as a painter. The balance between racism and physical abuse and the difference between Hawaiian vs Southern racism. The power of human expression. Fear motivation Nature and nature wealth resist poverty. Bringing up the bar for almost all humans to benefit most. Denver Colorado architecture being amazing castle like designer with Frank Loyd Wright, Denver history of printing money. John Denver from back in the 70’s. Getting harassed by Denver Mexican gang style dude. Describing a weird type of sound terrorism using sonic extremes with a slight hint of Mexican genre. It’s very non descriptive and painful to hear. Playing a song by Z titled “Good From The Bad” a hard heavy rocking sassy piece. Hear more music over a https://sifuzmusic.wordpress.com Discussing when “Good From The Bad” was recorded. This version was recorded live in Los Angeles in about 1990. Pre Nirvana and Sound Garden Seattle bands Bam Bam, Hoi Polloi, and various bands. Selling cassette tapes in the early days to get you music heard in the 80’s. Spearheading a genre doesn’t often mean being popular or successful. Hollywood’s influence on our culture. Thespianism music and being an Anchor OG. The possibility of being shadow banned, Hitler and art school. The profound negative effects of suppressing expression. The French salon era spawning Impressionism. Various methods of expression and having a wide understanding of various points of view. Homogenizing in order to be accepted into a community. Comedy as a vehicle of dealing with contrary points of view. Contemplating the ratio between truth and funny. Unscripted rant. Cancer culture and the most recent YouTube videos with Stephen Pinker. MGTOW or Men Going Their Own Way is discussed with Cancel Culture. Perving on the Youtube MGTOW girl. Polarization and being disenfranchised. Woman catching up to mens inappropriate behavior and third world people catching up to consumerism, not hurting people because of different views. Chappelle as a grand wizard. Living through multiple riots east coast race wars of the 70’s and the Rodney King riots in LA. The data on mental health in America and Sweden. Prison populations, opioid epidemic, having doom in your genes Germanic, Norwegian roots, Engage with others and resist fearful actions. The value of wing Chun training through it all at https://sifuz.com Contribute over at https://paypal.me/sifuz Talking about wanting to get out into the mountains and doing the show out on the road in a couple weeks… hopefully. Outro song is titled “Darla” by Z #sifuz #integrityradio #mgtow #cancelculture #shadowbanning --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/integrity/support

Closing out our three part series on Stephen Pinker’s book: The Better Angels of Our Nature. Today we discuss tie everything together, the inner demons, better angels and how the humanitarian revolution fundamentally changed humankind’s paradigm of the world. If you enjoyed this series, consider picking up a copy of Steven’s book: The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined https://www.amazon.com/dp/0143122010/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_8.jcFbDMS5YTK --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/mdrnac/message

Part one of three in our Series on Stephen Pinker’s book: The Better Angels of Our Nature. Today we discuss Humanities inner demons and the framework of the book. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/mdrnac/message

Part 2 of a three part conversation between Paul and Bill, where the main themes are skepticism, Catholic education, the mysterious absence of the Spanish Flu from our historical consciousness prior to 2020, and the philosophical conundrums of materialism, transgenderism, and scientism. Paul and Bill continued their conversation about skepticism toward science and religion. They touched on several examples of science failing to show that it “knows everything” or gets everything right. There must be a constant push for additional inquiry and knowledge. Bill said the teaching of religion in K-12 Catholic schools needs to express the hunger to learn more—the dynamic sense of joy in seeking God—just as the teaching of science sets an exciting stage for learning. The co-hosts discussed the lack of sure scientific knowledge about the COVID-19 pandemic. This led to references to the Spanish flu. Its history is poorly understood by most people, just as there was poor understanding in 1918 about the flu’s origins and impacts. Philosophy and natural science became unmoored from each other after the 17th century. Bertrand Russell appeared to share an opinion that Paul considers quite natural—the reluctance to accept that no philosophical inquiry into reality can be conducted without employing at least some original, foundational assumptions. Stephen Pinker acknowledges that materialistic thinking suffers from logical inconsistencies, Paul said. He referred to Pinker’s landmark book, The Blank Slate, an inquiry into the origins of human nature. Quantum physics, in its effort to explain how everything works by describing the behavior of atoms, is full of paradoxes, Paul said. Image by Miroslava Chrienova from Pixabay

The human mind is an incredible thing. It allows us to think, speak, perceive and imagine everything from the ordinary to the extraordinary. But what is the difference between the mind and the brain? And can we really train our minds to be better, healthier people?Today on The Agenda Podcast with Stephen Cole we talk to Professor Steven Pinker, a Johnson Family Professor of Psychology at Harvard University, about what we understand so far about the human mind. Professor Pinker goes into detail about the difference between the mind and the brain and what that difference means for us in our everyday lives [01:30]. He also dispels the myth that we only use a small percentage of our brain, and tells why this myth persists despite the best efforts of brain scientists [04:12].Professor Pinker explains the areas where there are differences in the mind between men and women [08.03]. Finally, Professor Pinker talks about his book Enlightenment Now and how the progress that we've made in society affects the way we think [10:48]. We also speak to Paul McKenna, Britain's best-selling non-fiction author. Paul tells us how a run-in with a hypnotist started his journey into exploring and studying the mind [12:28]. He also explains he thinks we might have some innate psychic or intuitive protection mechanisms that prepare us for big world events [18.30].

In this episode, we talk with Ojai's Mayor about the local response to the pandemic, the shock to the economy and the subsequent strain on the city's "rainy day" fund. We also talk about the dilemma of promoting social distancing and healthy activities such as hiking in our beautiful backyard, as well as pockets of resistance, herd thinning and his "embers" metaphor linking the pandemic to the Thomas Fire. We talk about our new favorite oxymoron, "disciplined freedom," and the concept of social insurance. We talk about the probable impacts of the pandemic on the elections this coming November. We also talk about the lessons of Henrik Ibsen's play, "Enemy of the People," Plato's parable of the cave, the invasion of Los Angeles hikers, my son's bout with the novel coronavirus, Johnston's stage management of the OJ Simpson "trial of the century," as a courts administrator in Los Angeles, as well as his pension battles as the chief executive officer of Ventura County. Then the discussion takes several discursions into Jim Thorpe, Dwight Eisenhower, General Grant's differing opinions on Robert E. Lee (overrated) and Joe Johnston (underrated, who could have achieved the Confederacy's goals had he not been fired by Jefferson Davis), and the Great Toilet Paper Shortage of 2020. In the monologue, Bret Bradigan talks Johnston's stint as city manager in the early 1970s, and the existential threats to Ojai that cropped up every month or so during that time, which leads into Stephen Pinker's "Enlightenment Now's" counter-intuitive premise that things are better now than they ever have been. We do not talk about Ventura River's once-abundant steelhead runs, the Decembrist Revolution of 1825 or the Strokes' new album, "The New Abnormal."

Haven and I reached back into the archives (December) as we discuss GLOBALIZATION: (To reiterate we are NOT providing investment advice, just a discussion of international relations issues that we find interesting) We heavily reference the below presentation from Ken Mehlman's group. It is worth opening up in a new tab. https://mehlmancastagnetti.com/wp-content/uploads/De-Global-2019.pdf 1) The World: Leadership & Direction Up for Grabs 2) Major Economies: Aging Fast 3) Internet Policy: Regionalism Replacing Globalism 4) Populism: The New Path to Power 5) U.S. Politics: Anti-Globalists Ascendant 6) U.S.-China: The Great Decoupling 7) Business: Evolving Strategies for Braving the New World 8) Government Economists: Fewer Fiscal / Monetary Tools 9) Leadership: New Global Players Emerging 10) Super-Disruptors: Climate, Debt, Technology & Urbanization Other interesting issues pop up around our discussion of China as the news of the CORONAVIRUS was in its infancy and nowhere near the level of publicity that is occurring right now. Another concept that we touch on throughout this presentation is "Are things better than we think?" Stephen Pinker has written a book on that topic . . . https://stevenpinker.com/taxonomy/term/4265?page=1 We also discuss Sarah Chase and the impact on the regression of trust in governmental institutions. . . https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Chayes Enjoy . . . and don't forget to subscribe! https://www.amazon.com/Wealth-Actually-Intelligent-Decision-Making-1-ebook/dp/B07FPQJJQT

Haven and I reached back into the archives (December) as we discuss GLOBALIZATION: (To reiterate we are NOT providing investment advice, just a discussion of international relations issues that we find interesting) We heavily reference the below presentation from Ken Mehlman's group. It is worth opening up in a new tab. https://mehlmancastagnetti.com/wp-content/uploads/De-Global-2019.pdf 1) The World: Leadership & Direction Up for Grabs 2) Major Economies: Aging Fast 3) Internet Policy: Regionalism Replacing Globalism 4) Populism: The New Path to Power 5) U.S. Politics: Anti-Globalists Ascendant 6) U.S.-China: The Great Decoupling 7) Business: Evolving Strategies for Braving the New World 8) Government Economists: Fewer Fiscal / Monetary Tools 9) Leadership: New Global Players Emerging 10) Super-Disruptors: Climate, Debt, Technology & Urbanization Other interesting issues pop up around our discussion of China as the news of the CORONAVIRUS was in its infancy and nowhere near the level of publicity that is occurring right now. Another concept that we touch on throughout this presentation is "Are things better than we think?" Stephen Pinker has written a book on that topic . . . https://stevenpinker.com/taxonomy/term/4265?page=1 We also discuss Sarah Chase and the impact on the regression of trust in governmental institutions. . . https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Chayes Enjoy . . . and don't forget to subscribe! https://www.amazon.com/Wealth-Actually-Intelligent-Decision-Making-1-ebook/dp/B07FPQJJQT

(00:00-09:23): Rookie Bears Kicker Eddy Pineiro came in clutch on Sunday against the Denver Broncos with a 53-yard game winning field goal. Brian and Ian touch on the pressure he overcame to do his job. They also touch on Kirk Cameron’s new show to talk with celebrity friends. (09:23-19:05): Evangelicals Who Distrust Muslims Likely Don’t Know Muslims. Brian and Ian touch on the stigma of Muslim’s as Christians, but believe it’s largely linked to misinformation and not knowing them personally. (19:05-28:30): What did we preach? Brian and Ian touch on what they preached on Sunday. Ian started a series called “This Changes Everything”. It is about how we are desperate to change things in our lives to make things easier or ideal. Brian talked on being passionate of entering into the Kingdom of God. Does God still act in immeasurably powerful ways? (28:30-38:03): Brian and Ian touch on 14 Questions to Ask Yourself Before Engaging in Tough Conversations. Karina Philip from Relevant magazine on how to address tough topics as Christians. They address how listeners engage with each other on topics and articles they post on their Facebook page. (38:03-48:40): Celebrities such as Chance the Rapper and Kanye West are more outspoken about their faith now more than ever. Brian and Ian talk about how hard it can be to speak out and defend your faith while in the spotlight. Hollywood can be a hostile place for people of faith. (48:40-59:16): One thing to change: Anecdotes aren’t data. Stephen Pinker in the Harvard Gazette addresses the lack of solid data and fact-based conversations. How often do we see comments beneath posted articles denouncing said article’s credibility? Brian and Ian touch on this. (59:16-1:09:58): Trygve Johnson writes “Gen Z Is Making Me a Better Preacher” in Christianity Today. There are new ways pastors and preachers address the younger generation in sermons. Brian and Ian reflect on this and relate to their own congregations. (1:09:58-1:16:32): Brian and Ian’s “Weird Stuff We Found on the Internet”: Apparently a giant lives in the clouds in the skies above Jersey. A new skydiving attraction features dodging a fighter jet. Florida article offers fun activities and history of biscuits. SoMa is so scary with biting folks on the streets. Meanwhile, show-and-tell in Sweden is being blown out of proportion.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Heute geht's um die Frage, ob AFD-Wähler zu Recht Nazis genannt werden müssen, unter besonderer Berücksichtigung des Satzes: Das wird man ja wohl noch sagen dürfen! Und ob es nicht vielleicht doch diskursive Auswege geben könnte. Es treten auf: Stephen Pinker, Harald Welzer, Joseph Goebbels, Kevin Kühnert, Jörg Meuthen, Meister Eder, Daryl Davis und der Klu-Klux-Clan. Folge abspielen

