Highlights - MICHAEL S. ROTH - President of Wesleyan University - Author of The Student: A Short History

Highlights - MICHAEL S. ROTH - President of Wesleyan University - Author of The Student: A Short History

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President of Wesleyan University
Author of The Student: A Short History

So I wrote this book and it was a lot of fun because I had to learn so much. The book examines three iconic teachers: Confucius, Socrates, and Jesus. And I look at how each of those teachers encourage a certain kind of student. The student as follower, someone who will take on the path that you've developed. In the case of Socrates, the student as critical interlocutor or critical conversation partner, someone who will, in dialogue with you, learn what they don't know, how to take things apart. And in the case of Jesus and the apostles, I look at trying to imitate a way of life to transform themselves to strive towards being the kind of person that Jesus incarnated. And so that's the beginning of the book, these models of studenthood, if I could use that word, and being a teacher. And then I look at the way in which these ideas reverberate in the West across a long period of time. So I'm interested in the idea of the student before there were schools. What did we expect young people to learn even when they weren't going to school?

MICHAEL S. ROTH - President of Wesleyan University - Author of The Student: A Short History

MICHAEL S. ROTH - President of Wesleyan University - Author of The Student: A Short History

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President of Wesleyan University
Author of The Student: A Short History

So I wrote this book and it was a lot of fun because I had to learn so much. The book examines three iconic teachers: Confucius, Socrates, and Jesus. And I look at how each of those teachers encourage a certain kind of student. The student as follower, someone who will take on the path that you've developed. In the case of Socrates, the student as critical interlocutor or critical conversation partner, someone who will, in dialogue with you, learn what they don't know, how to take things apart. And in the case of Jesus and the apostles, I look at trying to imitate a way of life to transform themselves to strive towards being the kind of person that Jesus incarnated. And so that's the beginning of the book, these models of studenthood, if I could use that word, and being a teacher. And then I look at the way in which these ideas reverberate in the West across a long period of time. So I'm interested in the idea of the student before there were schools. What did we expect young people to learn even when they weren't going to school?

Highlights - BRIAN DAVID JOHNSON - Director of the ASU Threatcasting Lab - Author of The Future You

Highlights - BRIAN DAVID JOHNSON - Director of the ASU Threatcasting Lab - Author of The Future You

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Author of The Future You: How to Create the Life You Always Wanted
Director of the Arizona State University’s Threatcasting Lab
Futurist in Residence, ASU’s Center for Science & the Imagination

Let's talk about technology and the role of humanity and the role of being human and what it means to be present in that. We need to keep humans at the center of everything that we do, that everything that we do in our life is about humans. It begins with humans and ends with humans. There might be technologies and businesses and all these things in between, but we should measure the effect on humans.

When I talk to people about artificial intelligence or technology, I'm generally asking them two questions. What are you optimizing for? What's the effect that you're trying to get? Developing technology for technology's sake, although it can be kind of interesting...then is why you're doing it because you think it's interesting? But then ultimately, if you're doing it beyond your own gratification, why are you doing it?

So much of what I do in that is talking to governments and militaries and large organizations to say we always have to keep humans in the loop. You have to keep humans in the center because it's about us. That really is incredibly important. And that's one of the central ideas in the future. The future should be about humans, and where are humans going. And what do we want as humans? And how are we using technology to make us more human, or healthier, or happier, or more productive?

BRIAN DAVID JOHNSON - Author of The Future You: How to Create the Life You Always Wanted - Futurist in Residence, ASU’s Center for Science & the Imagination

BRIAN DAVID JOHNSON - Author of The Future You: How to Create the Life You Always Wanted - Futurist in Residence, ASU’s Center for Science & the Imagination

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Author of The Future You: How to Create the Life You Always Wanted
Director of the Arizona State University’s Threatcasting Lab
Futurist in Residence, ASU’s Center for Science & the Imagination

Let's talk about technology and the role of humanity and the role of being human and what it means to be present in that. We need to keep humans at the center of everything that we do, that everything that we do in our life is about humans. It begins with humans and ends with humans. There might be technologies and businesses and all these things in between, but we should measure the effect on humans.

