This was my weekend watch. It’s a fantastic, far-reaching discussion across the evolution of virtue, morality, free trade and more. It touches on the green revolution and on Ridley’s Rational Optimist perspective (similar to Steven Pinker’s Enlightenment Now.
In fact, it’s all that you might expect from a discussion between Peterson and Ridley.
Well worth a watch.
This looks interesting.
Jordan Peterson and Douglas Murray in conversation on Peterson’s podcast.
My weekend will be complete.
However, is this 100 minutes isn’t sufficient, there’s an archive of his podcasts, here.
A weekend watch on bonsai for beginners.
I’ve long been fascinated by the magical quality of bonsai, but imagined a heady responsibility (nurturing and tending a tiny, decades-old specimen) steeped in ritual.
This makes it all seem more achievable. There’s no prissy nonsense, here.
Continue reading “Beginning bonsai”
Something quirky for the weekend.
Written and directed by Peter Capaldi, this 22-minute film won the Oscar and BAFTA awards for Best Short Film in 1993/94.
It stars Richard E Grant (as Kafka) and Ken Stott. What’s not to love?
You can read more about the film on Wikipedia and IMDb.
Well worth 22 minutes of your weekend (despite the uncertain quality).
Douglas Murray on his books The Strange Death of Europe and The Madness of Crowds; interviewed for the Hoover Institution’s Uncommon Knowledge series.
Thought-provoking, fascinating, controversial.
Worth a Weekend Watch.
Image: Andy Ngo
Professor Anthony Long is largely responsible for reviving serious academic interest in Stoicism.
In this talk (from Stoicon 2018) – Stoicisms Ancient and Modern – he discusses “three big ideas” of Stoicism:
Another great podcast from CapX’s Free Exchange series. In this episode, Steven Pinker discusses his recent book, Enlightenment Now.
It’s a fascinating book, but I confess I’ve been reading it all year. The takeaway is clear but the wealth of data takes time to digest. The book is worth the work, but this 30-minute podcast will give you the gist.
The podcast you can hear, here.
You can also get it on iTunes, here.
Photo credit: Rose Lincoln / Harvard University
Magic and marketing both rely on directed attention. The conjurer directs the audience away from the palmed coin while the marketer directs it towards the big, shiny, buy button.
But attention is a fickle animal.
Continue reading “The psychology of illusion – @RogerDooley, @MattLTompkins”
Now that we have Boris and a very clear statement of intent with regard of Brexit, it’s worth listening to this podcast.
From CapX’s Free Exchange, it dates from a couple of weeks ago. Professor Niall Ferguson gives a historian’s view on Europe, Brexit and politics. He also offers a personal perspective on Oxford contemporary Boris Johnson. It’s both thought-provoking and amusing.
A couple of snippets:
I’m not convinced Churchill would have approved of Brexit since it amounts to a leap in the dark to think Britain can simply exit the EU and hope for a bunch of free trade agreements, including with the United States, to turn up – at a time when most of the world is turning away from free trade.
and…
Ultimately you could argue, in that case Brexit doesn’t really matter – and I would say ‘right, exactly right!’. So why waste all this time on a divorce from something that is in the end becoming weaker over time and is almost certain not to become a superstate…We’re divorcing a slowly decomposing spouse.
A good use of 30 minutes.
Robert Greene on the importance of being grounded and knowing your selves:
If you’re constantly listening to what other people are saying, if you’re plugged into the matrix continually, and that’s your only reality, then … you’re never understanding who you are. What you see when you look in the mirror is a reflection of all the opinions that other people have … You become a reflection of other people.
A five-minute film for the weekend…
Continue reading “A reflection of other people”