Holland’s seventeenth-century emphasis on trade rather than conquest helped build a culture of tolerance: everybody’s money is good. The author of The Island at the Center of the World offers a sort of moral defense of capitalism in a conversation at the Fraunces Tavern Museum: look out the window and see what he’s describing. Music from … Continue reading »
Monthly Archives: June 2019
Episode 264: Sloane Crosley
Like many funny writers, this essayist and novelist grew up around someone with a highly cultivated sense of humor, in this case her grandmother Nettie. “She was extremely funny. She was sarcastic in a very loving way, which I think is a hard note to hit.” The challenge of being simultaneously funny and sweet. Plus … Continue reading »
Episode 263: Eben Bayer
The co-founder and CEO of Ecovative Designs, he trained as a mechanical engineer but now devises products made from mushrooms. Mushrooms! “If the last century was about electronics,” he says, “ the next century is going to be about biology.” How inventors invent. Plus music from Bendt. How musicians musish. Continue reading »
Episode 262: Einat Lev
Is scientific thought regional? Do people in Iceland devise different ideas from people in India? No, says geophysicist Einat Lev: science is science around the world. Yet she’s visited 40 countries, most with no volcano. Paradox or pleasure? A conversation at KGB’s Red Room, produced with Lori Schwarz and 500 Women Scientists. Music from Francois … Continue reading »
Episode 261: Dana Ivey
She is a fine actor and an honorable person with a weakness for that racist claptrap Gone With the Wind. “That’s the dichotomy in my heart and soul,” she tells the English Speaking Union. She’s not alone. It is the second most beloved book in America, behind only the Bible. When good people love bad … Continue reading »