When I talk to people about artificial intelligence or technology, I'm generally asking them two questions. What are you optimizing for? What's the effect that you're trying to get? Developing technology for technology's sake, although it can be kind of interesting...then is why you're doing it because you think it's interesting? But then ultimately, if you're doing it beyond your own gratification, why are you doing it?

So much of what I do in that is talking to governments and militaries and large organizations to say we always have to keep humans in the loop. You have to keep humans in the center because it's about us. That really is incredibly important. And that's one of the central ideas in the future. The future should be about humans, and where are humans going. And what do we want as humans? And how are we using technology to make us more human, or healthier, or happier, or more productive?

Highlights - SUSAN SCHNEIDER - Author of Artificial You: AI and the Future of Your Mind, Fmr. Distinguished Scholar, US Library of Congress

Highlights - SUSAN SCHNEIDER - Author of Artificial You: AI and the Future of Your Mind, Fmr. Distinguished Scholar, US Library of Congress

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Founding Director · Center for the Future Mind · Florida Atlantic University
Author of Artificial You: AI and the Future of Your Mind
Fmr. NASA Chair at NASA · Fmr. Distinguished Scholar at US Library of Congress

So it's hard to tell exactly what the dangers are, but that's certainly one thing that we need to track that beings that are vastly intellectually superior to other beings may not respect the weaker beings, given our own past. It's really hard to tell exactly what will happen. The first concern I have is with surveillance capitalism in this country. The constant surveillance of us because the US is a surveillance capitalist economy, and it's the same elsewhere in the world, right? With Facebook and all these social media companies, things have just been going deeply wrong. And so it leads me to worry about how the future is going to play out. These tech companies aren't going to be doing the right thing for humanity. And this gets to my second worry, which is how's all this going to work for humans exactly? It's not clear where humans will even be needed in the future.

SUSAN SCHNEIDER - Director, Center for the Future Mind, FAU, Fmr. NASA Chair at NASA

SUSAN SCHNEIDER - Director, Center for the Future Mind, FAU, Fmr. NASA Chair at NASA

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Founding Director · Center for the Future Mind · Florida Atlantic University
Author of Artificial You: AI and the Future of Your Mind
Fmr. NASA Chair at NASA · Fmr. Distinguished Scholar at US Library of Congress

So it's hard to tell exactly what the dangers are, but that's certainly one thing that we need to track that beings that are vastly intellectually superior to other beings may not respect the weaker beings, given our own past. It's really hard to tell exactly what will happen. The first concern I have is with surveillance capitalism in this country. The constant surveillance of us because the US is a surveillance capitalist economy, and it's the same elsewhere in the world, right? With Facebook and all these social media companies, things have just been going deeply wrong. And so it leads me to worry about how the future is going to play out. These tech companies aren't going to be doing the right thing for humanity. And this gets to my second worry, which is how's all this going to work for humans exactly? It's not clear where humans will even be needed in the future.

AI & THE FUTURE OF HUMANITY

AI & THE FUTURE OF HUMANITY

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What will the future look like? What are the risks and opportunities of AI? What role can we play in designing the future we want to live in? In this first episode of our new channel, philosophers, futurists, AI experts, science fiction authors, activists, and lawyers reflect on AI, technology, and the Future of Humanity..

Highlights - DAVID BYRNE'S THEATER OF THE MIND - Stories of Impact - Nicholas Bruckman, John Tracey, Ian Moubayed

Highlights - DAVID BYRNE'S THEATER OF THE MIND - Stories of Impact - Nicholas Bruckman, John Tracey, Ian Moubayed

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Stories of Impact · People’s TV

Q: Who is David Byrne?
David Byrne: …I have no idea.

Most people know me through music, but when I was in high school I saw science and the arts as being equally creative fields. More recently, I just started taking an interest in how the brain works, and there's been this explosion of literature. As much as I love reading about neuroscience, I realize that experiencing some of the phenomena is just on a different level. I wanted to create an experience that shows us we're not who we think we are. Theater of the Mind is an immersive Science Theater project. With this show, I've tried to marry a narrative to the experience of different scientific phenomena that reveal how malleable our perception memory and identity really are.

