Yiliu Shen-Burke, founder of Softspace
John Underkoffler, creator of G-Speak
Host: Jerry Michalski
Finally catching up on Jerry Michalski’s Tools for Thinking podcast. #ToolsForThought
Category: Listen
🎧 The Modern Golden Age Podcast Episode #16: Bryan Kam
This week, I show you my conversation with Bryan, a philosopher, writer, and researcher. He's a very thoughtful individual, with a fascinating mind. We talked about his work, writing, music, and much more.
- 00:00 ~ Introduction
- 01:10 ~ Thomas Khun
- 05:55 ~ Bryan's relationship with ideas
- 11:02 ~ Note-taking
- 17:20 ~ Health model of Inquiry
- 20:41 ~ Bryan's current questions
- 26:00 ~ Meditation
- 33:00 ~ Change and Modern Golden Age
- 42:15 ~ Speaking, writing and thinking
- 50:43 ~ Original Sources and influences
- 55:20 ~ Intellectual and creative Humility
- 1:06:03 ~ Classical composers and jazz musicians
- 1:08:30 ~ Types of writing
- 1:10:00 ~ Practices in MGA
- 1:18:00 ~ The kind of person that allows for an MGA
- 1:21:00 ~ Values in a Modern Golden Age
- 1:23:12 ~ Where can you find Bryan?
There’s some interesting space to explore with respect to music composing, creation, and playing with respect to jazz and “conversation” that relates to orality and literacy here, but they miss that piece broadly. The classical music portion was missing some context as much classical music is like certain forms of poetry which have highly structural elements within which one must stay while being expressive, while improvisational jazz is like free verse.
The “monastery” to “metropolis” discussion of the development and nurturing of an idea is an interesting analogy for pedagogy and learning as well as scaffolding. Having a supportive environment with trust is similar to most learning environments and particularly a difficult one for second language learners to find as the paradigm changes based on age.
I wish there had been more improvisation here with respect to the conversational portions, but instead the interviewer kept going back to a script of pre-formed questions instead of exploring the ideas as they came. I was surprised to see references to David Krakauer and Stefan Zweig pop up here.
Stefan Zweig (reference? his memoir?) apparently suggested that students translate authors as a means of becoming more intimately acquainted with their work. This is similar to restating an author in one’s own words as a means of improving one’s understanding. It’s a lower level of processing that osculates on the idea of having a conversation with a text.
Drinking game using the phrase: “I do believe.” 😅
Rating: 2 of 5; this was in my wheelhouse, but provided no real insight for me. Unlikely to listen to others in this series.
🎧Episode 539: Frustrated On Your Behalf | Core Intuition
Manton and Daniel talk about payments from the Small App Developer settlement against Apple. Why does Manton refuse to accept free money, and are there valid reasons to opt out of the settlement? Then they reflect on the wave of opportunity from Twitter’s drastic downfall, and whether Manton and Daniel can “catch it”. Finally, Manton remembers the IndieWeb principles about plurality and monoculture, and they discuss how that might relate to Mastodon.
“We’re extremely powerful when it comes to making sense and finding connections, doing it visually instead of with a page.” Howard Rheingold is an eminent author, maker, and educator. His work has explored and defined key aspects of digital culture, including the use of computers as tools for mind augmentation, virtual communities, and social media literacy. In this conversation, we discuss computers as extensions for our minds, Douglas Engelbart’s unfinished revolution, basic literacies for interacting in information environments, and the resurgence of Tools for Thought.
Interesting and some useful base material here on literacies, but one can’t get very deep in 30 minutes with Rheingold on this topic. I would have rather this been 6 hours long and then multiple times that.
Jorge Arango from The Informed LifeMark Bernstein is chief scientist of Eastgate Systems, Inc. He’s been writing hypertexts and developing hypertext authoring software since the late 1980s. Mark is the creator of Tinderbox and other tools for thinking that “harness the power of the link.” In this conversation, we discuss thinking through connected notes.
Some subtle insights here.
representational talkback; the design of taking notes in the present when you’re not sure how they’ll connect to ideas in the (imagined) future; The Tinderbox Way; by force, all research is bottom up.
