The Art of Fiction · Democracy & Truth

The Art of Fiction · Democracy & Truth

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Author · Activist ·  Stand-Up Comedian AL KENNEDY · Author of Alive in the Merciful Country

The thing that puzzled him was why people don't agree to be fully expressed while they're alive. Why does it only happen in their last moment? Why wouldn't you live being fully expressed? If you have love, eventually you're going to win. It's not that people aren't going to die. It's not terrible things aren't going to happen. But if you stay with that and you stay centered in that, you'll get through and you will not have turned into a monster in order to overcome monsters.”

The Score: How to Stop Playing Somebody Else's Game

The Score: How to Stop Playing Somebody Else's Game

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A Conversation with Philosopher C. THI NGUYEN · Author of The Score · Games: Agency as Art

To be in the process of making things, to be in the process of talking to people about what things mean… The creative process is actually, I think, the most meaningful part of life, but it's very hard to measure. When we get shoved towards a world that demands easy measurables, it's very hard to optimize away from the creative process and optimize towards things that are more static.

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How the Arts Can Transform Our Health

How the Arts Can Transform Our Health

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DAISY FANCOURT · Author of Art Cure · Director of WHO Collaborating Centre on Arts & Health · Prof. Psychobiology & Epidemiology at UCL

Within society we seem to have separated the arts out, so they’re not so much a part of our daily lives. As I’ve become a mother and I have children now, it’s been really eye-opening to rediscover lots of arts things that I’d stopped doing in my own childhood. But now coming back to them I think probably the most meaningful one for me is one I describe in the book, which is about my younger daughter, Daphne, who was premature and unfortunately got incredibly ill with meningitis and was in intensive care when she was just a few days old.

The Fight for the Future: AI, Privacy & Power

The Fight for the Future: AI, Privacy & Power

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CARISSA VÉLIZ · Author of Prophecy: Prediction, Power & the Fight for the Future · Privacy is Power: Why & How You Should Take Back Control of Your Data

Algorithms are deciding whether you are eligible for a loan, a job, an apartment or insurance. They determine what you see online, who reads your social media posts and who connects with you on dating apps. They may even decide whether you get arrested or go to jail. Your very life hangs in the balance of prophecies.

If you are unlucky, a prediction will be what kills you. Forecasts can determine your place on a waiting list for an organ transplant or whether you get medical care in an emergency. Policymaking hinges on predictions. War and peace and whether someone lives or dies are decided based on forecasts about the strength of an adversary, the impact of a mission or the identity of a person. And yet no one has asked your permission to make those guesses. No governmental agency is supervising them. No one is informing you of the prophecies that shape your fate. Prophecies are the grounds on which fights over the future take place.

For the Sun After Long Nights: Iranian Women Leading Fight for Freedom

For the Sun After Long Nights: Iranian Women Leading Fight for Freedom

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Journalist FATEMEH JAMALPOUR

Then I started to write about the interrogation sessions. I knew that writing is jumping over the death row. I knew they couldn't shut down my mind. I had all these notes about returning and the interrogation sessions because I was facing the whole ideological core of the regime. We realized that to tell the full, human side of the story of our people, we needed a book.

The Salt Stones: Seasons of a Shepherd’s Life

The Salt Stones: Seasons of a Shepherd’s Life

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HELEN WHYBROW
Writer · Shepherd · Organic Farmer

There are two ways that I measure diminishment in the natural world, a world we all have the ability to see and sense no matter where we live. The first is ecological: a loss of vitality, complexity and stability. This can be studied and measured, but it can also be perceived by simply listening and noticing. Nature has a voice that sings in different registers and in those registers you can hear health or struggle, presence or absence. The second way I measured diminishment is in the human experience-- loss of beauty, of meaning, of pattern language these also become more available to us as we watch and listen take in what surrounds us.  

Exile, Empire & Resistance

Exile, Empire & Resistance

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YURI HERRERA on Benito Juarez and Today's Political Crises

Benito Juarez is a really important figure in Mexican culture, politics and history. He is probably the most respected figure in that sense in Mexico, only akin to what Lincoln is in American culture. Juarez was an orphan in the state of Oaxaca who spoke a variant of Zapotec, an indigenous language. He was sent to a seminary and was going to become a priest, but in his own words, he felt repulsed by the way the priests were manipulating the people in Oaxaca.