A year on from launching the GDS podcast, senior creative writers Angus Montgomery and Sarah Stewart talk about their jobs.   The pair discuss their career paths and the role of writers in government and how clear writing can help people to do their jobs better.     Angus Montgomery: Hello, and welcome to the latest episode of the Government Digital Service podcast. My name is Angus Montgomery and I’m a Senior Writer at GDS. And for this episode of the podcast, I’m joined by my colleague Sarah Stewart.    Sarah Stewart: Hello. I’m also a Senior Writer at GDS.    Angus Montgomery: So our voices might sound quite familiar because both Sarah and I, with our colleague Laura, have been on all the episodes of the GDS podcasts that we’ve done so far and as part of those episodes, we’ve been interviewing people across GDS and across government about their work and talking about the things that they do to help transform government and to build digital services and to make things better for users.    And, we realised that we’re nearly a year into this podcast now, I think this is our 11th episode, and we haven’t actually properly introduced ourselves and talk about what we do, and how our work contributes to digital transformation across government and helps everyone in GDS and across government do their jobs better. So that’s what we intend to do with this podcast.   Sarah Stewart: And we’re also going to be sharing our top tips for clear writing, which we’ve put together over the past 3 years of working at GDS, so we’ll be sharing those with you as well.   Angus Montgomery: Yeah, so Sarah and I, just as a bit of background, we’re both Creative Writers at the Government Digital Service. We both joined on the same day. Can you remember what day that was? Testing you.    Sarah Stewart: It was May 23rd.    Angus Montgomery: I thought it was the 22nd.    Sarah Stewart: Strong start.    Angus Montgomery: Sarah’s memory is better than mine. May 23rd 2016. And we work as part of a team called the Creative Team in GDS.    And we’re in a team that also has people like filmmakers, production experts, graphic designers, Graham Higgins, who’s also in the room with us, who is doing the production of this podcast and is one of our filmmakers, and audio production and all sorts of other amazing things as well.   And our role, the role of our team, is to help everyone in GDS, from Director General down throughout the organisation of all parts talk about their work, communicate their work and explain what it’s doing to help government work better and to make things better for users.   Sarah Stewart: Don’t sell us short, Angus. We also write at a ministerial level as well. So it’s from Minister down.   Angus Montgomery: So, yeah what we want to do with this podcast as Sarah has already talked about, is explain a bit about our jobs and what we’re here to do, talk a bit about writing and communication and why it’s important and to give our ten top tips, pieces of guidance, principles, whatever it is that you want to call them about how to write and communicate more clearly.    So that’s what we’re going to do. But before we kick that off...Sarah, can you tell me a little bit about what your background is and how you came to work at GDS?   Sarah Stewart: Well I don’t know how far we should go back - but at school, the only 2 things that I thought I was good at and enjoyed were English and rounders. And there’s not much you can do with rounders, so I pursued English. I read English at university, came down to London, did my postgrad down here. Became a journalist. Hated every second of it. I was a business journalist and it was a generally terrible experience for me. Although I did pick up some useful things, like always carry a notebook and pen with you, which I still do to this day.    Angus Montgomery: How’s your shorthand?   Sarah Stewart: It is non-existent. And also about libel as well, that was an important lesson.   Angus Montgomery: Oh yeah, that’s very important.   Sarah Stewart: And then I was lucky enough to get a job working at Shelter, which is a housing and homelessness charity and they also campaign for better housing rights and conditions. And I was a Content Writer and Producer there, so I launched their advice Youtube channel, I edited their advice on their website, I launched their advice sound clips, and I edited their blog as well, of case studies.   And then after a couple of years, I found out about the job at GDS.   Angus Montgomery: What attracted you to GDS?   Sarah Stewart: Funny story actually, I had never heard of GDS before applying. I was at Shelter and someone that I worked with left the job advert on my desk with a post-it that said ‘this is the kind of job you can go for in a few years time’ and I thought ‘Screw that, I'll apply for it now.’    It wasn’t really my ambition to work in government, but it kind of worked out well. I really enjoy what we do now. But you did know about GDS before you joined.   Angus Montgomery: I did. So my background was similar in the sense that I was a journalist, I hadn’t worked doing anything else actually, I’d been a journalist my entire career   Sarah Stewart: And you liked it?   Angus Montgomery: Uh, yeah. I mean like...Liked is not a strong word.   Sarah Stewart:...liked it more than I did? Did you cry in the loos everyday like I did?   Angus Montgomery: No, that’s really unpleasant and horrible. I’m sorry that you went through that. But there might have been some loo crying at certain stages. I think the thing about journalism, as you sort of implied, is that when it’s good, it’s really fun and it is a great industry to work in.    And you can do lots of different things, and lots of exciting things and meet lots of interesting people. It is really really tough. And when it’s bad, it is very very unpleasant and a difficult environment to work in.    So I was working for a website called Design Week, which covers the UK design industry. Around the time I became editor was around the time that GDS was setting up and launching and getting a really big profile. And was winning awards like a D&AD black pencil and the design of the year awards, so obviously it was a really really big design story. And I got to know some of the design team in GDS, and I was you know obviously, while that was happening, an observer of what was happening, I was reading all the blog posts, I was looking at all the posters and all the other communication that it was putting out    Sarah Stewart: Oh my god, you’re really putting me to shame.   Angus Montgomery: But GDS was a really big story, it looked really interesting to me, was hugely appealing in the sense that of, something similar to what you said, this was an organisation that was serving the whole nation.    And an organisation that was very clearly there to do something good. It was there to help government work better for users and for everyone, for civil servants and everyone. Being involved in something like that was really really appealing, and remains really really appealing, it’s why I still come to work everyday.   Before we get onto the kind of, the writing aspect and the top tips, the kind of the educational part of this podcast, what is it that you enjoy most about working at GDS and what do you find most satisfying?   Sarah Stewart: That’s a good question. I’m lucky to say that they are quite a few things that I enjoy. I like the fact that when I write, and that can be if I’m drafting a speech or writing a presentation or helping someone edit a policy document or write a ministerial forward, that I’m actually doing something that’s important to the idea of democracy, because in order for people to make good decisions, they need to know what the facts are. And I like that I can ask the difficult questions that get to the facts, I like that I can challenge people and say ‘no, you need to include more detail’, I can say ‘you should leave this out because it’s maybe not the right time to come out and say this particular thing.’   I love the feeling when someone, maybe this is a bit self-indulgent, but when someone is delivering a speech that I’ve written, it’s like the best feeling in the world, because I’m naturally introverted and I know that these words aren’t my words, but when a joke goes down really well and the audience laughs or when you, you know, when the key message has been hit and people understand it and an action is taken, that’s massively rewarding.    But there’s... I get so much pleasure from just the act of writing. I mean when I’m not doing it at GDS, I’m doing it in my spare time. There’s just something really satisfying, I guess like mathematicians, when they do a sum correctly or they workout a formula and it and it all works out wonderfully well, it’s writing a sentence that flows beautifully and is truthful and you know, moves people to do something or to consider something in a different way.    So I don’t think there’s really one part that I don’t enjoy. I mean I hate meetings, but doesn’t everyone? What, how about you?   Angus Montgomery: I think something similar. Although I’m kind of less wedded in a weird way to the craft of writing. I mean writing, it’s not something that I don’t enjoy but I kind of, I don’t get a huge amount of pleasure in a sense from, like constructing a sentence or the kind of technical aspects of it. But the thing I enjoy most is, I really like the idea that writing is structured thinking.    So when you write something down, you need to be really clear and it needs to be really structured and it needs to make sense. And so the thing I get most satisfaction from is, when you’re working with someone to help them explain a difficult concept that can exist maybe only in their own head, and they’re explaining it in a way that they can’t fully articulate, you’re just about understanding it.  And there’s that breakthrough moment when you write something down and you show it to them and they go ‘yes, that’s exactly what I’m trying to say!’     Sarah Stewart: Yeah.   Angus Montgomery: ‘That makes total sense, that’s exactly what I’m trying to do’. That to me is the really satisfying part of this, is like getting. And I suppose corollary to that is the fact that we work with really intelligent, really nice people as well, but really super intelligent people that are really driven and really focussed on what they’re doing, and have these really complex things going on in their heads.   And maybe because they are so close to that work, the aren’t always capable or don’t always find it easy to communicate as clearly as possible. And that’s really our role is to go in there and say, ‘right, let me inside your head, let me inside all those really deep technical details and All the different things that you’re thinking about. And I will help you communicate this clearly’.    Sarah Stewart: Yeah.   Angus Montgomery: And like that to me is the really satisfying part, it’s like being the bridge between this really intelligent person who has a really complicated idea, and the person who needs to understand that.   At the risk of asking I suppose a cliched question, tell me about your day-to-day, and what it is that you actually do, and what it is that we do and what we write and produce?   Sarah Stewart: Yeah, so we write a whole host of things. So there’s obviously the kind of straightforward written content, so blog posts, press articles, op-eds. I tend to...   Angus Montgomery: What’s an op-ed?   Sarah Stewart: Oh sorry. Good question. It’s, well actually I was, I…   Angus Montgomery: I don’t know the answer to this actually, which is why I…   Sarah Stewart: It’s either…So there are some people who think it’s an opinion editorial. So someone just speaking about a subject that they know. Other people think that it means ‘opposite the editorial page’ But basically what we take it to mean, and what I’m doing I think, is writing an opinion piece so…   Angus Montgomery: For a newspaper or magazine.   Sarah Stewart: Yeah for a newspaper or a magazine. And so I’ll be writing on behalf of somebody, I don’t think it’s any secret to say that you know in government, there are speech writers and there are other...people like us exist in order to kind of help Senior Civil Servants communicate.    So, I tend to specialise in speeches but we also write presentations for people across GDS, we might be writing forewords for strategy papers, we might be editing, you know, policy documents, but that’s a very small part of what we do I think. And we also write scripts for animations and films and do things like podcasts.   Angus Montgomery: So we wanted to give you ten principles that help us communicate clearly, and that we think you might benefit from as well. And some of them are you know, things that might seem obvious and some of them may be are a bit more left field. But they are all things that we kind of, help us to our day-to-day jobs.    So without further ado, Sarah do you want to give us point one and tell us a little bit about it?   Sarah Stewart: OK so my first principle is: Establish ‘The Point’. Before you write anything, whether it’s a speech, a blog post, a presentation, a love letter – establish what the point of your writing is. And ‘The Point’ comprises two parts – and I’m thinking of trademarking this actually, it’s: What you want you want to say and why it needs to be said. We’ll come onto audience in just a second.    So once you’ve established what the point is, write it on a post-it note, stick it at the top of your doc. It will be your guiding star. It will keep you relevant, it will keep you focused and if you can’t figure out what the point is, don’t write. Don’t agree to do the speech. Don’t agree to do the presentation. The chances are you’ll come up with the point at a future date, but if you’re really struggling to establish what it is that you want to say and the reason for saying it, just don’t do it. You’ll waste people’s time and wasting people’s time is a sin.    Angus Montgomery: Point three of the point, I think. You’ve got what you want to say and why you want to say it but also who you want to say it to.The audience, as you mentioned,  is an important thing. You have to assume that the thing you’re saying is interesting to someone or to a group of people, and then you have to work out who that group of people is. Knowing that will help you work out the best way of communicating your message. It might be that the thing you want to say or write is best done as a blog post, or it might best done as a film, or best done presentation or it might be better to draw it as a picture and create a poster of it. Knowing the what, the why and who you’re trying to tell it to, will help you shape your message and the way you’re communicating your message.    My first point so number 2 of our principles is, ‘write it like you’d say it’. So I mentioned earlier about a big part of our role, or the main part of our role is to help organisations, this organisation, communicate in a human voice.   To me a human voice is the voice that you would use to describe something to a friend when you’re you know, having lunch or at the pub or at the park or whatever. Like if this is that thing about like, if you’re trying to describe a really difficult technical concept, then think about how you would explain it to a friend or to your mum or to you know, son or daughter or whatever it might be.   And then write down the way that you would do that. So it shouldn’t be really that much difference between the written word and the spoken word. Although obviously you’ll have far fewer sort of ‘ums’ and ‘ahs’ and all those sorts of things.   But like a human voice written on page should sound like speech to me. So when you read something, it should sound like someone is saying it to you, someone is speaking to you in the way that, in a sort of slightly informal, kind of suppose, kind of friendly tone of voice but in a way that’s understandable and relatable.   And that really helps you to, I think, get away from what can be a quite, there can be a formality about the written word, and I think that this is again, why some people find writing quite a sort of scary prospect, is it can feel like you have to use the longest most complex, most impressive words possible.    And actually you really don’t. You need to use the shortest, clearest, simplest words possible just as you would if you were trying to explain something verbally really clearly. So write it like you’d say it, and the way, a thing that can help you to do that is, as you’re writing something down, read it out.   