Working over many years with several Indigenous Elders, Duane has published The First Astronomers, a complete overview of traditional First Nations star knowledge.
A great introduction to the book The First Astronomers.
In her new book, The Second: Race and Guns in a Fatally Unequal America, Anderson traces racial distinctions in Americans’ treatment of gun ownership back to the founding of the country and the Second Amendment, which states:
"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."
The language of the amendment, Anderson says, was crafted to ensure that slave owners could quickly crush any rebellion or resistance from those whom they’d enslaved. And she says the right to bear arms, presumably guaranteed to all citizens, has been repeatedly denied to Black people.
This is the sort of history that should be more commonplace in our schools. Why was I not taught this? What an excellent little interview. Going to buy Carol Anderson’s book in triplicate.
Cereals provide their offspring with a long-lived supply of energy to power the first growth spurt of the seed. Thousands of years ago, people discovered that they could steal some of the seeds to power their own growth, taking advantage of the storability of seeds to move the food from where it grew to where it might be eaten. Wheat, the pre-eminent cereal, moved along routes that were ancient before the Greek empire, carried, probably, by ox-drawn carts and guided along these black paths by people remembered in Ukraine today as chumaki.
In this episode, Scott Nelson, author of Oceans of Grain, tells me about the various ways in which the ability to move wheat more efficiently changed world history, geography and economics, for starters.
Notes
- Scott Reynolds Nelson’s book Oceans of Grain is published by Basic Books.
- Listen to Persephone’s Secret, if you haven’t already, and I promise no vengeful gods will render you dumb.
- Banner photo of a grain elevator and train in Wichita Falls, Texas by Carol M. Highsmith. Image of a 19th century Chumak by Jan Nepomucen Lewicki; Public Domain.
- Transcript coming soon.
Subscribe: iTunes | Android | RSS | More
Support this podcast: on Patreon
In the trailer for this short series, I presumed some context about the relationship of the topic to the Ukraine, but missed the true mark with the additional context provided here.
Even better, I suspect that some of the history here is right up my alley in relation to work I’ve been doing on oral cultures. Some of it “sounds” like early oral Ukrainian culture is eerily reminiscent to Milman Parry’s work on orality among the guslars of Yugoslavia and reading I’ve been doing on Indigenous astronomy! What a great find. I’ve immediately ordered a copy of the book.
I wouldn’t expect these sorts of information and insight in a typical podcast about food, but Jeremy Cherfas always delivers the goods.
Many people take the myth of Demeter — Ceres in Latin — and her daughter Persephone to be just a metaphor for the annual cycle of planting and harvesting. It is, but there may be more to it than that. Why else would it be worth scaring participants in the Eleusinian Mysteries into saying absolutely nothing about what went on during these initiation rites into the cult of Demeter and Persephone?
Maybe the story hides a secret so valuable that it was worth protecting.
Elucidating the Eleusinian Mysteries is one small element in Scott Reynolds Nelson’s new book, Oceans of Grain. It looks at the many, many ways in which wheat and human history intertwine, which he’s been working on for years. It was finally published on 22 February this year.
Two days later, Russia invaded Ukraine.
Today, what the story of Persephone is really about. And over the next three weeks, Scott Nelson and I will be talking about how wheat has influenced human affairs, as it is still doing today.
Subscribe: iTunes | Android | RSS | More
Support this podcast: on Patreon
I’ve fallen way behind on making my listen posts public and hope to remedy the issue, particularly for the better podcasts I listen to. What better way to start than a new short series in Jeremy Cherfas’ excellent Eat This Podcast?
Links from today’s episode:
- Chris Aldrich web site
- Gardens & Streams II (Indieweb pop-up event) on September 25, 2021 https://events.indieweb.org/2021/09/gardens-and-streams-ii-pPUbyYME33V4
- Obsidian (https://obsidian.md/)
- Hypothesis (https://web.hypothes.is/)
- Knowledge and Power in Prehistoric Societies: Orality, Memory, and the Transmission of Culture by Lynne Kelly (Cambridge, 2015)
- Memory Craft by Lynne Kelly (Pegasus, 2019)
- Anthropology: Why it Matters by Tim Ingold (Polity Press, 2018)
- How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking – for Students, Academics and Nonfiction Book Writers by Sönke Ahrens (Create Space, 2017)
And for the crazy rhetoric and note taking nerds:
Early Philosophical Texts
- Aristotle, Topica, written about 350 BCE Venice, 1495.
