Textiles: Humanity’s early tech boom | Virginia Postrel | Big Think

The traditional measure of evolutionary success is a population's ability to continue, adapt and grow. By that measure, humanity has been a huge success: our population is only getting bigger, and for a lot of countries, so is our average life-span. Biological anthropologist Agustín Fuentes takes issue with this measurement. In his view, the sheer number of humans living on the planet doesn't necessarily equate to success. In fact, the argument that humans are doing better than ever before is problematic, because it only considers a narrow perspective of Euro-American societies, ignoring other vast cultures and populations. Instead, Fuentes argues, evolutionary success for humans should be measured by our capacity for flourishing, which includes health, security, interaction, and well-being — and importantly, how this flourishing is distributed across our species. --------------------------------------------------------------------- chapters: 0:00 The overpopulation myth 1:20 Niche construction, explained 4:06 Human nature: Amazing and awful 5:46 The “it’s just nature” myth Listen To This Next:- Adam Grant's #1 phrase to unlock potential The science of super longevity Beat anxiety with the most addictive experience on Earth This interview is an episode from ⁠@The-Well⁠, our publication about ideas that inspire a life well-lived, created with the ⁠@JohnTempletonFoundation⁠. Get Smarter Faster, With Daily Episodes From The Worlds Biggest Thinkers ---------------------------------- Go Deeper with Big Think: ►Become a Big Think Member Get exclusive access to full interviews, early access to new releases, Big Think merch and more ►Get Big Think+ for Business Guide, inspire and accelerate leaders at all levels of your company with the biggest minds in business ---------------------------------- Discover Big Think | Smarter Faster™ Your top destination for expert-driven, educational content. Featuring thousands of episodes and insights from renowned figures like Bill Clinton to Bill Nye, Big Think accelerates your learning by delving into the pivotal concepts and essential skills shaping knowledge in the 21st century... Unlock Knowledge, Faster With Insights from the World's Leading Minds Remember to Follow the Podcast and Enable Notifications If you found this episode valuable, Share It Leave a 5-Star Review! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

