I’m personally very partial towards interviews and memoirs/biographies. I’m putting together a few nice interviews that I’ve read in the last month or so.
- Maria Popova: Cartographer of Meaning in a Digital Age - Maria Popova, who runs Brain Pickings (which you should definitely check out if you haven’t) is a wonderful human being and this interview is about her ethos and motivation to keep Brain Pickings running. It’s beautiful and this is the closest I will be on Kat’s Kable fanboying about anyone who is not Roger Federer.
- Big as a Calf, White as a Swan - Michael Engelhard is a researcher who has also written a book called Ice Bear: The Cultural History of an Arctic Icon. Here he talks about his research and about polar bears. I learnt many many things by reading this.
- Pablo Neruda: The Art of Poetry
Neruda - I don’t believe in symbols. They are simply material things. The sea, fish, birds exist for me in a material way. I take them into account, as I have to take daylight into account. The fact that some themes stand out in my poetry—are always appearing—is a matter of material presence.
Interviewer - What do the dove and guitar signify?
N - The dove signifies the dove and the guitar signifies a musical instrument called the guitar. - My Life with the Physics Dream Team - Freeman Dyson, an English mathematician, worked with many physicists in America in what I like to call a ‘golden period’. His most famous collaboration was with Richard Feynman. He talks here about Pauli, Einstein, Feynman and so many other great scientists. It’s great!
- Muhammad Ali on Parkinson - A video interview where Muhammad Ali is on the show Parkinson. This video has only part 4, but it has the best part(s). If you’re in a hurry, go to 10:00 and watch the next three minutes or so to encounter some of the best poetry of the 20th century.
- Can Nathan Myhrvold Change How the World Eats Bread? - Myhrvold was CTO of Microsoft, but here he talks about his new life project, Modernist Bread, a book that aims to become an essential resource for professional and amateur bakers. Again, I learnt a lot about bread while reading this, and I think you will too.
- The Mind Bleeds Into the World - This is an interview with a person called David Chalmers who is Co-Director of the Center for Mind, Brain, and Consciousness at New York University. It’s about virtual reality and AI, and how the world as we know it is primed to change soon, and change radically. It’s from Edge.org, which is a fabulous resource. Chalmers’ views are followed by reactions from four experts in the field as well.
At that level, artificial intelligence will start to become an extension of my mind. I suspect before long we’re all going to become very reliant on this. I’m already very reliant on my smartphone and my computers. These things are going to become more and more ubiquitous parts of our lives. The mind starts bleeding into the world. So many parts of the world are becoming parts of our mind, and eventually we start moving towards this increasingly digital reality. And this raises the question I started with: How real is all of this? - The True Hard Work of Love and Relationships - This is an interview with Alain de Botton, who writes excellently about human psyche and especially about relationships. This is a delightful read. I have read de Botton’s book Essays in Love and I thoroughly recommend it.
Have a great week! (Btw, this weekend is issue #50, are you as excited as I am?)