Does it make sense if you say it out loud? Does it make sense if you say it in your head? Does that article that you’ve written sound like something you would naturally say? If it does, then you’re broadly along the right lines I think.   Sarah Stewart: That’s a good tip. And it neatly links it my next point, which is ‘don’t try and sound clever’.   Essentially what you want to be is clear and concise and don’t over do it. Don’t try and impress anyone because you are probably doing something that is impressive. You probably have all the vocabulary you need to express it clearly. Leave it there.    This reminds me of a good quote by the investor Charlie Munger. He said ‘if you want to be thought of as a good guy, be a good guy.’ So if you want to come across as smart, then be smart and explain what you’re doing. But don’t go out there having an agenda that you have to come across as something. It’s inauthentic.    You see it, particularly in academic writing. People who are so in that world become - it’s almost impossible to cut through what they’re saying. For example, my friend sent me the abstract of his book and his opening sentence was 58 words long with no punctuation. I could individually pick out what every single word meant, I knew the meaning of each word but in the syntax, in that sentence, I had no idea what was going on. And I was trying to give positive feedback and I said look I’m really sorry, I don’t know what it is you’re trying to say and he said: ‘Oh, well, it’s written for academics’ - well, presumably at some point you want other people to read it!    Angus Montgomery: Sometimes in this organisation as well, people say ‘oh it’s written for Senior Civil Servants’ or it’s written for a particular audience or it’s written someone whose a specialist, but they are people too. When you’re a senior civil servant, you don’t suddenly become this person who communicates in a really arcane fashion or understands things in a really complex fashion. You’re also a person who needs to understand things really, really quickly, so being able to write things down and explain things in a clear and accessible fashion is appropriate for any reader, regardless of who they are.    Sarah Stewart: Yeah, actually there’s a really good discussion if you want some further reading or further listening. It’s Stephen Pinker in conversation with Ian McEwan on academic writing and the importance of clear writing. So after you’ve listened to this podcast, do give it a watch it’s on YouTube.    Angus Montgomery: Which leads nicely, these are segueing quite nicely together I think, to my point or my next point. Which is something that we say quite a lot at GDS, which is ‘show the thing’. And by that we mean if you’re talking about something or you’re trying to tell someone about a product or a service or a thing, just show it.   Explain how it works, say what it is, don’t use metaphors, don’t try to dress it up, don’t try to make it sound like it’s doing things that it isn’t. Just explain what it does.   Because as you’ve just said, if the thing that you’ve built or the thing that you’re trying to describe is valuable and worth talking about, then all you need to do is explain it clearly and it will do the work for you.    You don’t need to dress it up, you don’t need to put marketing on it, you don’t need to you know make it sound like it’s the incredible next you know, use loads of adjectives like ‘stunning’ and ‘life changing’. You just need to show it and if it’s a worthwhile thing then the reader will understand that and accept that and will be on board with it.   So show the thing, talk about it as clearly as possible, say what it does, and that’s all you need to do. That’s basically it.   Sarah Stewart: I’ve come up with an original next principle, Angus. Burn! Which is about feedback and welcoming feedback and a sub point of this, is the message: you are not your writing.    So the other day, some kids came in for work experience. Can I call them kids? Some students came in for work experience and I spoke to them about my job and writing more generally. And a question they asked was ‘what do you do when someone gives you really bad feedback about your writing?’ I think the most important and first thing that you should learn and it’s the most difficult thing that writers have to come to terms with is: you are not your writing.    Yes, it has come out of your head and through your hands and is informed by the experiences you’ve had, but once it leaves you, it is a separate entity. And once you have that disconnect, that it is a separate entity, you stop being precious about it and you start thinking about the work and the work is the most important thing.    So, when someone says to you ‘this is a really confusing piece of writing’ or ‘this is a really confusing essay ‘ or ‘this is a muddled blog post’, they are not saying ‘you are a terrible person.’ They are not saying ‘you’re an imbecile’ or ‘you are a failure as a writer’. They are saying ‘this is muddled’ ‘this is confusing’. It doesn't feel good to be criticised or to have negative feedback, but it’s a gift. It’s an opportunity for you to...   Angus Montgomery: Feedback is a gift   Sarah Stewart: It really is. I was thinking about the best advice I was ever given as a writer which was being told, when I was a journalist, which is probably why I hated it so much, that I was a rubbish writer. So I think I needed to hear that things weren’t very good or I would have been writing, you know, like a crazy woman for the rest of my life. You need feedback, you need to welcome that in. Because it’s always about the work, it’s never really about you, and it’s never even about you when you’re writing memoir or yoru autobiography, it’s still a separate thing.   Angus Montgomery: That leads, leads very neatly into my next point.   Which is another GDSism, something that we say quite a lot at GDS which is, ‘the team is the editor’.   And before I got into this, because it’s a common thing we say at GDS, I should probably give a shoutout to some of the original Creative Team and Creative Writers at GDS, who you know we’re standing on the shoulders of giants and all that stuff, a lot of certainly my ways of working and thinking have come from these people.   So people like Giles Turnbull, Ella Fitzsimmons, Matt Sheret, Amy McNichol and this is the thing I used to hear a lot from them, ‘the team is the editor’ and that means, to pick up on exactly your point, we’re not doing this writing on our own, like we are the writer kind of in charge ultimately of the document or the piece of writing that will go out but we’re working in collaboration with a lot of other people.   So we could be working in collaboration with the person who has developed the idea or product or service or whatever it is that we’re trying to communicate. We’ll be working with a comms specialist who will be thinking about what’s the best way to best place to publish this.    You might be working with someone who edits the blog. And we’re working with the rest of our team as well because we’re not working in isolation. Pretty much everything that I write, I share with you and I think vice versa.    And you have to, you’re nothing without an editor. A writer is nothing without a good editor. No book that you have read and no newspaper article that you’ve read and no film that you’ve seen and no commercial you’ve seen on TV is just a result of a single writer...   Sarah Stewart: That’s so…   Angus Montgomery: ...with their vision.   Sarah Stewart: Yeah, that’s so true. And I think that’s why people get so put off writing as well because they seem, people think of writers as, like, strange creatures inspired that they you know, get hit on the head by muse and are able to write perfect prose.   But it goes through loads and loads and loads of editing to get that kind of pure, perfect sentence.    Angus Montgomery: So ‘the team is the editor’ and the editor is the unsung hero of writing as well. They are the person in the background that is making all these things work. The reason people give feedback isn’t because they want to undermine you or attack you, it’s because they want to make the work better. And you have to welcome that and find that as well. As a writer it’s really important not to isolate yourself and do it on your own, and plough away and...   Sarah Stewart: It is nerve-wracking to share your work and you do have to be aware of when, for example, say I’m writing a speech, it’s not unusual to have twenty people in the document all feeding in their ideas and you have to be able to distinguish: what is a ‘showstopper’ so a fact that needs to go in or something that has to come out because it’s incorrect, what’s personal opinion and what’s style. And if you have a really clear idea of that, there does come a point where you can say, ‘Actually, no, I’ve taken in everything I need to take in and I’m happy with the piece now.’   Just to add to that, sharing with the team and the team is the editor, of all things I’ve written and shared with you or shared with the team, I’ve never had a case where it’s been made worse by a suggestion, the work has always improved.   Angus Montgomery: If the person who is giving you feedback understands what this piece of writing is trying to do and that person is sort of vaguely competent, then they will give you useful constructive feedback.    Sarah Stewart: I feel like maybe we’re rambling on this or maybe I’m rambling on this, but In terms of feedback givers, it’s very easy to criticise someone. It’s very easy to say ‘this isn’t good’. It takes intelligence to say what’s not quite working about it. So when you are giving feedback to someone, really consider, first of all, of course, their feelings because you don’t want to come across as, well you don’t want to be an awful person, but what’s useful for them to know about this. And we’ve got some fantastic posters around the office on how to give feedback effectively. So just make sure that if you’re required to give feedback, you’re doing it in an intelligent, kind way.   Angus Montgomery: In a constructive fashion.   Sarah Stewart: Yes, better.    Angus Montgomery: and your next point?   Sarah Stewart:... is to ‘read’. Reading is as important as writing. If you want to be a really good writer, you have to read lots and you should read good things. You know like the classics like Nabokov, James Joyce and Jane Austen. Yes of course you should read them because they’re fantastic, and it’s a pleasure to read a good writer.    But also, just  don’t be too much of a snob about it.Read a Mills and Boon book, read Fifty Shades of Grey, and again no shade on E.L James because she’s a multi-millionaire doing what she loves.   Angus Montgomery: It takes skill to write that stuff surely.   Sarah Stewart: Yeah. In particular I would say read poetry. Not only because I think it’s super cool, poetry can teach you a lot about conveying complex ideas in a very short space of time and you know, we’re you know kids of the digital age, we don’t have a very long attention span so understanding how to kind of compress ideas is very important.   But poetry can teach you a lot about the music of a sentence. And especially for speech writing, it’s particularly important. A poem can teach you about the sound of words, the meter, how a piece scans, it’s called scansion. So there’s no alchemy to writing really well, it is just about practicing writing and reading.    Angus Montgomery: Any poem in particular or poet in particular?   Sarah Stewart: Well...good question. I would recommend the Confessional poets, so like Sylvia Plath. But actually, do you know what? Any American poet from the 1950s onwards because American poetry in particular, they have a way of, I say ‘they’ in a very general sense, I would recommend the Confessional School and the New York School in particular  – – as you’ve asked – because they just say it how it is.    And also the Beat poets as well, although they can talk a lot in abstraction, you can learn a lot by their directness.   Angus Montgomery: Yeah.    Sarah Stewart: So yeah. Ginsberg, Kerouac.   Angus Montgomery: Yeah.   Sarah Stewart: Frank O'Hara.   Angus Montgomery: Very minimal viable words.    My next principle, next tip, is quite a practical one. And it’s something that might not work for everyone, but I find really really helpful, which is to never start with a blank page.   So if you’re writing something, the scariest thing is when you kind of open up a Word doc or a Google doc or have a physical sheet of blank paper in front of you, and you’re like ‘oh my god, what do I do with this now?’ like ‘I need to turn this from this blank sheet into a speech or an article or a blog post or a presentation or whatever it might be.    And that blankness is the most terrifying part of this and starting is the most terrifying part of any project and writing is no different. So the way that I deal with that is when I have a blank page in front of me, I immediately go to Google or other search engines are available obviously, and or previous pieces that I’ve done that are similar, copy paste and just throw as much text as I can on to that page, that even if it’s only tangentially similar, gives me something to work from.   So that I’m not starting from scratch, so that I have something to bounce ideas off of or something re-work or something that guides me in the right direction, and also takes away that fear of you know, just having a totally blank page in front of you.   Sarah Stewart: I do that all the time actually. If I’m writing a speech for example, I always write ‘good morning or good afternoon everyone’. And then if anyone asks me if I’ve made any progress, I can at least say I’ve made a start!   Angus Montgomery: Yeah exactly. The vital start is there.    Sarah Stewart: Yeah. It’s psychologically important to have something down on paper.    Angus Montgomery: Yeah.    Sarah Stewart: You’re right.   Angus Montgomery: So I think it’s that, it’s that starting and then sort of flowing, flowing from there basically.    Sarah Stewart: Yeah.   Angus Montgomery: And what’s your next principle?   Sarah Stewart: So my next principle I’ve entitled, ‘enough is enough’. So just don’t overdo it. Just write enough, and enough doesn’t mean writing an epic poem nor does it mean writing a haiku. Sorry, there are a lot of poetry allusions in this – but it means writing enough to get the job done.    And the poet Frank O’Hara had a lovely quote about, you should read it, it’s called...it’s in a piece of writing that he called Personism: A Manifesto. And he describes writing and how effective writing is wearing a piece of clothing so it fits you perfectly, so it does exactly the job that it’s meant to do.    Angus Montgomery: It’s showing the thing.   Sarah Stewart: And you might ‘show the thing’...it’s a very confusing analogy.    Angus Montgomery: It’s a very confusing mixing, we’re mixing several metaphors here to prove a point.   Sarah Stewart: Yeah.   Angus Montgomery: But yeah. And bringing me, without really a segue in this one, but bringing us nicely nevertheless to the final point which is, ‘stay human’.   And this is not necessarily a writing point, this is something obviously that we should be all doing all the time in whatever work we do, but the reason I’m talking about it, and we’ve touched on this several times, writing isn’t something that we just do in isolation on our own    Writing our, the writing that we do is helping one person, one human being, convey a message to another person, another human being or a group of them. And the people in that process are really really important, like the written word is important, but the people in that process are the most important parts.   So just when we’re dealing with people, we always try to be as nice and humble and listen as much as we can and advice and guide and all those sorts of things. But just try and do it nicely because it can be a stressful situation for people.  So thank you Sarah.   Sarah Stewart: Thank you Angus. This has been nice, hasn’t it?   Angus Montgomery: This has been nice.   Sarah Stewart: So that brings us to the end of our 10 principles. This podcast will be embedded into a blog post, which will be published on the GDS blog. Please leave your comments for clear writing and any advice that you have for others.   Angus Montgomery: Thank you for listening to the latest episode of the GDS podcast. We hope you enjoyed it and if you want to listen to previous episodes that we’ve done or what to subscribe for the future, then please just do to wherever it is that you download your podcasts from and hit the subscribe button.   And we hope to have you as a listener again soon.    Sarah Stewart: Farewell.   

