Podcast appearances and mentions of Walter C Klein

The nest guest is on board - Michael Bervell. MIchael is a Ghanaian-American angel-investor, entrepreneur, and author. He's the author of "Unlocking Unicorns", a book about the stories and habits of leading entrepreneurs in Asia, Africa and the Middle East (e.g. he personally interviewed Jack Ma for the book). In 2007, he co-founded the non-profit "Hugs for" where he funraised over 500,000 $ in materials and monetary donations and impacted over 300,000 youths around the world. Because of his work, Bervell was awarded the National Caring Award in 2015 (alongside Pope Francis, Dikembe Mutombo, and 7 others). He became the youngest President of the Harvard Club of Seattle and a former member of the Harvard Alumni Association after he studied in Harvard himself. His various efforts led to a diverse set of awards, such as the GE-Lloyd Trotter Scholar (2018), World Internet Conference Wuzhen Scholar (2017), Walter C. Klein Scholar (2017), United Health Foundation Scholar (2016), Deutsche Bank Rise Into Success Scholar (2016), Blacks at Microsoft Scholar (2016) and many more. We talked about this new book "Unlocking Unicorns", African's tech ecosystem, angel investing and many more topics. Michael's Website Unlocking Unicorns Book Source: Michael's Website

Speaker: Stephen Owen, Harvard University Stephen Owen is a sinologist specializing in premodern literature, lyric poetry, and comparative poetics. Much of his work has focused on the middle period of Chinese literature (200-1200), however, he has also written on literature of the early period and the Qing. Owen has written or edited dozens of books, articles, and anthologies in the field of Chinese literature, especially Chinese poetry, including An Anthology of Chinese Literature: Beginnings to 1911 (Norton, 1996); The Making of Early Chinese Classical Poetry (Harvard Asia Center, 2006); and The Late Tang: Chinese Poetry of the Mid-Ninth Century (827-860) (Harvard Asia Center, 2006). Owen has completed the translation of the complete poetry of Du Fu, which has been published as the inaugural volumes of the Library of Chinese Humanities series, featuring Chinese literature in translation. Owen earned a B.A. (1968) and a Ph.D. (1972) in Chinese Language from Yale University. He taught there from 1972 to 1982, before coming to Harvard. In acknowledgment of his groundbreaking work that crosses the boundaries of multiple disciplines, Owen was awarded the James Bryant Conant University Professorship in 1997. He has been a Fulbright Scholar, held a Guggenheim Fellowship, and received a Mellon Foundation Distinguished Achievement Award (2006) among many other awards and honors. Discussant: Michael Puett, Harvard University Michael Puett is the Walter C. Klein Professor of Chinese History and Anthropology, as well as the Chair of the Committee on the Study of Religion, at Harvard University. His interests are focused on the inter-relations between philosophy, anthropology, history, and religion, with the hope of bringing the study of China into larger historical and comparative frameworks. He is the author of The Ambivalence of Creation: Debates Concerning Innovation and Artifice in Early Chinaand To Become a God: Cosmology, Sacrifice, and Self-Divinization in Early China, as well as the co-author, with Adam Seligman, Robert Weller, and Bennett Simon, of Ritual and its Consequences: An Essay on the Limits of Sincerity. The Reischauer Lectures were established in 1985 to honor Edwin O. Reischauer, University Professor Emeritus of Harvard University, by celebrating his distinguished contributions to the study not only of Japan but also of China and Korea. As a reflection of Reischauer’s research, this series intends to highlight current scholarship that deepens understandings of East Asia as a region. Sponsored by the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, Harvard University. Co-sponsored by the Harvard University Asia Center, Korea Institute, Mittal South Asia Institute, and the Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies.

CRASSH Impact Lecture Series, Michaelmas Term Speaker: Professor Michael Puett (Harvard University) We seem to have a relatively clear (if somewhat uncomfortable) narrative concerning the rise and (potential) decline of neoliberalism. But, if we take into account the perspective of China, such a narrative may have to be re-thought. This talk will place some of the current political debates in China within a larger historical context and argue that these debates may force us to re-think some of our assumptions concerning the workings of the state and the economy and accordingly to re-think some of our readings of recent history. My hope is that the talk will help to contribute to developing a more global understanding of political theory. Michael Puett is the Walter C. Klein Professor of Chinese History and Anthropology, as well as the Chair of the Committee on the Study of Religion, at Harvard University. His interests are focused on the inter-relations between philosophy, anthropology, history, and religion, with the hope of bringing the study of China into larger historical and comparative frameworks. His books include To Become a God: Cosmology, Sacrifice, and Self-Divinization in Early China and The Path: A New Way to Think About Everything (co-authored with Christine Gross-Lo). This lecture is part of the CRASSH Impact Lecture Series.

