Category: Culture

Michael Muthukrishna: A Theory of Everyone

The Dissenter | 25 September 2023 | 1h 40m | Listen Later | Podcasts | Spotify
Interview with Michael Muthukrishna about his book A Theory of Everyone: The New Science of Who We Are, How We Got Here, and Where We’re Going. Discusses the premise of the book; the four laws of life: energy, innovation, cooperation, and evolution; how cooperation expands in human societies, and what distinguishes us from other animals; intelligence and IQ, and the collective brain and the idea of “genius”; the importance of institutions and cultural norms, and the role of ideas; multiculturalism, and how to solve the “paradox of diversity”; our current energy ceiling, and the problems that derive from it and how to solve them; and the challenges of studying human behavior cross-culturally.

It’s finally here! Michael Muthkrishna launches what will surely be the most important book this year in conversation with Matthew Syed at the London School of Economics, 28 September at 6:30 pm. You can watch remotely or afterwards on LSE’s YouTube channel.

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Celebrating Marginal Revolution’s 20th Anniversary

Conversations with Tyler | 23 August 2023 | 0h 58m | Listen Later | Podcasts | Spotify
Interview with Alex Tabarrok and Tyler Cowen on the 20th anniversary of Marginal Revolution. Discusses MR’s legacy, including the golden age of blogging in the mid-2000s, the decline of independent blogs and the rise of social media, the robust community—and even marriage—forged through MR, favorite commenters, how MR catalyzed separate real-world pandemic responses by each of them, what’s happened to Tyrone, whether the site’s popularity has tempted them into self-censoring, and more.

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Clive James on Cultural Amnesia, Totalitarianism, and his Remarkable Career

Writers and Company | 28 August 2022 | 0h 52m | Listen Later
2008 interview with Clive James about his book Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts. Discusses his life and work, many of the greatest thinkers and their lessons that we keep having to relearn, and the need for humanist values.

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Valerie Fridland – Like, Literally, Dude: Arguing for the Good in Bad English

The Dissenter | 21 August 2023 | 1h 43m | Listen Later | Podcasts | Spotify
Interview with Valerie Fridland about her book Like, Literally, Dude: Arguing for the Good in Bad English. Discusses what people call “bad” English, the history of standardization and prescription in English, how grammar rules are mostly arbitrary; how women and low-status people drive linguistics change; what gender has to do with how we speak; the uses of filled pauses like “um” and “uh”, the uses of “like”, “I mean”, “you know”, and “so”; the meaning of “dude”, and “literally”; whether words have any intrinsic meaning; the current proposal of using “they/them” as singular personal pronouns to refer to non-binary people; and removing/banning words from classic books.

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Anna Funder: How George Orwell Wrote His Wife Out of His Story

Saturday Morning | 4 August 2023 | 0h 52m | Listen Later | Podcasts | Spotify
Interview with Anna Funder about her book Wifedom: Mrs Orwell’s Invisible Life. Describes her work blending forensic research, fiction, life writing and criticism to put George Orwell’s wife, Eileen O’Shaughnessy, back into his story. Discusses Eileen’s contributions to Orwell’s life and work.

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Anna Funder is Her Own Wife

Read This | 12 July 2023 | 0h 28m | Listen Later | Podcasts | Spotify
Interview with Anna Funder about her book Wifedom: Mrs Orwell’s Invisible Life. Discusses how George Orwell’s wife, Eileen O’Shaughnessy, contributed to his work and was erased from his story. Draws lessons about the role of patriarchy in O’Shaughnessy’s life, her own life, and society more generally.

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Yi-Lin Chiang on Study Gods: How the New Chinese Elite Prepare for Global Competition

New Books in Education | 11 July 2023 | 1h 05m | Listen Later | Podcasts | Spotify
Interview with Yi-Lin Chiang about her book Study Gods: How the New Chinese Elite Prepare for Global Competition. Shares behind-the-scene stories from her ethnographic research about the education of elite Chinese adolescents pursuing high academic performance.

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