Q&A: JANE McGONIGAL, REALITY IS BROKEN – How Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World

Written on January 24th, 2012

 

 

Aired 01/20/12

There are 183 million active video gamers in the US, and the average young person will spend 10,000 hours gaming by the age of 21. There are now more than five million “extreme” gamers” in the US who play an average of 45 hours a week.

According to game designer JANE McGONIGAL, this is because videogames are increasingly fulfilling genuine human needs. But she goes way beyond that, in her first book, REALITY IS BROKEN — just out in paperback – she suggests we can use the lessons of game design to fix what is wrong with the real world.

Drawing on positive psychology, cognitive science, and sociology, she shows how game designers have hit on core truths about what makes us happy so that videogames consistently provide the exhilarating rewards, stimulating challenges, and epic victories that are so often lacking in the real world.

I recommend Reality Is Broken to people who have no interest in games. Separate from what it says about the current reality and possible future of games, the book is an excellent primer on what we have learned – and most people don’t know – about happiness, learning, productivity and growth.

http://janemcgonigal.com/

Q&A: Occupy the Dream: Benjamin Chavis & David DeGraw

Written on January 21st, 2012

 Aired 01/15/12

Learn about the alliance between African American faith leaders and the Occupy movement — Occupy the Dream — from two of those who made it happen: David De Graw, one of the central figures in the leaderless and horizontal Occupy/99% movement and Dr. Ben Chavis, longtime civil rights leader, from his youthful days with King, to his leadership of the Million Man March, to his current role in the Hip Hop Summit Action Network. The coalition called a National Day of Action for Martin Luther King Day, January 16, 2012,, with demonstrations in multiple cities nationwide, focusing attention on the injustice visited upon the 99% by a financial elite. You can learn more at occupythedream.org.

DAVID DeGRAW is founder and editor of AmpedStatus.com, as well as OWSnews.org, formerly editorial director of MediaChannel.org, and author of The Economic Elite Vs. The People of the United States.

In 1965, while a college freshman, BENJAMIN CHAVIS became a statewide youth coordinator in North Carolina for the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). As a chemist, he was a founder of the environmental justice movement, then an organizer of the Million Man March, and since he has been CEO and Co-Chairman of the Hip-Hop Summit Action Network, in New York City which he cofounded with hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons.

Q&A: STEPHEN GREENBLATT, National Book Award Winner, THE SWERVE: How the World Became Modern

Written on January 21st, 2012

 

Aired 01/15/12

In the winter of 1417, a short, genial, cannily alert man in his late thirties plucked a very old manuscript off a library shelf, saw with excitement what he had discovered, and ordered that it be copied. The man was Poggio Braccionlini, the greatest book hunter of the Renaissance. His discovery was the last surviving manuscript of an ancient Roman philosophical epic, On the Nature of Things by Lucretius—a beautiful poem of the most dangerous ideas: that the universe functioned without the aid of gods, that religious fear was damaging to human life, and that matter was made up of very small particles in eternal motion, colliding and swerving in new directions. 
The copying and translation of this ancient book fueled the Renaissance, inspiring artists such as Botticelli and thinkers such as Giordano Bruno; shaped the thought of Galileo and Freud, Darwin and Einstein; and had a revolutionary influence on writers such as Montaigne and Shakespeare and even Thomas Jefferson.

Stephen Greenblatt is John Cogan University Professor of the Humanities at Harvard University. Among his books are Will of the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare, a Finalist for the 2004 National Book Award in Nonfiction and a New York Times best seller, and Hamlet in Purgatory. He holds honorary degrees from Queen Mary College of the University of London and the University of Bucharest.

Q&A: TOM FRANK – What’s the Matter with Kansas? / EDGAR CAHN – founder of Legal Services & Time Dollars

Written on January 10th, 2012

 

Aired 01/08/12

This will be a conversation about the state of things as we embark on 2012. I will be joined by TOM FRANK (What’s the Matter with Kansas?) and EDGAR CAHN (founder of Legal Services and Time Dollars). We will talk about their passions and projects.

http://www.tcfrank.com/

In his new book, PITY THE BILLIONAIRE, Frank examines how the crash that has hurt so many millions of Americans has delivered wildly perverse political results. He gives us a diagnosis of the cultural malady that has transformed collapse into profit, reconceived the Founding Fathers as heroes from an Ayn Rand novel, and enlisted the powerless in a fan club for the prosperous.

Edgar Cahn was a serial social entrepreneur before the term was invented. In 1974, he and his wife co-founded the Legal Services Program to deliver legal services to the poor, then co-founded Antioch School of Law, where students learned through providing legal services to the poor. Two decades later Cahn created TIme Dollars, a system to bank and exchange services rather than currency.

In the larger conversation, I want to take a fairly big picture, historical, and forward-looking perspective. While I assume we will talk about global economics and international conflicts, the emphasis would be on the US. Though I assume we will talk about the fall election, I want to look more broadly.

Questions like: Where are we as a society – socially, culturally, economically, and politically? What’s working and why is it working? What are your fears and hopes for the year ahead? What stories and narratives will you be paying attention to in the next year? 
Maybe something about the battle over the narrative of America’s founding and the American dream. Is there a story in which humanity turns things around?

THOMAS FRANK, a former opinion columnist for The Wall Street Journal, is the founding editor of The Baffler and a monthly columnist for Harper’s. He is the author of The Conquest of Cool; What’s the Matter with Kansas? One Market Under God; and his newest, PITY THE BILLIONAIRE.

EDGAR CAHN teaches Law and Justice, and directs the Community Service Program at the University of the District of Columbia School of Law. A co-founder with his late wife Jean Camper Cahn of the Antioch School of Law, UDC-DCSL’s predecessor; the first law school in the United States to educate law students primarily through clinical training in legal services to the poor. In the late 1980s, Professor Cahn began the Time Dollars project, a service credit program that now has more than 70 communities in the US, UK and Japan with registered programs (www.timebanks.org). He’s the author of several books, including Hunger USA, Time Dollars and No More Throw-Away People.

Q&A: Steve Stockman, writer/director, author, HOW TO SHOOT VIDEO THAT DOESN’T SUCK

Written on January 4th, 2012

 

Aired 01/01/12

I’ll be joined by writer-director STEVE STOCKMAN whose new book HOW TO SHOOT VIDEO THAT DOESN’T SUCK has a great deal of smart things to say – not just about shooting videos of your kids’ parties or your company’s new products, but also about the essential role of story in the movies you see in theatres. Stick around. I believe you’ll learn something no matter who you are.

http://www.stevestockman.com/