The Gray Area with Sean Illing15 Tammi 2018

You will love this conversation with Jaron Lanier, but I can’t describe it

Oftentimes it’s easy for me to describe these conversations. This one is on Trump and Russia. That one is on health care. But not this time. I want you to listen to this conversation, because Jaron Lanier is brilliant and his mind is unusual and spending some time within it is a privilege. But I don’t know how to describe it to you. It begins with the story of Lanier tripsitting Richard Feynman, the famed physicist, when he was dying from cancer and decided to try LSD, and it goes from there. Lanier is a VR pioneer and a digital philosopher. He coined the term "virtual reality,” founded one of the first companies in the space, and has been involved in both the practice and theory of creating and living in virtual worlds for decades now. He's one of the most trenchant critics of Silicon Valley's business model, and the way it's screwed up both the internet and the world. And somehow, all this has made him a much more humanistic, insightful analyst of what it’s like to live in this world, too. His latest book, “Dawn of the New Everything,” is one of my favorites of the last year — it’s thrilling to read a memoir that smart, and that strange, in an era that is so focused on making us dumber and angrier. And in person, Lanier is just as exciting — every answer has an insight worth hearing in it. This is one of my favorite conversations I've had on the pod. Give it 15 minutes. If you don’t love it, I’ll give you your money back. Books: Finite and Infinite Games by James P. Carse I and Thou by Martin Buber Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Tämä jakso on lisätty Podme-palveluun avoimen RSS-syötteen kautta eikä se ole Podmen omaa tuotantoa. Siksi jakso saattaa sisältää mainontaa.

Jaksot(765)

Jill Lepore on America’s two revolutions

Jill Lepore is a Harvard historian, a New Yorker contributor, and the author of These Truths, a dazzling one-volume synthesis of American history. She’s the kind of history teacher everyone wishes the...

3 Tammi 20191h 33min

Best of: N.K. Jemisin

This is the most fun I’ve ever had on a podcast. Nora Jemisin — better known by her pen name, N.K. Jemisin — won the Hugo Award for best novel this year for the third year in a row. No one had ever do...

31 Joulu 20181h 23min

Best-of: Bryan Stevenson

Here, at the holidays, I wanted to share some of my favorite episodes of the show with you. Bryan Stevenson tops the list. He’s the founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, the author of the remarkabl...

27 Joulu 20181h 32min

Kara Swisher interviews me on the Future of Journalism (Live!)

When I decided to start an interview podcast, the first person I went to for advice was Kara Swisher — founder of Recode, host of the Code Conference and the Recode/Decode podcast, and one of the most...

24 Joulu 20181h 33min

TED’s Chris Anderson on the lessons of listening

You know TED. Black stage, red accents, wireless mic, one speaker. Billions of views each year. TED is more than a conference now; it’s a meme: “Thanks for coming to my TED talk” closes Tumblr and Twi...

20 Joulu 20181h 9min

Rep. Katie Porter on how capitalism is failing

Katie Porter is the Rep.-elect from California’s 45th District, which happens to be the district I grew up in. She’s part of the brigade of Democrats who turned Orange County blue for the first time s...

17 Joulu 20181h 19min

How Hasan Minhaj is reinventing political comedy

In Patriot Act, Hasan Minhaj’s new Netflix show, he does three things political comedians often don’t do. First, he makes political comedy personal. Second, he makes it visual. And third, he makes it ...

13 Joulu 20181h 42min

Adam Serwer on white political correctness

“What a society finds offensive is not a function of fact or truth,” writes Adam Serwer, “but of power.” Serwer is a writer at the Atlantic, and he’s been looking at the identity politics and politica...

10 Joulu 201850min