CRASSH Impact Lecture Series, Michaelmas Term Speakers: Michael Puett (Harvard University) and Julia Lovell (Birkbeck) Michael Puett is the Walter C. Klein Professor of Chinese History and Anthropology, as well as the Chair of the Committee on the Study of Religion, at Harvard University. His interests are focused on the inter-relations between philosophy, anthropology, history, and religion, with the hope of bringing the study of China into larger historical and comparative frameworks. His books include To Become a God: Cosmology, Sacrifice, and Self-Divinization in Early China and The Path: A New Way to Think About Everything (co-authored with Christine Gross-Lo). Julia Lovell is a Reader in Modern Chinese History and Literature at Birkbeck, University of London. Her research has so far focused principally on the relationship between culture (specifically, literature, architecture, historiography and sport) and modern Chinese nation-building. Her books include The Great Wall: China Against the World 1000 BC - AD 2000 and The Opium War: Drugs, Dreams and the Making of China (winner of the 2012 Jan Michalski Prize for Literature). This event is part of the CRASSH Impact Lecture Series.

Christine Gross-Loh @grossloh Author, writer. THE PATH: What Chinese Philosophers Can Teach Us About the Good Life. Bylines: @theatlantic, @wsj, @guardian, @nytimeswell @voxdotcom Christine Gross-Loh is a freelance journalist and author. Her writing has appeared in a number of publications including The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, and the Huffington Post. She has a PhD from Harvard University in East Asian history. The Path - NYT and International BestsellerPraise for THE PATH: “Puett’s dynamism translates well from his classroom theater onto the page, and his provocative, radical re-envisioning of everyday living through Chinese philosophy opens wide the “possibilities for thinking afresh about ourselves and about our future.” His text presents creative alternatives to the stale “confines of our narrative.” With philosophical consideration, our methods of interacting and coexisting may, as the author promises, have the power to better our lives and our relationships. With its academic tone and spirited, convincing vision, revolutionary new insights can be gleaned from this book on how to approach life’s multifarious situations with both heart and head.” —Kirkus Reviews “[Michael Puett and Christine Gross-Loh's] accessible, conversational style introduces anyone with interest to what Chinese sages suggested about giving meaning to our days. Even more impressive, they inspire interest.” —Huffington Post “The Path illuminates a little-known spiritual and intellectual landscape: the rich body of Chinese thought that, starting more than two millennia ago, charted new approaches to living a meaningful life. But Puett goes a lot further, creatively applying this ancient thought to the dilemmas of modern life. The result is a fresh recipe for harnessing our natural energies and emotions to strengthen social connection and build islands of order amid the chaos that sometimes surrounds us.” —Robert Wright, author of The Evolution of God “I read The Path in one sitting and have been talking about it to everyone. It’s brilliant, mesmerizing, profound—and deeply contrarian. It stands conventional wisdom on its head and points the way to a life of genuine fulfillment and meaning.” —Amy Chua, Yale Law professor and author of Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother “This is a book that turns the notion of help—and the self, for that matter—on its head. Puett and Gross-Loh bring seemingly esoteric concepts down to Earth, where we can see them more clearly. The result is a philosophy book grounded in the here and now, and brimming with nuggets of insight. No fortune-cookie this, The Path serves up a buffet of meaty life lessons. I found myself reading and re-reading sections, letting the wisdom steep like a good cup of tea.” —Eric Weiner, author of The Geography of Bliss and The Geography of Genius Each fall, Harvard professor Michael Puett begins his freshman survey of Chinese Philosophy with a promise – if you take the ideas in these texts seriously, they will change your life. Confucius’s Analects, the Dao de jing, the writings of Mencius: Ancient texts handed down over millennia in a land more than 7000 miles away. These texts, you ask, will change my life? Many students, even those bound for Wall Street, say the class has done just that. And we have one better: we suspect they may change yours, too. In his inspiring book THE PATH: What Chinese Philosophers Can Teach Us about the Good Life, written with Christine Gross-Loh, Puett brings these texts out of the University and into the world, encouraging us to put aside traditional Western ideas about “the good life” and to engage with the philosophies of key Chinese thinkers. A course the administration thought would barely draw 100 students has, in nine years, inspired such an overflow of requests to attend that it was forced to move to the majestic Sanders Theater – the biggest room on campus – where 700 students now crowd into that hall every semester for Puett’s legendary seminar, “Classical Chinese Ethical and Political Theory.” It is Harvard’s third most popular class after “Computer Science” and “The Principles of Economics.” And life-changing indeed have these ideas been. For students pressured to push ahead with big pre-set goals and achieve individual excellence, this ancient way of thinking about life seems to them nothing less than revelatory – and a huge relief. But of course it isn’t only students who feel this pressure to succeed; it’s every one of us. And while our culture rewards ambition, that ambition often leaves us wanting for happiness, for peace, and for reassurance. So for Westerners, to say nothing of Harvard students, when these are ideas are put into practice they may even seem almost subversive. According to the wisdom of the sages in THE PATH, in making subtle adjustments to way we move through our day, the most dramatic changes can – and will – occur. By engaging with these texts, we can make profound shifts in our thinking, not only about what we can control, but about what success and happiness really are; we can stop thinking about what we’d like to become, and focus more on how we want to be. Michael Puett is the Walter C. Klein Professor of Chinese History in the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations and Chair of the Committee on the Study of Religion at Harvard University. He is the recipient of a Harvard College Professorship for excellence in undergraduate teaching.