DAVID BYRNE'S THEATER OF THE MIND - Stories of Impact produced by Simons Foundation & People’s TV

DAVID BYRNE'S THEATER OF THE MIND - Stories of Impact produced by Simons Foundation & People’s TV

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Stories of Impact · People’s TV

Q: Who is David Byrne?
David Byrne: …I have no idea.

Most people know me through music, but when I was in high school I saw science and the arts as being equally creative fields. More recently, I just started taking an interest in how the brain works, and there's been this explosion of literature. As much as I love reading about neuroscience, I realize that experiencing some of the phenomena is just on a different level. I wanted to create an experience that shows us we're not who we think we are. Theater of the Mind is an immersive Science Theater project. With this show, I've tried to marry a narrative to the experience of different scientific phenomena that reveal how malleable our perception memory and identity really are.

Speaking Out of Place: LIZA BLACK & JOSEPH PIERCE discuss When “Natives” Aren’t: The Epistemic & Communal Violence & Re-storying

Speaking Out of Place: LIZA BLACK & JOSEPH PIERCE discuss When “Natives” Aren’t: The Epistemic & Communal Violence & Re-storying

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Discuss When “Natives” Aren’t: The Epistemic & Communal Violence & Re-storying

A lot of Pretendians lay claim to this identity of being Native American, and the universities have no problem with it whatsoever. It's indigenous people who fight against that settler colonial initiative to make this about diversity, equity, and inclusion, and not about indigeneity or indigenous rights. And so when students mark down Indigenous, they're accepted as an Indigenous person, and the university pats itself on the back for admitting yet another Indigenous person. And they happily add up those numbers that go into all sorts of reports to say, "This is how many Indigenous students we have at the moment. The numbers are rising, etc." And many of those students never attend any Indigenous events, but some do. Some will come to the support center for Native students. And some will really take on ownership of this idea that they are Native, when in fact they're not. And they actually know they're not. But let's say we have a person who's gifted intellectually. And they can get their heads around these stories. And they can get their heads around epistemic violence. And they become friends with people in the Native community. That's the beginning of their story. And that's the way in which academia produces these people.

Highlights - APRIL GORNIK - Artist, Environmentalist, Co-founder of The Church: Arts & Creativity Center

Highlights - APRIL GORNIK - Artist, Environmentalist, Co-founder of The Church: Arts & Creativity Center

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Artist · Environmentalist
Co-founder of The Church · Arts & Creativity Center
Co-director of Sag Harbor Cinema Board

I've chosen my work because I've loved the outside world. I love the things outside of myself. I love what isn't immediate to me. And I love projecting onto that as a way of kind of trying to reach the distance between my inner self and the vastness. To try to do that in a way that makes other people feel inspired by it, not be chided for not taking care of it. It's not something that I intend to be a message per se. I'd rather people look at the natural world and see the heartbreaking beauty of it and sense its fragility and its impermanence and their own impermanence and fragility and then have a response to that rather than say, you know, you have to act, you have to do something. I would hope that would inspire action rather than to cudgel them with a directive.

APRIL GORNIK - Artist, Environmentalist, Co-founder of The Church: Arts & Creativity Center

APRIL GORNIK - Artist, Environmentalist, Co-founder of The Church: Arts & Creativity Center

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Artist · Environmentalist
Co-founder of The Church · Arts & Creativity Center
Co-director of Sag Harbor Cinema Board

I've chosen my work because I've loved the outside world. I love the things outside of myself. I love what isn't immediate to me. And I love projecting onto that as a way of kind of trying to reach the distance between my inner self and the vastness. To try to do that in a way that makes other people feel inspired by it, not be chided for not taking care of it. It's not something that I intend to be a message per se. I'd rather people look at the natural world and see the heartbreaking beauty of it and sense its fragility and its impermanence and their own impermanence and fragility and then have a response to that rather than say, you know, you have to act, you have to do something. I would hope that would inspire action rather than to cudgel them with a directive.

