“What I would hate to see happen now is that City Hall would breathe a big sigh of relief and think, Thank God that’s over: we made it to the finish line and nobody got hurt – now let’s not talk about arts and culture for a long time.”
Category: ideas
How Did Shakespeare, The Playwright, Become Shakespeare, The Myth?
“It is useful, in answering this question, to think of Shakespeare less as a legendary artist and more as a product: In order for a product to sell, it of course needs to meet certain demands of quality. But the ability to make the sale is also dependent on more banal considerations.”
What “Serial”, The Rolling Stone Rape Story, And Michael Brown’s Death In Ferguson Can Teach Us About Memory
“Our expectation that memory is consistent and reliable is ubiquitous. It is taken for granted in day-to-day interactions and determines countless decisions. We do not acknowledge often enough how unstable our memories are, how susceptible they are to change, and how serious the implications of those changes are when we rely on memory to determine the fates of real human beings.”
Some People Actually Like The Voices In Their Heads
Joan of Arc, for instance. (Sure, and look what happened to her.) Seriously, though, one Dutch study found that only 4% of a group of sufferers found the voices they heard to be solely negative.
Oronyms Lead To Mondegreens (How We Mis-Hear Song Lyrics)
Maria Konnikova explains the processes by which some people come to think Queen did a song called “Bohemian Rap City” and children wonder why Olive the other reindeer was mean to Rudolph.
Want The Next Generation To Be Creative? They Need To Know Code
“The ability to code enables young people to become creators rather than consumers. Students with this creative capacity and technical literacy will hold the power in the future. They are the next generation of entrepreneurs, and, as some teenagers and younger students have shown us, they are already the entrepreneurs of today.”
If Positive Thinking Doesn’t Work, What Does? WOOP Does
For decades, from Norman Vincent Peale to Oprah Winfrey, we’ve been told that the power of positive thinking is real. Now some researchers are arguing that, at best, it’s no sure thing and could even hold us back. So what’s a goal-oriented person to do? WOOP. (Yes, it’s an acronym.)
How New Ideas Spread: Contagion Or Persuasion?
“In contagion models, influence goes one way, from one infected person to an uninfected one, or from someone who has adopted an idea to one who hasn’t. In persuasion models, on the other hand, influence is a two-way street, and adoption isn’t an either/or condition. Instead, people have some belief in a new idea’s value, and those who believe in it more are in turn more likely to adopt it.”
We’ll Never Find A Unified Theory Of Life, The Universe, And Everything
The idea “that behind nature’s manifest diversity there is a simple, unified explanation” goes all the way back to the ancient Greeks (if not farther) and right up to today’s physics labs and philosophy workshops. Theoretical physicist Marcelo Gleiser argues that we probably just have to live with the mystery. (“42” simply isn’t enough.)
What Makes Someone An Atheist Or Theist?
“Should we express religious categories in terms of people’s beliefs or their behaviors? Commentator Tania Lombrozo examines why we describe (a)theism the way we do.”