Imagine the world of today's high technology, but instead of sleek Apple like design, it is all powered by steam, driven by gears and could actually be taken apart and fixed. That’s the world of Steampunk.
Throughout the history of America, and its federalist system, different states have personified, both politically and economically, the ethos of a particular era.
New York would came to represent the economic boom of the 20’s and Chicago with its big shoulders, the apotheosis of industrialization. California would represent post war America and the dreams of the golden land with its promise of freedom and education. Today many would argue that Silicon Valley represents the future. But my guest Erica Grieder thinks we need to look toward the Lone Star State.
We are creatures of exploration. Today with so much information available to us, and travel so easy, we might be like Alexander the Great with no more places left to conquer. But perhaps the one great mystery, the one great area still left for exploration, is the workings of the human mind.
We see it day in and day out with how kids learn, how we process information and how all of our styles of learning are so different.
Temple Grandin has been an explorer extraordinaire on this journey. In her previous works, Thinking in Pictures and Animals in Translation, she gave us great insight into the human side and scale of autism. Now in her new book, The Autistic Brain: Thinking Across the Spectrum, she literally takes us inside the brain, to give all of us an affirmative understating of autism itself.
When we think about the future, and the vast array of dangers that we face as a society and a species, how big do we think? Is our future measured in days, weeks, hours or perhaps millennia? For Alvy Singer, the Woody Allen stand-in in Annie Hall, the future was far, far away as the young man worried about the “universe expanding” while sitting in Brooklyn.
The fact is that Alvy was thinking in species time, and history tells us that species do go extinct; that our day will come to an end and that maybe it is something we should be thinking about.
Eric Fischl is one of America's most celebrated and accomplished artists. At a time in the 80’s when painting was declared to be dead, he and others of his generation prevailed and gave new life to art.
Through the years Fischl sought to bring his work and life into harmony and in so doing has constantly strived to reinvent himself and his work in order to remain relevant. His newly published autobiography, Bad Boy: My Life On and Off the Canvas, proves he has succeeded.
Imagine the world of today's high technology, but instead of sleek Apple like design, it is all powered by steam, driven by gears and could actually be taken apart and fixed. That’s the world of Steampunk.
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she literally takes us inside the brain, to give all of us an affirmative understating of autism itself.
. My conversation with Annalee Newitz:
, proves he has succeeded.