Several recent bestselling books have focused on the Enlightenment, including Stephen Pinker’s Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress. But what was the Enlightenment, and how should we view its effects? Bishop Barron offers his take today. A listener asks how Christians determine which parts of the Mosaic law in the Old Testament are still in effect today.

Several recent bestselling books have focused on the Enlightenment, including Stephen Pinker’s Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress. But what was the Enlightenment, and how should we view its effects? Bishop Barron offers his take today. A listener asks how Christians determine which parts of the Mosaic law in the Old Testament are still in effect today.

Amanda and Jenn discuss good “relationship reads,” Asian authors, classic retellings, and more in this week’s episode of Get Booked. This episode is sponsored by the Read Harder Journal, But That’s Another Story podcast and Life, Death, and Cellos by Isabel Rogers. Subscribe to the podcast via RSS, Apple Podcasts, or Stitcher.   Questions 1. Hi! So I’m a part of this book club and we are in need of a new book. All the members of our book club are recent college grads and have just entered adulthood. Most of us have just moved to a new city and are in the process of finding our place, launching our careers and figuring out what we want to do with our lives. Collectively we often feel a sense of ‘being lost’. There are so many options in this world and decisions we need to make and those choices can be overwhelming. We would love to read a book that resonates with the struggles, excitement and growing pains of the season we are currently experiencing. We also would love to read something that can serve as a source of hope for us-hope that we will figure out how to approach this season and who we want to be in this world. Also, we prefer to read novels. Thank you so much! –Emily   2. Hi! In the last month, I have been reading If We Had Known by Elise Juska, Vox by Christina Dalcher, The Poppy War by R. F. Kuang, and Red Clocks by Leni Zumas. I didn’t set out to read books surrounding heavy and/or politically-charged issues, and I generally wouldn’t characterize my reading life as trigger warning heavy. However, I really enjoyed reading these books that aren’t strictly reality but are still very real and can help me think through real and pressing issues. Can you recommend more novels like these? Please no white male authors because its 2019 and I’m tired of hearing men talk—thanks! –Tally   3. I’m looking for a book I can listen to on audio with my husband. We have listened to A Walk in the Woods, Ender’s Game, the King Killer Chronicles, The Expanse series etc. He is a history buff who loves fantasy, classic adventure literature (like the Count of Monte Christo) and long history books like The history of Salt, Heart of the Sea, McCullogh presidential biographies etc. I am an ex-English major. Recently on audiobook I have enjoyed Spinning Silver, A Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds, My Lady Jane, Becoming by Michelle Obama and The Winter Garden by Kristen Hannah. I love your weekly recs! Thanks in advance. –Sarah   4. Hello, book friends! And help! I just finished a reread of Kristin Cashore’s trilogy (Graceling, Fire, and Bitterblue) and now I’m flailing around at just how great they are, and how I’ve never read anything that feels quite like them. I love how the characters take care of each other. I love the characters! They’re very likeable people, and I also love how practical they are. I like how these books are books with romance in them rather than books about romance. Same for the magic–it’s mostly very low key, but is still unique and interesting. I am so desperate to find other books that feel the same way these do! They don’t have to be YA, though I would prefer sticking to secondary fantasy worlds. Extra super special brownie points if the main character is queer! THANK YOU! –A   5. Hi Jenn and Amanda, Thank you for this amazing podcast and all the recommendations that you make. One of my main reading goals this year is to continue reading more diversely and as part of that I want to read fewer American authors. American authors always end up making a big chunk of my reading and I am trying to change that to broaden my perspective. So, could you please recommend any books by Asian female authors? No Asian-American ones as I feel that would still be cheating. I have read the more popular authors like Arundhati Roy, Han Kang, Celeste Ng, Mira Jacob, Jhumpa Lahiri, Kamila Shamsie etc. I read all kinds of genres, fiction or non-fiction, and would love to hear your recommendations. Thanks a lot! –Nikhila   6. Hi, looking for some books I could give my sister. She reads mostly fiction, mixing classics and modern picks. Some favourites of hers include Pride & Prejudice, Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, His Dark Materials, The Book Thief, The Last Runaways. This year she loved Naomi Novik’s Uprooted and Spinning Silver and Eleanor Catton’s The Luminaries. I gave her Hannah Kent’s Burial Rites and she really liked it but found it hard because of how sad it is. I keep thinking of and giving her books I think she will love but they are often pretty bleak, and she would love some less depressing books to throw in the mix (I gave her Ferrante, her best friend gave her A Little Life, she will need something in between) They don’t have to be all light and fluffy but at least a happy ending would be great. Thank you! I love the show, you have made my tbr almost impossible, which is the best problem to have.   7. I’m looking for a fun book to listen to on audio with my husband on a roadtrip. The problem is that we have quite different interests–I love literary fiction and popular fiction: Crazy Rich Asians, Outlander, The Goldfinch, The Marrying of Chani Kaufman. He mostly reads nonfiction–Stephen Pinker, books on objectivism, and comparative religions. Some books we’ve listened to together and liked are The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri, Shroud for a Nightingale by P.D. James, and The Martian by Andy Weir. I know this is kind of a tough one, so thanks in advance! You guys are awesome. –Aaryn   Books Discussed Upstream by Mary Oliver Becoming by Michelle Obama Startup by Doree Shafrir (rec’d by Rebecca) Chemistry by Weike Wang (tw: family emotional abuse) Tiny Beautiful Things by Cheryl Strayed Book of Unknown Americans by Cristina Henriquez How Long Til Black Future Month by NK Jemisin The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker (tw: rape, gendered violence) On Such a Full Sea by Chang-Rae Lee (narrated by BD Wong) The Queen’s Thief series by Megan Whalen Turner Witchmark by CL Polk The Good Women of China by Xinran, trans. By Esther Tyldesley The Lonesome Bodybuilder by Yukiko Motoya, translated by Asa Yoneda (tw: body horror) Jane Steele by Lyndsay Faye Pride by Ibi Zoboi Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders The Fortunes by Peter Ho Davies

In this episode of Functional Philosophy, I answer the following questions: 00:38 - "I was watching a livestream with Yaron Brook, Onkar Ghate, and Gregory Salmieri about the Jordan Peterson panel at OCON. Yaron said the following in the chat: "Happiness is far from self-evident." That really threw me for a loop. Isn't happiness self-evident? It's simply irreducible that happiness is desirable. You can't get underneath the fact that happiness makes you feel happy. It's the foundation of ethics. There's no "proof." Am I missing something here?" 12:11 - "I have been watching your videos and I want to thank you for sharing your ability to explain philosophy and to identify errors and false premises. I have never seen someone able to articulate Objectivism in a way that shows such a deep and thorough understanding of the philosophy outside of a few of the best thinkers at ARI (Onkar, Greg Salmieri, HB and LP). I find it rather astonishing that you are on par with these highly trained professionals, especially since you appear to be under 30 years old. Is there anything in particular, as far as your thought/learning process, that has allowed you to advance so rapidly? Any particular material or mental habit? P. S. I really want to encourage you to keep up what you are doing and not to sell yourself short. You can be a marvelously successful philosopher even today." 21:06 - "Stephen Pinker’s latest book “Enlightenment Now” was released a few months ago. Since its release, there has been some discussion about resurrecting (or perhaps preserving) Enlightenment ideas. However, one notable criticism of The Enlightenment, mainly from conservatives like Ben Shapiro, is the failure of the French Revolution - Which we know resulted in replacing the French monarchy with a secular dictatorship before collapsing into the dictatorship of Napoleon Bonaparte. My question is: Why did the Enlightenment work in America, but fail in France? Conservatives like to claim that it was religion (notably Christianity) that grounded the Enlightenment in America." *** Functional Philosophy is the weekly Q&A podcast that helps you gain and strengthen the philosophical foundations required to achieve certainty, success, and happiness. Subscribe to hear philosopher Charles Tew, an expert on Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism, answer your questions on philosophy, politics, career, and more. New episodes on Mondays. Website: https://www.charlestew.com Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/charlestew Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/charlestew

Just in time for Thanksgiving, we speak with best-selling author and "immersive journalist" A.J. Jacobs about his extraordinary gratitude project and brand new book, "Thanks a Thousand".He decided to say "thank you" to every single person involved in producing his morning cup of coffee. "It turned out to be thousands of people," A.J. tells us. "I thanked the barista, the lid designer and the coffee bean farmer, but also the truck driver who delivered the beans. The idea is to show the interdependence and interconnectivity of our world."We hear useful insights about gratitude, including tips that can be helpful and fun at Thanksgiving Day gatherings. This episode is a joint "simul-pod" with our friends at "Half Hour of Heterodoxy" podcast. Deb Mashek, Executive Director of the Heterodox Academy is the co-host along with Richard and Jim. In our confrontational and troubled times, this episode is a reminder that cooperation plays a vital role in many of the most basic human rituals. "To make a cup of coffee, you need dozens of countries, and so it's partly an argument against this rise of nationalism and tribalism to show that we are so interconnected," says A.J.Several books and lectures are mentioned, including "Enlightenment Now" by Stephen Pinker and "I Pencil" by economist Milton Friedman. A.J .recommends a worthwhile charity: Dispensers for Safe Water, an innovative low-cost approach to increase rates of household chlorination in East Africa. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Pete Worrell's interview with Stephen Pinker at the 2018 Bigelow Forum

