Extraordinary Discourse Podcast

Disruptive Intelligence For myself, the only way I know how to make a book is to construct it like a collage: a bit of dialogue here, a scrap of narrative, an isolated description of a common object, an elaborate running metaphor which threads between the sequences and holds different narrative lines together. Hilary Mantel

Fishin' In The (Human) Condition My God! The English language is a form of communication! Conversation isn't just crossfire where you shoot and get shot at! Where you've got to duck for your life and aim to kill! Words aren't only bombs and bullets —no, they're little gifts, containing meanings! Philip Roth  

Talkstream Takeaways A written word is the choicest of relics. It is something at once more intimate with us and more universal than any other work of art. It is the work of art nearest to life itself. It may be translated into every language, and not only be read but actually breathed from all human lips; -- not be represented on canvas or in marble only, but be carved out of the breath of life itself. Henry David Thoreau, Walden

Defenestrating the Overton Window For millions of years, mankind lived just like the animals. Then something happened which unleashed the power of our imagination. We learned to talk and we learned to listen. Speech has allowed the communication of ideas, enabling human beings to work together to build the impossible. Mankind's greatest achievements have come about by talking, and its greatest failures by not talking. It doesn't have to be like this. Our greatest hopes could become reality in the future. With the technology at our disposal, the possibilities are unbounded. All we need to do is make sure we keep talking. Stephen Hawking

Field Notes of a Tenured Autodidact Do I dare set forth here the most important, the most useful rule of all education? It is not to save time, but to squander it. Jean-Jacques Rousseau The salvation of the world lies in the maladjusted. Martin Luther King, Jr.  

Memes in Themes Drunk on the chill whiskey of words. Robert Allen Magellan's Clouds

THIS and THAT and THE OTHER thing Jewish mystics used to believe that the world presents innumerable smashed pieces of vessels with divine light clinging to them. It is each individual's responsibility to rescue the captive sparks. Bonnie Friedman, Surrendering Oz