Highlights - LINDSEY ANDERSON BEER - Writer, Director - Pet Sematary: Bloodlines - Sleepy Hollow

Highlights - LINDSEY ANDERSON BEER - Writer, Director - Pet Sematary: Bloodlines - Sleepy Hollow

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Writer · Director · Executive Producer
Pet Sematary: Bloodlines · Sleepy Hollow · Bambi · Lord of the Flies

For me, I don't start a project unless I have a really clear understanding of who the main characters are and why this is a journey that's necessary for them to take. And why are these both the best and the worst people to be in this series? That's the question I ask myself all the time because you need to know: What are their strengths? What are their weaknesses? What are the dramatic tension points going to be where these specific people can really succeed or really fail in this scenario? I love people who are passionate, and Quentin Tarantino is just so passionate. And I've never been in a writer's room or even really in any kind of development experience where a director was just so passionate and so full of kind of energetic ideas. And that was really inspiring. Somebody who just completely knows their own point of view and gets excited by their own ideas is just fun to watch.

LINDSEY ANDERSON BEER - Writer, Director, Producer - Pet Sematary: Bloodlines - Sleepy Hollow - Bambi

LINDSEY ANDERSON BEER - Writer, Director, Producer - Pet Sematary: Bloodlines - Sleepy Hollow - Bambi

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Writer · Director · Executive Producer
Pet Sematary: Bloodlines · Sleepy Hollow · Bambi · Lord of the Flies

For me, I don't start a project unless I have a really clear understanding of who the main characters are and why this is a journey that's necessary for them to take. And why are these both the best and the worst people to be in this series? That's the question I ask myself all the time because you need to know: What are their strengths? What are their weaknesses? What are the dramatic tension points going to be where these specific people can really succeed or really fail in this scenario? I love people who are passionate, and Quentin Tarantino is just so passionate. And I've never been in a writer's room or even really in any kind of development experience where a director was just so passionate and so full of kind of energetic ideas. And that was really inspiring. Somebody who just completely knows their own point of view and gets excited by their own ideas is just fun to watch.

Highlights - DEAN SPADE - Professor at SeattleU’s School of Law - Author of Mutual Aid, Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next)

Highlights - DEAN SPADE - Professor at SeattleU’s School of Law - Author of Mutual Aid, Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next)

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Organizer · Speaker · Professor at Seattle University's School of Law
Author of Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics, and the Limits of Law
Mutual Aid, Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next)

I want to see movements that embolden our tactics. Like people blocking oil pipelines all over the world. That's what's required now. Asking endlessly from the dominant system to treat us fairly doesn't work. And this frustrating kind of endless appeal and hoping maybe we can get it to work this time doesn't work. And the clock is ticking, especially on ecological collapse. We need to save each other's lives and act.

DEAN SPADE - Author of Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics, and the Limits of Law

DEAN SPADE - Author of Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics, and the Limits of Law

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Organizer · Speaker · Professor at Seattle University's School of Law
Author of Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics, and the Limits of Law
Mutual Aid, Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next)

I want to see movements that embolden our tactics. Like people blocking oil pipelines all over the world. That's what's required now. Asking endlessly from the dominant system to treat us fairly doesn't work. And this frustrating kind of endless appeal and hoping maybe we can get it to work this time doesn't work. And the clock is ticking, especially on ecological collapse. We need to save each other's lives and act.

Highlights - ANTHONY LEISEROWITZ - Host of Climate Connections - Senior Research Scientist, Yale School of the Environment

Highlights - ANTHONY LEISEROWITZ - Host of Climate Connections - Senior Research Scientist, Yale School of the Environment

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Founding Director of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication
Host of Climate Connections · Senior Research Scientist at the Yale School of the Environment

Storytelling is still one of the most powerful ways we have to communicate from one person to another, from one person to millions, and from millions back to one. At the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, we study how people respond to climate change. So what do people around the world understand or misunderstand about the causes, the consequences, and solutions? How do they perceive the risks: the likelihood and severity of different types of impacts from sea level rise to the health impacts? What kinds of policies do they support or oppose? And then what kinds of behaviors are people engaged in or willing to change to be part of climate solutions? There are lots of different things there, but our ultimate question is answering why. What are the psychological, cultural, the political reasons why some people get engaged with this issue? While others are kind of apathetic and some are downright dismissive and hostile, or at least they are in the United States, which thankfully is not the case in most of the rest of the world.