This week’s guest is Charles Eisenstein, author of five books that challenge our inherited stories of civilization and progress – but move beyond critique and into an articulation of the new paradigm emerging simultaneously through all fields of human inquiry and practice: new modes of inter-being in a living and intelligent world; humility and celebration of the mysteries that bridges science, art, and spirit; and new perspectives on how we determine value and how we can thrive amidst an age of transformation.Charles offers us a literate and savvy look at how we got to where we are and what we will require to move past the suicidal, ecocidal myths that got us here. He’s also warm and kind and makes it easy to unfold into this awesome conversation, in which he calls BS on the rhetoric of endless economic growth and scientific conquest, and invites us to co-dream the future that so many of us have become too cynical to hope for. Enjoy this bracing dose of cool, clear wisdom and bright insight:Subscribe on Patreon to watch the uncut interview:https://www.patreon.com/posts/20618842Our New, Better Life?https://charleseisenstein.net/essays/7061-2/Why I Am Afraid of Global Coolinghttps://charleseisenstein.net/essays/why-i-am-afraid-of-global-cooling/Discussed:What inspired Charles’ thorough history and critique of civilization, The Ascent of Humanity, and how it differs from “anti-civilization” texts.The independent convergent evolutions of civilization in Mesopotamia, China, India, and several other places, pointing to the inevitability and directionality of what we call “progress.”What new stories emerge at the intersection of the timeless attractors toward a whole and healthy, thriving biodiverse world of human inter-beings, and a fragmented post-ecocidal VR fully artificial landscape?When is it useful to think of humans as part of nature and when is it useful to think of humans as distinct from nature?“Participation begins with listening. And that listening is motivated by accepting that there’s something to listen TO. That there’s something that wants to happen. What wants to happen and how can we participate in that? How can we exercise our gifts in service to this larger thing?”What cultural appropriation gets wrong in its attempts to retrieve and revive indigenous rites (“It’s not the content of the rituals; it’s the spirit of the rituals.”)Money as a ritual: “One of the reasons money comes so easily to us is that it’s a kind of ritual. The human mind…ritual is its territory.”“Law, Medicine, Money, and Technology: those are the most powerful realms of ritual that we have.”Operating on a story that believes the world to be dead leads to a world that is, in fact, dead – whether or not it actually was dead in the first place. Treating nature as a resource rather than as a community of minded cohabitants and potential collaborators is a self-fulfilling prophecy and an act of self-sabotage.Charles’ critique of the New Age technologies of manifestation as oblivious of where the intention or vision comes from in the first place, how we’re enfolded into our environments……and how paradoxically similar that critique is to the disenchanting philosophies described by people like Yuval Harari and Timothy Morton, who make the case that it’s equally the case that the world is alive, or that humans are basically just machines. Or Erik Davis’ “re-animism,” in which we return to a pre-modern sense of a sentient environment through our encounter with AI-suffused devices.How the scientific quest for control over a purely mechanical cosmos pushed us all the way around into some truly weird revelations about the indeterminate, irreproducible, and contingent workings of our mysterious universe.Why machines don’t provide a sufficient metaphor for understanding consciousness, and certainly not for reproducing it.Is trying to fit the complexity of the world into a linear narrative structure the problem at the root of all this? Is it a form of violence to talk about time and evolution having a direction?“I’m not a story fundamentalist. If I say the world is built from story, I also recognize that that itself is also a story. I look at the story of inter-being, for example, as really just the ideological layer of an organism that is far deeper than story.”“There are many ways to know. And we’re conditioned by a story that says only the measurable is real. So we’re conditioned to give priority to ways of knowing that have to do with putting things in categories.”“Progress as currently formulated is not real progress at all. We’re not getting ANY closer to the fulfillment of human potential. Well, aybe we are getting closer on one very narrow axis of development. But there is so much more to a fully expressed human being…and we’re moving away from it in a lot of ways.”What metaphor for mind/life/nature is set to replace “the computer,” just as “the computer” replaced “the steam engine,” which replaced “the geared watch?”How black box AI solutions restore the mystery and magic to the technosphere, replacing reason with blind faith.Kevin Kelly, Stephen Pinker, William Irwin Thompson, Douglas Rushkoff, Arthur Brock,“The more empathic our participation, the better off we’ll be.”Can we be TOO empathic?“I think on some level, we all DO feel what all beings are feeling.”The boundaries we draw between our selves and the world, between one organism and another, also evolve.The healing power of grief.Purge-aholics Anonymous.The evolution of service as a continuously shifting, molting thing that changes, that requires careful listening. No moment is the same.The sacred disquiet that attends our new perspective as we learn to see a bigger (ever-bigger) picture.“We have to be cognizant of the inevitable reduction that happens when we assign values to things…one way to translate the humble awareness of the limitations of quantified value is to design currencies that do not need to grow in order to survive.”Did money invent science?“Property is an agreement. It’s not an absolute objective thing…as much as libertarians would like it to be.”Why cryptocurrency (wants to, but) can’t replace human agreement with code.Subscribe on Apple Podcasts:https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/future-fossils/id1152767505?mt=2Subscribe on Google Podcasts:http://bit.ly/future-fossils-googleSubscribe on Stitcher:https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/michael-garfield/future-fossilsSubscribe on Spotify:https://open.spotify.com/show/2eCYA4ISHLUWbEFOXJ8C5vSubscribe on YouTube:http://youtube.com/michaelgarfieldSubscribe on iHeart Radio:https://www.iheart.com/podcast/269-FUTURE-FOSSILS-28991847/Join our Facebook Discussion Group for daily news and conversations:http://facebook.com/groups/futurefossilsSupport the show (and an avalanche of other mind-expanding media):http://patreon.com/michaelgarfieldBig thanks to our featured sponsor, transhumanity.net!7y8qr5yz See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

The Paradox of Choice, by psychologist Barry Schwarz, is a book that has influenced many people interested in minimalism. Schwarz argues that the extensive freedom of choice in affluent societies has become detrimental to psychological and emotional well-being. This episode provides a critical review of Barry Schwarz's arguments. Show Notes: Become a Patron of TVL to get bonus episodes and rewards! The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less by Barry Schwartz The Paradox of Choice TED Talk 227 Review of The Better Angels of Our Nature by Stephen Pinker

Tom Chivers is a writer, who specialises in the intersection of science, philosophy and politics. He was a former staff writer at BuzzFeed UK and an assistant comment editor at the Telegraph. He's currently writing a book about Artificial Intelligence. In this episode, he talks about atheism, the value of truth and verification. He also talks about attaining truth through scientific methods, taking principles from both classical philosophy and computer science to interrogate the hard questions. Finally, he talks about the UK's media environment, and how best to handle an altercation on Twitter. The episode also features Nick Spencer, who talks about his upcoming conversation with Stephen Pinker, and his review of the writer John Gray's "Seven Types of Atheism", which is now available on the Theos website. You can follow Theos at @theosthinktank and you can follow Elizabeth at @theoselizabeth on Twitter.

Everyone has a blood type right? Well, not really. Some people have no blood type – not to be confused with people who have a universal blood type. Do you know if you are type A, B, AB or 0? Why do you have a blood type anyway? That’s the first topic of conversation today. (http://mosaicscience.com/story/why-do-we-have-blood-types)To hear tell, the world is going to hell. Watch the news and it seems as if we are on the road to self-destruction. But we are not. In fact we are living in an age of enlightenment according to Harvard Professor and bestselling author Stephen Pinker. In his new book, Enlightenment Now the Case for Reason, Science Humanism and Progress, (http://amzn.to/2FKuhNb), Stephen reveals that while many think the world is in decline, the opposite is true and he joins me to discuss. What he says will lift your spirits.(And remember, to get Stephen Pinker's audiobook version of Enlightenment Now for free from Audible, just go to www.audible.com/something and sign up for a 30-day trial and your first book is free!)If you use a handheld hair dryer, you may want to hold it a little differently than you probably do. That’s because hair dryers emit an electromagnetic force that may not be so good for your health. The same is true for other household appliances. I’ll explain which ones and what you should do differently. (https://www.prevention.com/health/healthy-living/electromagnetic-fields-and-your-health)Do you swear? Chances are you do. Most people do. But why? Melissa Mohr, author of the book Holy Sh*t: A Brief History of Swearing (http://amzn.to/2Dty0fM) explain why every language has swearing and what purpose it serves.

Sure, the Enlightenment was good, but it wasn't everything. At least, that's what these thinkers say. In this episode James Carleton hears about the past, present and future of western democracy.

We detect a downshift in the mood of Democrats. We perceive Liberals losing their faith in "progress" and their "view of the world" as they bitterly cling to their "Obama Dolls" in the Trump Era. Stephen Pinker's new book, Enlightenment Now, attempts to stave off panic in these "wavering souls." But does he succeed? Philosopher John Gray doesn't think so. Former Hillary advisor Philippe Reines marvels over Trump's "remarkable" Pennsylvania Rally and says he sees how Trump could win in 2020. Beseiged Never Trumper Bill Kristol develops a curious "Davy Crockett Complex." Alamo time? MSNBC's Joy Reid defends the IQ of Maxine Waters. CNN avoids coverage of the Democrats' growing Farrakhan Scandal. Elizabeth "Pocahontas" Warren refuses a DNA test. ABC's Joy Behar privately apologizes to VP Mike Pence. Trump floats "paper" ballots. Mueller contemplates the Seychelles as Democrats migrate their hopes over to porn star Stormy Daniels. Meanwhile, a new Harvard-Harris poll shows overwhelming support for Trump's trade policies. Also, we explore new revelations from AG Jeff Sessions concerning his quiet appointment of an experienced investigator into Deep State malfeasance. Grounds for optimism? Has Stealth Sessions been up to more than we've realized? Former DA Joe diGenova weighs in. Plus, we remark on the 48th Anniversary of The Beatles song "Let It Be." With Listener Calls & Music via Jamey Johnson, George Strait, the Wellingtons and The Beatles. Sacred Song duet from Hank Williams and Little Jimmy Dickens. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Stephen Pinker argues that the Enlightenment is the key driver behind massive improvement that is taking place in a number of different areas. He claims the enlightenment is working. Phil and Stephen discuss whether they agree with Pinker’s analysis and what the chances are that the enlightenment will keep doing what it’s doing. The Enlightenment is Working  Globally, the 30-year scorecard also favors the present. In 1988, 23 wars raged, killing people at a rate of 3.4 per 100,000; today it’s 12 wars killing 1.2 per 100,000. The number of nuclear weapons has fallen from 60,780 to 10,325. In 1988, the world had just 45 democracies, embracing two billion people; today it has 103, embracing 4.1 billion. That year saw 46 oil spills; 2016, just five. And 37% of the population lived in extreme poverty, barely able to feed themselves, compared with 9.6% today. True, 2016 was a bad year for terrorism in Western Europe, with 238 deaths. But 1988 was even worse, with 440. Background on the Enlightenment  Anti-enlightenment Trends Post-Modernism  Authoritarian Governments  Alt-Right / White Nationalists / the “Dark Enlightenment”   WT 403-716 Eternity Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Living Well In The Midst Of Uncertainty: Aruna Ratanagiri, (approx. 28 mins)  rate of change, technology, Uber, block-chain, anxiety, change, anicca, wisdom, amplification, comfort, complacency, food, heedlessness, benefit, impermanence, purification, reality, nibbindati, selfishness, slavery, Stephen Pinker, human rights, education, empathy, narcissism, mindfulness, wise views, Mindfulness In Schools, dot b, amygdala, hopefulness, fear, chaos, spiritual immune system, threatening, cooperation, intuition, creative vigilance, optimism, pessimism, tension, stress, apathy, hopelessness, depression, mutual benefit. .

Which piece of social science research has most inspired or most influenced you? This question has been posed to every interview in the Social Science Bites podcast series, but never made part of the audio file made public. Now, as we approach the 50th Social Science Bite podcast to be published this March 1, journalist and interviewer David Edmonds has compiled those responses into three separate montages of those answers. In this first of that set of montages, 15 renowned social scientists – starting in alphabetical order from all who have participated – reveal their pick. As you might expect, their answers don’t come lightly: “Whoah, that’s an interesting question!” was sociologist Michael Burawoy’s initial response before he named an éminence grise – Antonio Gramsci – of Marxist theory for his work on hegemony. The answers range from other giants of social, behavioral and economic science, such as John Maynard Keynes and Hannah Arendt, to living legends like Robert Putnam and the duo of Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein (and even one Social Science Bites alumnus, Stephen Pinker). Some of the answers involve an academic’s full oeuvre, while others zero in on a particular book or effort. John Brewer, for example, discusses his own background in a Welsh mining town and how when he went to college he encountered Ronald Frankenberg’s Communities in Britain: Social Life in Town and Country. “That book made sense of my upbringing and committed me to a lifetime’s career in sociology,” Brewer reveals. And not every answer is a seminal moment. Danny Dorling, for example, names a report by his Ph.D. adviser, computational geographer Stan Openshaw, who took two unclassified government reports to show the futility of nuclear war. And not every answer is even an academic work. Recent Nobel laureate Angus Deaton reveals, “I tend to like the last thing I’ve ever read,” and so at the time of our interview (December 2013), named a journalist’s book: The Idealist by Nina Munk. Other Bites interviewees in this podcast include Michelle Baddeley, Iris Bohnet, Michael Billig, Craig Calhoun, Ted Cantle, Janet Carsten, Greg Clark, Ivor Crewe, Valerie Curtis, Will Davis and Robin Dunbar.

