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A library of interviews with the world’s biggest thinkers.
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The financial meltdown caught China off guard—and may make the country hesitate to follow Japan and other East Asian neighbors into full-fledged capitalism.
4mins
Will China’s future economic success hinge on its willingness to democratize? Or will U.S. debt make the country a superpower sooner than we think?
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“There’s no point in going into a field like English literature unless you’re going to have fun with it.”
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The Harvard critic recalls feeling genuinely anxious about how things would turn out for the hero of “The Magic Mountain.”
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China is becoming progressively more open and entrepreneurial, but Western corporations shouldn’t assume they can export their traditional business models there.
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Creative writing programs have left a dominant stamp on American literature in recent decades. The Harvard professor is glad they’re around.
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Louis Menand recalls the most vehement reactions his essays have ever gotten—including one from a reader who didn’t realize Menand agreed with him.
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A conversation with Booz & Company’s Chairman for Greater China.
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Louis Menand isn’t sure the cognitive science approach to literature has yielded much of interest so far, but thinks there may be “some surprises around the corner.”
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Not on purpose, says the “Marketplace of Ideas” author. But the system is starting to hurt them nonetheless.
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The “Marketplace of Ideas” author suggests steps American colleges can take to become more ideologically diverse.
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The “problem of general education” haunts any college trying to design a core curriculum, but standardizing across schools is a poor solution.
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Whether we’re in postmodernism, post-postmodernism, or some other phase, one thing we’re not in is cultural decline.
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The kind of literary criticism that Lionel Trilling practiced, which assumed that national literatures reflected deep national values, is dead now.
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The audience that the New Yorker critic has in mind is “somebody who’s like yourself, but in a completely different discipline.”
28mins
A conversation with the Harvard University English professor.
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What excites the legendary computer scientist about the future? In a word: graphics.
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The terrorist attack David Gelernter experienced in 1993 left his body injured, but his mind unfazed.
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The basic user interface of our personal computers has stayed the same for a generation. How can we move beyond the desktop?
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How spreading sensitive information over thousands of computers could revolutionize digital security.