- Aristotle, Rhetorica, written about 350 BCE. Basel, 1529.
- Cicero, De Oratore, written about 46 BCE. Northern Italian manuscript about 1450.
- Cicero, Topica, written about 44 BCE. Florentine manuscript, about 1425-30.
- Seneca the Younger, Epistulae morales, written 62-65 CE. French manuscript, about 1175.
- Quintilian, Institutio oratoria, written about 100 CE. Paris, 1542.
- Macrobius, Saturnalia, written about 430 CE. Central Italian manuscript, about 1475.
- Boethius, De topicis differentiis, written about 480-526 CD. English manuscript, about 1275.
Renaissance Handbooks
- Rodolphus Agricola, De formando studio. Antwerp, 1532; composed 1484.
- Desiderius Erasmus, De ratione studii et instituendi pueros comentarii totidem. [Paris, 1512].
- Philip Melanchthon, Institutiones rhetoricae. Wittenberg [1536].
- Philip Melanchthon, Rhetorices elementa. Lyon, 1537.
- Desiderius Erasmus, De duplici copia verborum ac rerum. Cologne, 1540.
- Petrus Mosellanus, Tabulae de schematibus et tropis…. In Rhetroica Philippi Melanchthonis. In Erasmi Roterdami libellum De duplici copia. Paris, 1542.
- Joachim Camerarius, Elementa rhetoricae. Basel, [1545].
- Henry Peacham, The garden of eloquence: conteyning the figures of grammar and rhetorick. London, 1577.
- One of the first handbooks in English
- Philip Melanchthon, De locis communibus ratio. Augsburg [1593].
- John Brinsley, Ludus literarius: or, The grammar schoole; shewing how to proceede from the first entrance into learning, to the highest perfection. London, 1612.
- [Obadiah Walker], Of education: especially of young gentlemen. Oxford, 1673.
I may have broadened the discussion that some of the intended audience on tools for thought may be showing up for, but I can never resist introducing people to mnemnotechniques and research on orality, anthropology, or the history of commonplaces.
I provocatively (with only a modest amount of wickedness) put forward the idea that a rock is as good a tool for thought as Obsidian.md or Roam Research.
What is a zine? The name "zine" is a shortened version of "fanzine" which is a portmanteau of the word "fan" and "magazine". Most people that think of zines think of punk rock and the punk community, where the DIY (do-it-yourself) ethos is more than just a slogan, it's a way of life. In truth, "zines" have been around for centuries, going back to Thomas Paine's famous pamphlet "Common Sense". These homemade publications can be about anything their creators desire - music, art, politics, or something personal. Chloe Cavelier sits down for a conversation with library staffer and resident zine expert Alice Wynne to discuss the past, present and future of zines and Altadena Public Library's very own zine collection. Later Chloe speaks with Bob Lucas Branch manager Diana Wong to discuss Bob's new and improved demonstration garden. Subscribe to This Is Altadena at any and all of the places you get podcasts including Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
I got a copy of the library’s zine last Friday. This is such a cool project. They’ve reached out to me briefly as a steward of a Little Free Library, but I’ll have to stop in and pick up a few copies to have in my library.
I’d like to join the next session to see what I might add to help people bring their zines into online spaces as well. I see a lot of overlap here with some of my work with the IndieWeb.
Welcome to This Is Altadena, a podcast hosted by the Altadena Libraries, celebrating people’s life experiences and stories, and the hidden histories of Altadena, California. In our inaugural episode, we look at the life and times of Altadena legend, artist Charles White. Library staffer Chloe Cavelier sat down with community members Veronica Jones, Keni Arts, and Eugene Hutchins for 3 in-depth conversations about Charles White, his art and legacy, and his ties to our thriving local art community. Then later, our own Aaron Kimbrell chats with resident Teen Librarian Isabelle Briggs about the amazing programs and services offered in the teen department here at the Altadena Library District. For more about Charles White, don't hesitate to reach out to the Altadena Library: https://www.altadenalibrary.org For more about Keni Arts, visit his website: https://keniarts.com
This podcast is simply awesome! It makes me proud to be a resident of Altadena, CA. Can’t wait to see what they continue to come up with.