A special Boom Festival "Future Fossils on The Road" episode featuring some awesome people Michael met while playing and speaking at the amazing biennial psytrance festival in Portugal.Shaft Uddin is a Tantric Unicorn and Sacred Sexual Awakener (with noisy arm bangles): http://sacredsexualawakening.com* Support Future Fossils Podcast on Patreon: patreon.com/michaelgarfield *We discuss:Shadow work, “turning into the swerve,” and going into darkness to claim the light. Realizing that the monster in your dream is you. Dealing with people’s projections and how to make peace with the people who embody your opposite or rejected self – in other words, how to be a “polyamorous sex cult leader” with grace and dignity and humility.“There’s nothing wrong with desire. There’s nothing wrong with harnessing your sexual energy for greater abundance and manifestation.”The dam is to the river system as the taboo is to the body. How do our needs to control nature manifest in ways that obstruct or interfere with our well-being?The horrible true history of the corset – designed to keep women from speaking up for themselves.“The more I study the vagina, the yoni, the sacred space, the more I understand myself. Because I understand where I came from.”The historical tendencies of masculine magic being about projecting the will and controlling nature, and feminine magic being about aligning will with the power of natural cycles.The power of the vulnerability of group intimacy and Michael’s experience with The Body Electric School at Burning Man 2008.Shaft’s ambidextrous “twin goddess awakening” practice and the creation of circuits of loving energy and other “woo woo stuff” that cured his loneliness, depression, and substance abuse.The difference between “polyamory” as loving multiple people and recognizing the original unity and non-separation of all of us and loving universally (see also Alice Frank’s “uniamory”).Polyamory vs. Transparent Love (and other Principles of Unicornia)“Don’t leave me!”(and then immediately)”It’s okay, I’m fulfilled in myself, it’s fine.”— TIME TRAVEL (not externally, but internally) and FATE —Following the histories of the atoms that compose us into the stars and nebulae from which our parts originated = internal time travel!The myth of Atlantis as an example of “misplaced concreteness” of the racial memory of an ancient extinction our cells still remember, not necessarily the story that we tell ourselves about an ancient city.Graham Hancock’s argument that a 13,000 year old comet impact ended the Pleistocene and the possibility that epigenetic molecules have coded this event in our cell nuclei – as well as other even more ancient extinction events such as The Great Oxygenation Event (in which the evolution of photosynthesis nearly destroyed all life).People are building bunkers preparing for a catastrophe that happened two billion years ago!Recycling everything.Faith in humanity and a belief in the Star Trek vision.“I believe that we will start flourishing.”Christopher Ryan vs Stephen Pinker and clashing narratives about the progress of our species and whether or not we really are more peaceful than we were as foragers.“I get my knowledge off of YouTube and Facebook.”— WOO ALERT ––We might as well go there: crystals. Meditating on them. Going back to Lemuria through crystal meditation time travel. “OR are we projecting onto it?”Exalting the natural world by our awareness and appreciation of it. Ensouling technologies by naming them. To observe something turns it from a possibility into an actuality. So with New Age weirdness, how many hallucinations does it take to qualify as reality?Iboga teaches Shaft to “Ask a tree.”Michael: “If my cohost were here to reign me in, we might not even be having this conversation.”Biogeomagnetism and Michael’s 2008 vision-hypothesis that solar maxima and mimina might correlate to changes in the expression of different hormonal balances and behavioral patterns, possibly entirely different genetic expression patterns and states of consciousness.S: “Do you believe in past life regression? I just paid $400 for my one.”M: “Why’d you do that when you can talk to a tree for free?”Camillo introduces himself. Our first third-party guest! He weighs in on the possibility of the cycle of learning that a soul goes through…Is “how literally true it is” the right question? Or do we just have a modern human obsession with FACTS?M: “We don’t realize we’re in this Russian doll of nested dreams. And so we regard LOCAL reality as REALITY. And then you get out of that atmosphere and it gets more and more diffuse.”Writing Field Guides to the Denizens of DMT Space:- the very circus vibe- “like with ayahuasca, there’s always a snake”…and on to Jeremy Narby’s revelations in his book, The Cosmic Serpent, about how plants communicate to animals about their phytochemical properties through gross anatomy.Camillo talks about synesthetic communication with the body, mapping brain regions to reinterpret signals from the body from feeling to visual cortex processing, etc. How archetypes might be the firmware-esque stable mappings of visual and emotional content onto personified entities. (Why would something like that evolve?) Filtered through the specificities of culture, universal human archetypes become specific deities and spirits.S: “THIS is why I want to have a church.”M: “This is why my dad doesn’t want me starting a church.”The Ten Principles of UnicornUnicorn Power BalladsBiophotonics and the DNA Light InternetM: “Maybe the medieval view of things as endlessly regressing celestial spheres is closer to the truth.”Mapping possibility as multiverses on a spherical coordinate plane, and the impossible as antipodal to you, and what’s just unlikely as on the horizon, and what is as where you’re standing. And it all moves when you move.“I basically suppressed my superpowers. I chose to live a lower form of existence…because what really made me happy was ‘Getting paid and getting laid.’ And it made me super happy until two years ago, when I had my awakening.”Michael Crichton’s experience, as reported in his autobiography Travels, of learning to see auras. How Shaft and his former lover learned to see auras. Shaft and Camillo share some exercises and anecdotes about how to move energy.Burning Man as a physicalized internet and the advent of “noetic polities” in which people affiliate and orchestrate according to interests and values, not blood relations or geographic proximity. Will this “unscheduled fluid simultaneity” of liminal zones like festivals be the norm in a few decades, as we get more and more invested in the internet? Nod to Doug Rushkoff’s book Present Shock and his term “narrative collapse.” “Let’s see if it’s in flow! Kind of a spiritual bypass; no agreements.”Scheduling as a byproduct of modern city time; flow as a byproduct as tribal nonlinear time.C: “You’re not the mountain from which the river flows. You’re something in the river that’s going with it, and you’d better just swim with it.”M: “But maybe if you had the mass of a mountain in people that were all trying to get the river to flow upstream, you could do it.”M: “Do you know [of] Peter Diamandis?”S: “Like a true shaman, I don’t read. I learn through experience. Tell me.”M: “Okay, well, through my experience of reading people…”S: [Devious Cackle]Taking an active stance toward the future. Seeing yourself as an active contributor to the future (rather than feeling disempowered by someone else’s vision of the future).Abundance vs. Scarcity in history and economics and how the kind of abundance Diamandis predicts for the next century will radically change our sense of value/priority and allow us to be more deeply generous with one another.C: “A lot of us live in a state of mental scarcity when we’re actually some of the richest people in the world.”Michael’s perspective on Lisbon and the awesomeness of Europe vs. the ridiculous waste and price of the USA.Shaft and Kamillo on the difference in agricultural and food standards in the USA vs. Europe.Parag Khanna and his book Connectography, which argues that our connective infrastructure and economic relationships define boundaries more than actual national borders.The Trans-Pacific Partnership and the light and dark sides of globalism vs. planetary culture. NOT THE SAME.Shaft’s three step plan for extricating yourself from the system.(Camillo is doing the exact same thing.)C: “I think the universe is going to show you more love if you show more love to it.”Reliance on the system we are trying to escape.M: “What does capitalism actually produce? It seems like people who are trying to escape capitalism is the main product.” Alex joins the conversation and drops a knowledge ball on us about permaculture. Shaft brings up Tamera, a sustainable free love community in Portugal – and his mission to travel the world’s intentional communities and model his own on their best features.M: “Every generation’s trash becomes something valuable to the next generation.”Was the Baby Boomer acquisition/trash-creation phase the caterpillar phase of humanity, gathering and consolidating for an evolutionary transformation?Art made out of trash! Building bricks!Steve brings up the possibility of Universal Basic Income. Camillo mentions that Finland will actually be implementing UBI next year!Lynn Rothschild’s recent speech arguing for Universal Basic Income because capitalism needs consumers and a middle class to keep things in circulation.Capitalism is based on extraction - nod to Episode 9 with author Ashley Dawson on his book, Extinction: A Radical Critique.The origins of the word wealth.Everyone’s perspectives on the future:- Steve wants to get involved rather than just complaining.- Camillo wants people to learn about finding how to make their passions their jobs and creating abundance for everyone before we destroy ourselves.- Shaft believes in Star Trek, that we’ll live in a beautiful future that’s like Sweden, only everywhere.- Alex hopes that our good choices reach a critical mass that changes everything in the direction of sustainability.- Michael asks, “What is the change that each of us must go through in order to make the world we want to live in BELIEVABLE?”The only way to move forward into this world is as complete people. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Topics: Ironic Alienation, Ideology, Emptiness, Meaninglessness, Synchronicity, Mental Illness, Impaired Emotions, Psychosis, Schizophrenia, Inciting Event, PKD, Paranoid Delusions, Technology & Nature, Unabomber, John Zerzan, Stephen Pinker, Thomas Hobb...

42 Minutes 234: Zander Sherman - Running on Empty: Anarchy & Alienation - 06.27.16 The origin of the word "anarchy" comes from the Greek which means "without" "chief" or "ruler." We explore this today for 42 minutes with Canadian essayist, Zander Sherman. Topics Include: Ironic Alienation, Ideology, Emptiness, Meaninglessness, Synchronicity, Mental Illness, Impaired Emotions, Psychosis, Schizophrenia, Inciting Event, PKD, Paranoid Delusions, Technology & Nature, Unabomber, John Zerzan, Stephen Pinker, Thomas Hobbes, Hope. https://twitter.com/zandersherman

The world today is a dangerous, unstable and violent place.  And while Stephen Pinker tells us that today is less violent than at any other time in human history, images from Africa and the Middle East would seem to belie that.But when we look at places that have improved, in Africa, in Latin America and even in the West, we see that woman and the empowerment of women have played a key role in the transformation to a more civil world.  What does this mean, why has it happened, and what does it portent for solutions to those places that still seemed mired in hatred and violence. Sally Armstrong has spent her career covering wars and global struggles and now examines this nexus between global progress and the empowerment of woman in Uprising: A New Age Is Dawning for Every Mother's Daughter. My conversation with Sally Armstrong:

Prolific, bestselling, multi-genre author Hugh Howey took me on a walk through the writer’s process. Rainmaker.FM is Brought to You By Discover why more than 80,000 companies in 135 countries choose WP Engine for managed WordPress hosting. Start getting more from your site today! Mr. Howey is the well-known author of Wool, and his self-published dystopian “Silo Series,” that has sold over two million copies worldwide. His books have been optioned for film and TV by well-known Hollywood director Ridley Scott and Heroes creator Tim Kring respectively. He has been a fierce advocate for self-publishing authors and even inked a rare print-only contract with major publishers to retain the electronic rights to his early works. Hugh is a tireless proponent for the pure craft of writing, and he has built an intensely loyal following. As he prepares to sail around the globe on his catamaran, Hugh took a time out from his busy schedule to talk with me on a short walk. In this file Hugh Howey and I discuss: The Importance of Starting Each Day the Right Way Why You Need to Learn to Hit Publish from Anywhere How to Alleviate Your Natural Self-Doubts Why Writing is Like Exercise How Writers Can Fine Tune Their Creativity Where the True Magic of Writing Springs From Why You Should Be a Tourist in Your Own Town Listen to The Writer Files: Writing, Productivity, Creativity, and Neuroscience below ... Download MP3 Subscribe by RSS Subscribe in iTunes The Show Notes Hugh Howey on Amazon The Five Tibetans HughHowey.com Hugh Howey on Twitter Kelton Reid on Twitter The Transcript How Bestselling Author Hugh Howey Writes Voiceover: Rainmaker.FM is brought to you by The Showrunner Podcasting Course, your step-by-step guide to developing, launching, and running a remarkable show. Registration for the course is open August 3rd through the 14th, 2015. Go to ShowrunnerCourse.com to learn more. Kelton Reid: These are The Writer Files, a tour of the habits, habitats, and brains of working writers, from online content creators to fictionists, journalists, entrepreneurs, and beyond. I’m your host, Kelton Reid: writer, podcaster, and mediaphile. Each week, we’ll find out how great writers keep the ink flowing, the cursor moving, and avoid writer’s block. Prolific, bestselling, multi-genre author Hugh Howey took me on a walk through the writer’s process. Mr. Howey is the well-known author of Wool and his self-published dystopian “Silo Series” that has sold over 2 million copies worldwide. His books have been optioned for film and TV by well-known Hollywood director Ridley Scott and Heroes creator Tim Kring, respectively. He’s been a fierce advocate for self-publishing authors and even inked a rare print-only contract with major publishers to retain the electronic rights of his early works. He’s a tireless proponent for the pure craft of writing, and he’s built an intensely loyal following. As he prepares to sail around the globe on his catamaran, he took time out from his busy schedule to talk with me on a short walk. In this file, Huge Howey and I discuss the importance of starting each day the right way, why you need to learn to hit publish from anywhere, how to alleviate your natural self-doubts as a writer, how writers can fine-tune their creativity, where the true magic of writing springs from, and why you should be a tourist in your own town. If you enjoy The Writer Files podcast, please do me a favor and leave a rating or a review in iTunes to help other writers find us. Thanks for listening. Hugh Howey, thank you so much for joining me back on The Writer Files to update your file. Hugh Howey: Hey, it’s good to be back, man. Kelton Reid: So for listeners who may not be familiar with you and your story, who are you, and what is your area of expertise as a writer? Hugh Howey: That’s a good question. Who am I? That could be a couple hours there, and I don’t even know if I’d have an answer. People think of me as a writer, but that’s the last six years of my life. Before that I was a vagabond, a sailor and lived on the water, and spent 10 years as a yacht captain. So that’s kind of who I am. I’ve been an avid reader my whole life, always wanted to write a novel. When I finally finished a book, I got hooked on that and started writing a lot, and my seventh work, Wool, took off and allowed me to write full time. I did that for the last six years or so. I’m going to continue writing, but now, I’m moving back onto a boat to get back to my roots, which is traveling the world by water. Kelton Reid: It’s an amazing story, honestly. You’re a prolific author. You’ve got your hands in a lot of different genres as well. Where can we find your writing for starters? Hugh Howey: The best place is Amazon. I’ve put everything in Kindle Unlimited because I do write a lot, and I like for people who are paying the $9.99 a month or whatever its costs to get to read everything without paying another penny. I do publish a lot, so it works out for me. Also, major bookstores carry Wool usually, or you can get any of my books in. My website s a great just to see what’s available. It’s just HughHowey.com. Kelton Reid: What are you presently working on? Hugh Howey: I’m bouncing back and forth between a fiction series called Beacon 23 and a nonfiction series that’s kind of self-help and travel log called Wayfinding. The Beacon 23 series, it’s weird. It’s another one of those short stories like Wool that took off. I’m telling this story in discrete parts. Each one has its own arc. Kind of like a season of TV, each episode tells a story, and people are eating them up at 99 cents each. And Warren Ellis, who I love to death, a graphic novelist and author, has become a fan of the series, and my film agent’s getting calls about the film rights. So it’s having a very similar trajectory that Wool had, which is kind of weird for lightning to strike twice like this. Kelton Reid: That’s amazing, and your sci-fi series, The “Silo Series,” is amazing. That’s the one that Wool kind of kicked off, right? And now Sand, the dystopian sci-fi novel that you wrote, is actually being adapted, is that right? Did I read that correctly? Hugh Howey: Yeah. It got picked up by Imperative. They re the team behind the relaunch of the Heroes TV show, “Heroes Reborn,” and I just met with them at Comic-Con and got to spend a couple days hanging out with them. Just a great group of people. I’m flattered when someone options something for film, but Wool has been with Ridley Scott for a couple years. They’ve written screenplays for that. It’s just really flattering. But however excited people are and they say they really want to make something, I don’t get my hopes up. I don’t assume that anything is going to go into production. I’d rather be surprised when it does than sit there and think about it and hound my agent for updates. It’s just better for me to keep writing. Kelton Reid: Absolutely. So let’s talk about writing and your productivity a little bit. How much time per day would you say you’re reading or doing research for projects? The Importance of Starting Each Day the Right Way Hugh Howey: Research, I don’t do direct. My research is very indirect. I read because I want to learn. I’ve been like that my whole life. I mentioned when I read nonfiction, I read veraciously. So all of what I read ends up getting distilled, mixed up, and then ends up in my writing. So even though I mostly write fiction, I want to write about the human condition and satirize popular culture and things like that. That comes from all my nonfiction reading. Probably two or three hours a day I spend reading, and some days, I can have an eight-hour day of just reading. The same thing with writing. I generally try to do two or three hours a day of writing, and sometimes I’ll have an eight-, 10-, or 12-hour day of writing where I pound out 5,000, 7,000 words in a day. Kelton Reid: Before you get into a writing session, do you have any pre-game rituals or practices? Hugh Howey: Yeah, but I don’t know if it has anything to do with the writing. I just live a healthy lifestyle. When I get up in the morning, I have a healthy breakfast of some yogurt with some raisins in it. Then I try to do the same thing every day, so I’m not having to make decisions. I’m not taxing my brain. It’s the same reason I think that I wear the same T-shirt and cargo shorts every single day and flip-flops. I do an exercise routine called The Five Tibetans, which is like yoga. It wakes me up better than a cup of coffee. It only takes about 10 minutes, and it really keeps you in shape. Then I open my laptop and start into whatever story I’m in progress. Kelton Reid: Nice. Do you have a most productive time of day and/or locale for getting into a session? Hugh Howey: Yeah, the morning for me. I’m most creative in the morning, but it’s also a matter of getting a lot of work done before I start checking email and get distracted with the business of writing. That doesn’t just come from self-publishing. I’ve published with traditional publishers as well. Having success as a writer means doing a lot of non-writing activities, supplemental stuff. Kelton Reid: Yeah. Do you have a favorite place to write? Why You Need to Learn to Hit Publish from Anywhere Hugh Howey: No. I can write anywhere. Yesterday, I’m at a family reunion, and I’m sitting at a table with a lot of conversations, a lot going on. I wrap up a work and hit publish and published right there from a dining room table. I’ve published while up on a panel. Right before the panel started, I was putting the finishing touches on a piece. They were doing introductions, and I’m hitting publish under the table. Sitting on curbs, waiting on taxis, on a book tour — Sand, that entire novel I wrote while in Europe on book tour. I wrote that book across nine different countries without a word of that rough draft written in the U.S. That’s the dedication you have to have. You can’t have an excuse. “Well, I’m traveling today, so I’m not going to write,” or “I’m doing this today, so it’s okay if I don’t write today.” My attitude is, if you take a day off, you’re giving yourself an excuse to two, or three, or four days off. Kelton Reid: Yeah. So as a world traveler, are you a writer who can stick on headphones? Do you like to listen to music while you write, or do you prefer silence or white noise? How to Alleviate Your Natural Self-Doubts Hugh Howey: I prefer silence or white noise, even crowds like cafes or airports, but I just posted on my website a few songs that I like to listen to when I’m having natural self-doubts that come from being creative. They’re very heavy-hitting songs just to fire you up and get the adrenaline going. So sometimes I use music to motivate me to have a powerful writing session, but I don’t like to listen to music while I’m writing. Kelton Reid: Got it. I think I already know the answer to this next one, but do you believe in writer’s block? Hugh Howey: I don’t. What I believe is that our writing varies in quality depending on what we’ve consumed, our chemical state, what’s going on in our life, how distracted we are, things that we’re anticipating might happen, how well the last writing session went. All of those things increase or decrease our expectation for how good our writing is going to be if we started clicking our keyboard. Sometimes we get into a mindset where we know we’re going to write crap, so we’d rather sit there and not write anything. I think we have to embrace the fact that we’re going to write poorly at times. When we feel that hesitation and that lack of confidence, that should motivate us to really pour the words out, prime the pump, get back to the good stuff, and trust the editing process. Kelton Reid: Absolutely. Are you still working on a MacBook Air? Hugh Howey: Yeah, I prefer the Air. I might be switching to this new Dell laptop they ve got out, which is a smaller form factor. I’ve not been too overwhelmed with the updates to the Mac OS. I’ve played with Windows 10. I kind of liked that, so I might be switching. Kelton Reid: Interesting. So what software do you use most for your writing? Hugh Howey: I usually use Microsoft Word. Kelton Reid: Do you have any organizational hacks since you’re constantly on the move? Hugh Howey: Not really. Organizational hacks. No, I’m sloppy. I have a Word document that I’ll keep open for notes, and I just kind of pile in notes for a series in there. It’s ugly, but it works for me. I’ve used it to write book series with 400,000 plus words across them — a lot of foreshadowing and a lot of plot points and characters — and somehow it all works. I’ve tried using Scrivener and stuff that have those tools built in, but I find myself playing with the tools instead of writing. I’ve never gotten over the learning curve for those things to be useful to me. Kelton Reid: Do you have any best practices for beating procrastination? Why Writing Is Like Exercise Hugh Howey: Yeah. Sit down, and it’s like exercise. There’s so many reasons to not get down on the floor and do push-ups. Your body does not want to be taxed. It doesn’t want to feel that. As soon as you feel it, you have to say, “I’m not going to let that control me. I’m going to choose what I’m going to do with my life and not let my inherent laziness, my desire to conserve calories, or whatever is going on in our bodies that makes us want to curl up in a ball and not attack the task before us.” Open up the document, turn off the Internet, and start writing. If you’re not sure what happens next in the story, skip to the part of the story that you know is going to happen. Start writing there. Just start writing about your character, or if you know the next scene takes place in a bar, just describe the bar. You’re going to delete every bit of that, but describe every facet of that bar — what the jukebox looks like, what the street noise is, every weird detail that aren’t going to end up in your story. As soon as you start doing that, you’re going to find that you’re able to get back into the flow of the plot. Kelton Reid: Very nice. My final question on workflow stuff is how do you unplug at the end of a long day? Hugh Howey: My favorite thing is to get by the water or on the water. Go to the beach. If I can have a nice meal looking out over the water, if I can go for a swim or take a paddle board out, anything like that energizes me. Just chill out with a book and read. Kelton Reid: Just a quick pause to mention that The Writer Files is brought to you by the Rainmaker Platform, the complete website solution for content marketers and online entrepreneurs. Find out more and take a free 14-day test drive at Rainmaker.FM/Platform. So let’s talk about creativity. How do you define creativity in your own words? How Writers Can Fine Tune Their Creativity Hugh Howey: I think creativity is not so much as creating something that’s never been done before. It’s the free expression of a combination of things that we’ve absorbed from elsewhere. To be absolutely creative is almost to be avant-garde, to do stuff that’s almost absurd. There’s some value in that, absurdity for the sake of complete newness or shock value. For me, true creativity is seeing the individual human like a filter, like a coffee filter. You push all this stuff through: popular culture, life experiences, upbringing, genetic makeup. What drips out is the way they distill all that knowledge and all those experiences. It’s different for every person, and people are creative in ways they don’t even appreciate. The way they approach their work, they might think that’s not creativity. There are things that they do in their workflow, how they organize their desk space, or how they organize their day — I see those as expressions of creativity. I think everyone is creative in some ways, and we need to figure out what ways we enjoy being creative and do more of it. It gets us in tune with ourselves. Kelton Reid: When do you feel the most creative? Hugh Howey: After I’ve written something. So when I’m writing, I tend to feel like it’s kind of garbage, but when I’m done with the writing session, I go back and read some stuff. Or I’m revising. That’s when I feel like I don’t completely hate what I’ve just done. Kelton Reid: Do you have a creative muse at the moment? Hugh Howey: Not really. I’m going through a lot of change in my life right now, and some of it is very stressful. It’s sad that that’s inspiration, but the best stuff I’ve ever written has been dealing with huge losses of my life. I’m generally an upbeat, perfectly happy, even-keel person, but the best stuff I’ve ever written is when I’ve lost people in my life or lost a beloved pet. I guess that the tortured artist cliché, there’s something to that because you tap into an emotional well that’s difficult to tap into when you’re just content and happy. Kelton Reid: In your own words, what do you think makes a writer truly great? Where the True Magic of Writing Springs From Hugh Howey: Having read a lot. Actually before having read a lot, I would say having lived and experienced a lot. I think you have to fill yourself with knowledge and experiences before you have something really wonderful to write. What we end up writing is kind of a greatest hits collection of our ideas, our thoughts, and our vocabulary. In order to have a greatest hits collection, you have to have a huge body of work that you absorb. It’s somewhat like photography, something I’m passionate about. The secret to photography is learning lighting and the controls of the camera and framing and all these tricks of the trade, but the magic comes from taking thousands of photos and then having an eye that recognizes the dozen in there that are truly spectacular. When we write, we have thousands of ideas, thousands of word choices, thousands of word combinations and sentence flow options, and the quality of a writer and the skill comes from knowing out of those thousands, which handful are viable options. Kelton Reid: Do you have a few favorite authors that you’re reading at the moment? Hugh Howey: I tend not to follow writers. I tend to follow subjects. Nonfiction makes it difficult to follow writers. Rick Adkins wrote a World War II Trilogy that I really liked, and I’ll read anything that Bill Bryson writes. I just read McCullough’s biography of the Wright Brothers. I’ve really enjoyed his work, but it’s rare for me to find … Stephen Pinker is a guy who, anything he writes, I’ll pick up and dabble. With nonfiction, it’s not like with a fiction author where you’re going to get a book a year. You might be likely to get one every five years. It’s hard to follow an individual author like that. Kelton Reid: Yeah. Well, I found your original writer’s file to be infinitely quotable, but do you have a favorite quote yourself? Hugh Howey: I don’t know. One that I’ve come back to time and again — and it’s so cliché, everyone uses it — but maybe there’s a reason for that. I’ll get the exact quote wrong, but I’ll paraphrase. I’m pretty sure Hemingway said it. “Writing is easy. You just sit down in front of your typewriter and bleed.” I love that because it tells me that writing was difficult for him, and it reminds me that it’s not supposed to be easy. The same thing is true of exercise, and diet, and anything worth doing in life. We should look for the things that are most difficult and then attack those things. We tend to live the path of least resistance. That’s defined to preserve calories, preserve our energy, and find ways to not tackle long-term goals and be fulfilled deeply in life. I found fulfillment through listening to my body, figuring out what it least wants to do, and then doing that thing. That quote kind of inspires me to do that. Kelton Reid: Nice. Couple fun questions for you. Do you have a favorite literary character? Hugh Howey: That’s a good question. Maybe growing up I loved The Stainless Steel Rat. That character really resonated with me. Kelton Reid: If you could choose one author from any era to sit down and have an all-expense paid dinner, who would you choose? Hugh Howey: Oh, it’d be William Shakespeare for sure. Kelton Reid: I’m always curious about this answer, but why Shakespeare? Hugh Howey: I like to tell everybody, “Hey, it was definitely William Shakespeare’s. Stop with the theories. I know for a fact it was him.” Kelton Reid: Do you have a writer’s fetish? Any good luck charms or any weird collectibles? Hugh Howey: No. All I really need is my laptop. I do feel kind of naked if I don’t have it with me. I grab it in the middle of the night to make notes. I try to carry it with me everywhere. I will say, as a reader, that I’ve upgraded my Kindle to the Kindle Voyage, and that’s such a sexy reading device. I feel I do not like not having that thing with me. With that in my pocket, I’ve got every book that I own and access to every ebook out there. I fetishize the heck out of that thing. Kelton Reid: Nice. So who or what has been your greatest teacher? Hugh Howey: Literally, Dr. Dennis Goldsbury, my English professor at the College of Charleston. I was a physics major when I had him for a prereq and loved his class so much that I made sure I had my 102 from him the next semester. Then I asked him what he was teaching the semester after that. He was the hardest teacher I’ve ever had. Getting an A from him was the most rewarding challenge in my collegiate career. I started taking all of his classes, and soon he was like, “Look, you have to be an English major to take these 4000-level classes.” I probably would’ve written something at some point in my life anyway because it’s been a dream of mine for a long time, but I wouldn’t be the writer that I am today without his guidance. Kelton Reid: Can you offer any advice to fellow writers on how to keep the ink flowing and the cursor moving? Why You Should Be a Tourist in Your Own Town Hugh Howey: Yeah. What are you doing to have novel experiences? Without that, you’re just not going to be inspired to write. Find a way to be a tourist in your hometown. Look at towns that are a short drive away, and get out on the weekend and do something. Talk to strangers. If you see an old man with a military service hat on, sit down on the bench beside him, and ask him his story. Observe the world. Carry around a notebook. Describe strangers. Describe settings. Writing is not something you do in front of your laptop. Writing is something that you do all day long, and the laptop is just the place where you dump that out. Kelton Reid: Where can fellow scribes connect with you out there? Hugh Howey: You can find me on Twitter at @HughHowey and on my website. Once I’m on the boat in another two and a half weeks, I’ll be moving onto the catamaran, and I’ll be at sea a lot. I’ll hopefully still be able to keep in touch when I’m in port, but I don’t know how much I’ll be accessible like I have been for the last five or six years. Kelton Reid: That’s really exciting. Where is your first destination? Hugh Howey: Well, I’m starting in St. Francis Bay, South Africa, and my first port of call will be Cape Town. I’ll stay there for a few weeks, and then I’m just going to spend a couple of months total in South Africa. Early October, we’ll head to St. Helena, which is in the middle of the south Atlantic and then Ascension Island, which is where Napoleon was held captive. From there, either Brazil or Barbados and then up the Caribbean chain into the Bahamas and Florida. Kelton Reid: Amazing. Well, we wish you a safe journey, and I’m sure that will spark some more really inspiring stories and writing. So best of luck to you, sir. Hugh Howey: Thanks, man. Well, if something bad happens to me, it’ll probably boost book sales just for a brief moment with any obituary or news mention. My heirs have that to look forward to. Kelton Reid: Well, I’ll knock on wood over here, and thank you so much for stopping by. Hugh Howey: All right. Thanks, man. Kelton Reid: Take care. Thanks for tuning into the show. In the words of Mr. Howey himself, you are a startup. The next great business is you. For more episodes of The Writer Files and all of the show notes or to leave us a comment or a question, drop by WriterFiles.FM. You can always chat with me on Twitter, @KeltonReid. Cheers. See you out there.

