Debates 3

AudioFiles Q+A with Professor Sara Seager

Sara Seager Full Interview

Noam Chomsky: The Final Smiley & West

In the midst of her search for life on other planets, astrophysicist Sara Seager's own world is shattered when her husband is told he has stage three cancer.

Professor Sara Seager is a planetary scientist and astrophysicist. She has been a pioneer in the vast and unknown world of exoplanets, planets that orbit stars other than the sun. Her ground-breaking research ranges from the detection of exoplanet atmospheres to innovative theories about life on other worlds to development of novel space mission concepts. Now, dubbed an "astronomical Indiana Jones", she on a quest after the field's holy grail, the discovery of a true Earth twin. Dr. Seager earned her PhD from Harvard University and is now the Class of 1941 Professor of Planetary Science and Professor of Physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Professor Seager is a 2013 MacArthur Fellow and was named in Time Magazine's 25 Most Influential in Space in 2012.

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Sara Seager: A New Search For Life

A conversation with Judith Donath SM '86, PhD '97, whose book The Social Machine was published by MIT Press in May 2014. The book is a chronicle of Donath's projects in social media dating from the late 1980s, long before the term was in vogue. Read more: http://bit.ly/1TjtJwr

Donath also traces the rise of social media to its roots in Usenet groups and discussion boards to the conquests of Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Donath explores why these media thrived while others failed, and the book serves as both a guide for researchers studying social media and a cautionary tale for casual users who don’t always question them critically enough. 

Learn more about Judith Donath: http://vivatropolis.org/judith/  
Book homepage: http://vivatropolis.org/SocialMachine/
Podcast transcript: https://bit.ly/2Gz80lL

The Social Machine (Alumni Books Podcast)

Professor Noam Chomsky, UCL Rickman Godlee Lecture 2011 (Part 3 of 3)

Contours of global order: Domination, stability, security in a changing world.

Professor Noam Chomsky explores the crucial role of a supportive intellectual culture in an environment of potentially dangerous irrationality in policy-making circles and among sectors of the political class, while institutional structures bar efforts to confront very serious domestic and international issues.

UCLTV Playlist of lecture excerpts: http://bit.ly/dKk2qY

Further links:
Blog post on the event: http://bit.ly/hwklig 
Professor Chomsky's MIT page: http://bit.ly/gon5cT

UCL is consistently ranked as one of the world's top universities. Across all disciplines our faculties are known for their research-intensive approaches, academic excellence and engagement with global challenges. This is the basis of our world-renowned degree programmes. Visit us at www.ucl.ac.uk.

Professor Noam Chomsky - UCL Rickman Godlee Lecture 2011 (Part 3 of 3): Questions & Answers

Eugene Mirman, Scott Adsit, and Maeve Higgins learn from Dr. Leslie Dewan, an MIT alum who developed a revolutionary new nuclear reactor that's powered by nuclear waste. It's environmentally friendly, cheaper than other reactors, and it can't meltdown. She's kind of a big deal. Along the way, we learn about the social life of nuclear engineers, why BP really needs some new recruiting videos, and Guy Fieri's cooking. Hosted by Chris Duffy. Produced by Pretty Good Friends.

Nuclear Power And Molten Salt

Robert Gordon PhD '67 calls his new book a revised version of his thesis for Professor Robert Solow, "47 years late." The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The U.S. Standard of Living since the Civil War upends the typical narrative about the wonders of twenty-first century American innovations.

In this interview, Gordon shares his thoughts on American growth and shares some memories of his MIT years. Read more: http://bit.ly/21bLmTd

Episode Transcript: https://bit.ly/2Je9zY4

The Rise and Fall of American Growth (Alumni Books Podcast)

Award-winning journalist, academic and author Stephen Kinzer discusses his latest book The True Flag: Theodore Roosevelt, Mark Twain, and the Birth of American Empire.

Show Notes
https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2017/05/13/new-allies-for-new-world/xVbB3usL9CPF7vvPDliTNM/story.html
https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2017/06/10/saudi-arabia-destabilizing-world/ivMeb7TWGk1fQaVjZWWKGP/story.html
https://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2017/05/27/foreign-policy-mixtape/3UEjCooruAmF3uHoJXQb8O/story.html

Websites
http://stephenkinzer.com
https://twitter.com/stephenkinzer

Books
https://www.amazon.com/Stephen-Kinzer/e/B00455F1NC/ref=dp_byline_cont_book_1

About the Guest
Stephen Kinzer is an award-winning foreign correspondent who has covered more than 50 countries on five continents. His articles and books have led the Washington Post to place him “among the best in popular foreign policy storytelling.”

Kinzer’s most recent book is “The Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles, and Their Secret World War.” The novelist John le Carré called it “a secret history, enriched and calmly retold; a shocking account of the misuse of American corporate, political and media power; a shaming reflection on the moral manners of post imperial Europe; and an essential allegory for our own times.”

Kinzer’s previous book was “Reset: Iran, Turkey, and America’s Future.” “Stephen Kinzer is a journalist of a certain cheeky fearlessness and exquisite timing,” The Huffington Post said in its review. “This book is a bold exercise in reimagining the United States’ big links in the Middle East.”

In 2006 Kinzer published “Overthrow: America’s Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq.” It recounts the 14 times the United States has overthrown foreign governments. Kinzer seeks to explain why these interventions were carried out and what their long-term effects have been. He is also the author of “All the Shah’s Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror.” It tells how the CIA overthrew Iran’s nationalist government in 1953.