ANTHONY LEISEROWITZ - Founding Director of Yale Program on Climate Change Communication - Host of Climate Connections

ANTHONY LEISEROWITZ - Founding Director of Yale Program on Climate Change Communication - Host of Climate Connections

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Founding Director of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication
Host of Climate Connections · Senior Research Scientist at the Yale School of the Environment

Storytelling is still one of the most powerful ways we have to communicate from one person to another, from one person to millions, and from millions back to one. At the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, we study how people respond to climate change. So what do people around the world understand or misunderstand about the causes, the consequences, and solutions? How do they perceive the risks: the likelihood and severity of different types of impacts from sea level rise to the health impacts? What kinds of policies do they support or oppose? And then what kinds of behaviors are people engaged in or willing to change to be part of climate solutions? There are lots of different things there, but our ultimate question is answering why. What are the psychological, cultural, the political reasons why some people get engaged with this issue? While others are kind of apathetic and some are downright dismissive and hostile, or at least they are in the United States, which thankfully is not the case in most of the rest of the world.

Highlights - ALLEN STEELE - Hugo Award-winning Science Fiction Author of the Coyote Trilogy, Arkwright

Highlights - ALLEN STEELE - Hugo Award-winning Science Fiction Author of the Coyote Trilogy, Arkwright

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Winner of the Hugo · Asimov's Readers & Locus Awards
Served on the Board of Directors of Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America

I'm really very glad. I was happy to see that within my lifetime that the prospects of not just Mars, but in fact interstellar space is being taken seriously. I've been at two conferences where we were talking about building the first starship within this century. One of my later books, Arkwright, is about such a project. I saw that Elon Musk is building Starship One, I wish him all the best. And I envy anybody who goes.

I wish I were a younger person and in better health. Somebody asked me some time ago, would you go to Mars? And I said, “I can't do it now. I've got a bum pancreas, and I'm 65 years old, and I'm not exactly the prime prospect for doing this. If you asked me 40 years ago would I go, I would have said: in a heartbeat!” I would gladly leave behind almost everything. I don't think I'd be glad about leaving my wife and family behind, but I'd be glad to go live on another planet, perhaps for the rest of my life, just for the chance to explore a new world, to be one of the settlers in a new world. We've got to be careful about how we do this. And we've got to be careful, particularly about the rationale of the people who are doing this.

ALLEN STEELE - Hugo Award-winning Science Fiction Author of the Coyote Trilogy, Arkwright

ALLEN STEELE - Hugo Award-winning Science Fiction Author of the Coyote Trilogy, Arkwright

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Winner of the Hugo · Asimov's Readers & Locus Awards
Served on the Board of Directors of Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America

I'm really very glad. I was happy to see that within my lifetime that the prospects of not just Mars, but in fact interstellar space is being taken seriously. I've been at two conferences where we were talking about building the first starship within this century. One of my later books, Arkwright, is about such a project. I saw that Elon Musk is building Starship One, I wish him all the best. And I envy anybody who goes.

I wish I were a younger person and in better health. Somebody asked me some time ago, would you go to Mars? And I said, “I can't do it now. I've got a bum pancreas, and I'm 65 years old, and I'm not exactly the prime prospect for doing this. If you asked me 40 years ago would I go, I would have said: in a heartbeat!” I would gladly leave behind almost everything. I don't think I'd be glad about leaving my wife and family behind, but I'd be glad to go live on another planet, perhaps for the rest of my life, just for the chance to explore a new world, to be one of the settlers in a new world. We've got to be careful about how we do this. And we've got to be careful, particularly about the rationale of the people who are doing this.