Revealing Zello's role in last week's riot, making a case for deplatforming, and exploring the idea of responsible social media.
Evidence shows that insurrectionists used the walkie-talkie app Zello to help organize the riot at the capitol. On this week’s On the Media, a look at how the platform has resisted oversight, despite warnings that it was enabling right-wing extremism. Plus, how to sniff out the real corporate boycotts from the PR facades. And, how to build social media that doesn't exploit users for profit.
1. OTM reporter Micah Loewinger [@MicahLoewinger] on Zello's role in last week's insurrection, and what the app is finally doing about its militia members. Listen.
2. Casey Newton [@CaseyNewton], writer for Platformer, on why this wave of social media scrubbing might not be such a bad thing. Listen.
3. Siva Vaidhyanathan [@sivavaid], professor of media studies at the University of Virginia, and Americus Reed II [@amreed2], professor of marketing at the Wharton School of Business, on the true costs of corporate boycotts. Listen.
4. Eli Pariser [@elipariser], co-director of Civic Signals, on how to build digital spaces that do not monetize our social activity or spy on us for profit. Listen.
Music from the show:
Fallen Leaves — Marcos Ciscar
The Hammer of Loss — John Zorn — A Vision in Blakelight
Hard Times — Nashville Sessions — Songs of the Civil War
What’s that Sound? — Michael Andrews
In the Bath — Randy Newman
Boy Moves the Sun — Michael Andrews
Ain’t Misbehavin’ — Hank Jones
Coronavirus spreads in schools. Just like it spreads everywhere else.
Over the past 10 months, debates have raged over how to keep the coronavirus in check. What to open? What to close? Where does the virus spread, and where are we relatively safe? Through it all, one kind of space in particular has been the subject of vigorous debate — and, starting a few months into the virus, a kind of unexpected conventional wisdom emerged: that schools were relatively safe. In the midst of the darkness, it brought some welcome light: kids are safe! They can go to school! While other institutions closed, countries around the world — particularly in Europe and the UK — kept their schools open.
And yet, in response to rising rates and a new, more contagious variant, many of those same countries have since closed their school doors. It turns out that, if you believe the epidemiologists, schools do, in fact, bring risk of transmission. How could we ever have thought otherwise? Rachel Cohen has been covering the debates around school closings and openings, most recently at The Intercept. In this week's podcast extra, she tells Brooke about how the school transmission narrative has evolved since the beginning of the pandemic, and how our understanding of the issue came to be so muddled.
Making sense of the events at the Capitol on Wednesday, unpacking the right-wing "Lost Cause" myth and its historical antecedent, and revisiting "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down."
On this week’s On The Media, journalists struggle to find the words to describe what happened at the capitol on Wednesday. Was it a riot? A mob? An insurrection? Plus, why supporters of the president’s baseless election fraud theories keep invoking the “lost cause” myth of the confederacy. And, taking a second look at "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down."
1. Brooke [@OTMBrooke] and Bob [@bobosphere] on the events at the Capitol on Wednesday. Listen.
2. Caroline Janney [@CarrieJanney], historian of the Civil War at University of Virginia, on the evolution of the post-Civil War Lost Cause mythology. Listen.
3. Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw [@sandylocks], professor of law at UCLA and Columbia Law School, on how post-Civil War appeasement allowed for the perpetuation of white supremacy in the United States. Listen.
4. Jack Hamilton [@jack_hamilton], associate professor of American studies and media studies at the University of Virginia, on the mixed and missed messages in the rock anthem "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" by The Band. Listen.
Music from this week's show:
Invitation to a Suicide — John Zorn
Sneaky Adventure — Kevin MacLeod
Glass House/Curtains — David Bergeaud
The Last Bird — Zoe Keating
Lost, Night — Bill Frisell
Using the Apostate Tyrant as His Tool — Kronos Quartet
The Night They Drove Ol' Dixie Down — The Band
The Night They Drove Ol' Dixie Down — Richie Havens