Kinzer spent more than 20 years working for the New York Times, most of it as a foreign correspondent. His foreign postings placed him at the center of historic events and, at times, in the line of fire. While covering world events, he has been shot at, jailed, beaten by police, tear-gassed and bombed from the air.

In 1996 Kinzer was named chief of the newly opened New York Times bureau in Istanbul, Turkey. He spent four years there, traveling widely in Turkey and in the new nations of Central Asia and the Caucasus. After completing this assignment, Kinzer published “Crescent and Star: Turkey Between Two Worlds.”

He has also worked in Africa, and written “A Thousand Hills: Rwanda’s Rebirth and the Man Who Dreamed It.” Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa called this book “a fascinating account of a near-miracle unfolding before our very eyes.”

Before joining the New York Times, Kinzer was Latin America correspondent for the Boston Globe. He is now a visiting fellow at the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University, where he teaches international relations. He contributes to The Guardian and the New York Review of Books, and writes a world affairs column for The Boston Globe.

In 2009, Dominican University in River Forest, Illinois, awarded Kinzer an honorary doctorate. The citation said that “those of us who have had the pleasure of hearing his lectures or talking to him informally will probably never see the world in the same way again.”

The University of Scranton awarded Kinzer an honorary doctorate in 2010. “Where there has been turmoil in the world and history has shifted, Stephen Kinzer has been there,” the citation said. “Neither bullets, bombs nor beating could dull his sharp determination to bring injustice and strife to light.”

Stephen Kinzer: The True Flag of American Empire #051

The founder of peace and conflict studies, Dr. Johan Galtung, discusses his predictions of the US Empire collapsing and becoming a dictatorship, before eventually rebuilding its democracy.

Transcript: http://guadalajarageopolitics.com/2017/09/10/johan-galtung-us-empire-will-collapse-and-become-a-dictatorship-058

Show Notes
USA–Where Are You Heading? https://www.transcend.org/tms/2017/09/usa-where-are-you-heading
Pentagon Study Declares American Empire Is Collapsing https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/pentagon-study-declares-american-empire-is-collapsing-746754cdaebf
DOD Risk Assessment in a Post-Primacy World https://ssi.armywarcollege.edu/pubs/display.cfm?pubID=1358
US Power Will Decline Under Trump Says Futurist Who Predicted Soviet Collapse https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/d7ykxx/us-power-will-decline-under-trump-says-futurist-who-predicted-soviet-collapse

Websites
https://www.transcend.org
https://www.galtung-institut.de

Books
https://www.transcend.org/tup/index.php?book=5

About Johan Galtung
Johan Galtung, dr, dr hc mult, a professor of peace studies, was born in 1930 in Oslo, Norway. He is a mathematician, sociologist, political scientist and the founder of the discipline of peace studies. He founded the International Peace Research Institute, Oslo (1959), the world's first academic research center focused on peace studies, as well as the influential Journal of Peace Research (1964). He has helped found dozens of other peace centers around the world. He is currently the president of the Galtung-Institut for Peace Theory & Peace Practice.

He has mediated in over 150 conflicts between states, nations, religions, civilizations, communities, and persons since 1957. His contributions to peace theory and practice include conceptualization of peace-building, conflict mediation, reconciliation, nonviolence, theory of structural violence, theorizing about negative vs. positive peace, peace education and peace journalism. Prof. Galtung's unique imprint on the study of conflict and peace stems from a combination of systematic scientific inquiry and a Gandhian ethics of peaceful means and harmony.

Johan Galtung has conducted a great deal of research in many fields and made original contributions not only to peace studies but also, among others, human rights, basic needs, development strategies, a world economy that sustains life, macro-history, theory of civilizations, federalism, globalization, theory of discourse, social pathologies, deep culture, peace and religions, social science methodology, sociology, ecology, future studies.

He is author or co-author of more than 1600 articles and over 160 books on peace and related issues.

He is the weekly editorialist for TRANSCEND Media Service-TMS, which features solutions-oriented peace journalism.

He is founder (in 2000) and rector of the TRANSCEND Peace University, the world's first online Peace Studies University. He is also the founder and director of TRANSCEND International, a global non‑profit network for Peace, Development and the Environment, founded in 1993, with over 500 members in more than 70 countries around the world. As a testimony to his legacy, peace studies are now taught and researched at over 500 universities across the globe and some are contributing to peacemaking efforts in conflicts around the world wihtout buying into the securitization sell out.

He was jailed in Norway for six months at age 24 as a Conscientious Objector to serving in the military, after having done 12 months of civilian service, the same time as those doing military service. In jail he wrote his first book, Gandhi's Political Ethics, together with his mentor, Arne Naess.

As a recipient of over a dozen honorary doctorates and professorships and many other distinctions, including a Right Livelihood Award (also known as Alternative Nobel Peace Prize), Johan Galtung remains committed to the study and promotion of peace.

Johan Galtung: US Empire Will Collapse and Become a Dictatorship #058

Foreign policy expert Robert Kagan discusses our nation's retreat from its international responsibilities under President Trump and why it could mean the end of the world order America created after WWII.

Robert Kagan on why Americans don't want the US to be the leader of the free world

In this episode, we discuss how the focus of education should be changing and how we best position American students for the challenges of a new century.

Rethinking Higher Education

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The Rise and Fall of American Growth (Alumni Books Podcast)

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