Only this weekend Mr Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Facebook, announced in his new book club ‘A Year of Books’ that he’d be taking on Stephen Pinker’s ‘The Better Angel’s of Our Nature’. Within hours, the book catapulted on Amazon’s chart from 6,521st to 501st. A timely coincidence for our scheduled REDUX of LondonReal’s 2013 interview with the linguistic and cognitive scientist - there is a real exciting sense that what we in the LondonReal community have known about Pinker for some time will now be known widely. With the rise to prominence of the Islamic State, Boko Haram and events in Paris, Pinker’s message has never been as relevant. We could be mistaken for believing the world is getting darker again but contrary to what seems to be the trend Pinker argues that violence is actually on the decrease. A revolutionary idea in our media driven world where it seems impossible to escape atrocity. He discusses how archaic structures of morality and thinking have been perpetuating conflict, rather than preventing it. Pinker’s work is promoted by philanthropist Bill Gates, who has his own reading blog called Gate’s Notes. On it Gates calls Pinker’s work “important” and heralds him as a great thinker showing us ways that “we can make those positive trajectories a little more likely… a contribution, not just to historical scholarship, but to the world.” The most engaging thing about Pinker as a guest is that as a communicator he is a simple pleasure to listen to, sharing his ideas with both passion and command. This episode is a must. So, before your jump on Amazon to snap up your copy of ‘Better Angels’ and join the Zuckerberg book club, get your fix of LondonReal.

Renowned theoretical physicist Marcelo Gleiser and cognitive scientist Stephen Pinker discuss the limits of knowledge and how much we can actually know of the world. This lecture took place at the Museum on November 3, 2014. Support for Hayden Planetarium Programs is provided by the Schaffner Family. Photo: AMNH/R. Mickens

Professor Stephen Pinker is interviewed before giving his lecture at New College of the Humanities. Talking about the human brain, Pinker, a member of the Visiting Professoriate at NCH, relays his thoughts about NCH, the undergraduate environment, and why he decided to lecture on the human brain.

Their work is changing the world we live in, but what do we really know about their lives beyond the lab? Each week on The Life Scientific, Jim Al-Khalili, Professor of Physics at Surrey University, invites a leading scientist to tell us about their life and work. He wants to get under their skin and into their minds; to find out what first inspired them towards their field of research and what motivates them to keep going when the evidence seems to be stacking up against their theories. And he'll ask what their ideas and discoveries will do for us. He'll talk to Nobel laureates as well as the next generation of beautiful minds, finding out what inspired them to do science in the first place and what motivates them to keep going. The programme will also feature short drop-ins from fellow scientists. Some will comment on our guest's early career, the implications of their discoveries, or offer alternative perspectives. In this first programme, Jim talks to geneticist Paul Nurse, arguably the most powerful scientist in Britain today. Nurse's interest in science was sparked by the early days of the space race, when one night as a boy, he chased Sputnik down the road in his pyjamas, in a vain attempt to catch up with the Russian satellite as it passed overhead. Nurse, a Nobel Laureate and President of the Royal Society is now firmly part of the science establishment but his upbringing and early academic life was far from conventional. Brought up by working class parents, in North London, Nurse struggled at first to even get accepted by any University. According to one of his tutors (who we'll hear from in the programme) Nurse didn't exactly shine as an undergraduate, either. But these experiences taught him to be self reliant, determined and not afraid of failure. It was a attitude that paid off. In 2001, Nurse shared the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for his research on how cells divide, a process which is not only fundamental to all living things but has major implications for understanding and treating diseases like cancer. His rise was, some say, meteoric. But it's not how he sees it, especially in the early days: " I did have a lot of trouble getting a proper job". Now President of one of the oldest and most respected scientific institutions in the world, Nurse's career has been far from predictable, and at times, controversial. Yet the same could be said for his personal life, when in his 50s, he was hit with a major revelation that would change forever how he viewed his past. Confirmed guests on future programmes include the cognitive scientist Stephen Pinker; Astronomer Jocelyn Bell-Burnell; the brains behind the Human Genome Project, John Sulston; Epidemiologist Michael Marmot, neuroscientist Colin Blakemore and Molly Stevens, a tissue engineer whose work growing bones could mean the end of metal pins for broken legs; Producers: Anna Buckley and Geraldine Fitzgerald.

It's relatively easy to accept the fundamentals of evolutionary science when it seeks to describe changes in physical features through the processes of natural selection. But it becomes harder when evolutionary psychologists argue that our ways of thinking, use of language and even creating and appreciating art also evolved during the time of our Pleistocene ancestors. In 1994, Stephen Pinker was praised and attacked for his book The Language Instinct. Now, a philosopher of art from the University of Canterbury, Denis Dutton, has "reverse engineered" his analyses of our artistic creativity and cultural behaviours in the twenty-first century to argue that humans evolved an aesthetic urge from the dawn of the species. The inevitable fierce debate has erupted again both within the evolutionary science community and across the science-religion fault lines. Via Skype from his home in Christchurch, New Zealand, Professor Dutton tells Peter Clarke about the thrust of his new book, The Art Instinct.

Harvard psychology professor, Stephen Pinker, author of The Stuff of Thought examines how language reveals the way we think by exposing the physics built into our nouns, the temporal characteristics of our verbs and the manner in which our brains react to profanity.