6 ways to heal trauma without medication, from the author of “The Body Keeps the Score,” Bessel van der Kolk Conventional psychiatric practices tell us that if we feel bad, take this drug and it will go away. But after years of research with some of the top psychiatric practitioners in the world, we’ve found that drugs simply don’t work that well for many, and our conventional ways of healing trauma need to change. In recent years, experts in the study of trauma have been experimenting with ‘new age’ healing mechanisms that are making massive waves for trauma patients. Some of these new healing methods include EDMR, yoga, theater and movement, neural feedback, and even psychedelics. Many of these methods have proven to be more effective than conventional pharmaceuticals. But just like any other health regimen, what works for you might not work for your friend or neighbor. New age trauma therapy is all an experiment, and after enough experimenting, something can eventually work, healing your trauma in a unique and effective way. About Bessel van der Kolk: Bessel van der Kolk is a psychiatrist noted for his research in the area of post-traumatic stress since the 1970s. His work focuses on the interaction of attachment, neurobiology, and developmental aspects of trauma’s effects on people. His major publication, Traumatic Stress: The Effects of Overwhelming Experience on Mind, Body, and Society, talks about how the role of trauma in psychiatric illness has changed over the past 20 years. Dr. van der Kolk is past President of the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies, Professor of Psychiatry at Boston University Medical School, and Medical Director of the Trauma Center at JRI in Brookline, Massachusetts. He has taught at universities and hospitals across the United States and around the world, including Europe, Africa, Russia, Australia, Israel, and China. Check out Bessel van der Kolk's latest book, “The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma” ------------------------------------------------------------ Listen To This Next: Adam Grant's #1 phrase to unlock potential The science of super longevity Beat anxiety with the most addictive experience on Earth Go Deeper with Big Think: ►Become a Big Think Member Get exclusive access to full interviews, early access to new releases, Big Think merch and more ►Get Big Think+ for Business Guide, inspire and accelerate leaders at all levels of your company with the biggest minds in business ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Discover Big Think | Smarter Faster™ Your top destination for expert-driven, educational content. Featuring thousands of episodes and insights from renowned figures like Bill Clinton to Bill Nye, Big Think accelerates your learning by delving into the pivotal concepts and essential skills shaping knowledge in the 21st century... Unlock Knowledge, Faster With Insights from the World's Leading Minds Remember to Follow the Podcast and Enable Notifications If you found this episode valuable, Share It Leave a 5-Star Review! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Washington University professor John Inazu tells us how we can make peace inside a raging culture war. What explains the high levels of political polarization in American society today? To writer and law professor John Inazu, the answer is not necessarily that the media has become more biased — there has always been bias in the news, after all. The more likely answer is that the “volume” of the information we encounter has been turned way up, thanks to technology. For example, while we used to have limited access to the news through the newspaper and nightly broadcasts, we can now get constant updates on social media, email, and news apps. Often, the result is that we seek out information that confirms our beliefs and we have trouble connecting with people whose opinions differ from our own. Inazu suggests we can break out of our ideological bubbles through “confident pluralism,” which he describes as a framework that uses the values of tolerance, patience, and humility to help people better engage with each other. ------------------------------------------------- About John Inazu: John Inazu is the Sally D. Danforth Distinguished Professor of Law and Religion at Washington University in St. Louis. He teaches criminal law, law and religion, and various First Amendment seminars. His scholarship focuses on the First Amendment freedoms of speech, assembly, and religion, and related questions of legal and political theory. He is the author of Liberty’s Refuge: The Forgotten Freedom of Assembly (Yale University Press, 2012) and Confident Pluralism: Surviving and Thriving Through Deep Difference (University of Chicago Press, 2016), and co-editor (with Tim Keller) of Uncommon Ground: Living Faithfully in a World of Difference (Thomas Nelson, 2020). Inazu holds a B.S.E. and J.D. from Duke University and a Ph.D. in political science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He clerked for Judge Roger L. Wollman of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit and served for four years as an associate general counsel with the Department of the Air Force at the Pentagon. ----------------------------------------------------- Listen To This Next: Adam Grant's #1 phrase to unlock potential The science of super longevity Beat anxiety with the most addictive experience on Earth Go Deeper with Big Think: ►Become a Big Think Member Get exclusive access to full interviews, early access to new releases, Big Think merch and more ►Get Big Think+ for Business Guide, inspire and accelerate leaders at all levels of your company with the biggest minds in business --------------------------------------------------------- Discover Big Think | Smarter Faster™ Your top destination for expert-driven, educational content. Featuring thousands of episodes and insights from renowned figures like Bill Clinton to Bill Nye, Big Think accelerates your learning by delving into the pivotal concepts and essential skills shaping knowledge in the 21st century... Unlock Knowledge, Faster With Insights from the World's Leading Minds Remember to Follow the Podcast and Enable Notifications If you found this episode valuable, Share It Leave a 5-Star Review! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Why do the worst people rise to power? University College London professor Brian Klaas responds. George Washington famously didn’t want to become the president of the United States, but he accepted the job and performed it well. That’s how people should feel about important leadership positions, according to how political scientist Brian Klaas thinks about the role of power in society. Klaas says that power should be a burden on people because leaders have to make decisions that will ultimately have negative consequences for many people. One problem: some humans don’t care about those consequences. And, according to Klaas, our institutions don’t do a very good job of screening these people out of important leadership spots. Klaas suggests implementing psychological screening for top jobs, asking questions to determine why someone seeks power, and identifying whether they are in it for themselves or for the greater good. These measures can help to ensure that the right people are in positions of power, whether that means leading a company, governing a nation, or handling nuclear weapons. chapters: 0:00 Power should be a burden / Power should keep you up at night 1:18: The dark triad personality traits 1:43 Machiavellianism 2:06 Narcissism 2:40 Psychopathy 4:04 Psychological screening for powerful jobs Listen To This Next: Adam Grant's #1 phrase to unlock potential The science of super longevity Beat anxiety with the most addictive experience on Earth ------------------------------------------------------------------ Go Deeper with Big Think: ►Become a Big Think Member Get exclusive access to full interviews, early access to new releases, Big Think merch and more ►Get Big Think+ for Business Guide, inspire and accelerate leaders at all levels of your company with the biggest minds in business ------------------------------------------------------------- Discover Big Think | Smarter Faster™ Your top destination for expert-driven, educational content. Featuring thousands of episodes and insights from renowned figures like Bill Clinton to Bill Nye, Big Think accelerates your learning by delving into the pivotal concepts and essential skills shaping knowledge in the 21st century... Unlock Knowledge, Faster With Insights from the World's Leading Minds Remember to Follow the Podcast and Enable Notifications If you found this episode valuable, Share It Leave a 5-Star Review! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

“How is it possible to do work that you’re proud of and not feel like your job is encroaching on all parts of your life?” Cal Newport, author of ‘Slow Productivity,’ explains. Up next, 12 traits emotionally intelligent people share (You can learn them) ►   • 12 traits emotionally intelligent peo...   When the Knowledge Sector emerged in the mid 20th century, our best understanding of the word ‘productivity’ came from manufacturing, which led to us measuring productivity based on quantity produced per hour. But in knowledge work, we’re not producing just one thing: We’re working on 7-8 different things at one time, that differ per worker. Our solution to this was to introduce a rough heuristic that author and professor Cal Newport has dubbed “pseudo productivity,” which uses visible activity as a crude proxy for useful effort. More and more of our time is focused on performing this busyness rather than focusing on high-quality outputs, leading to burnout. Newport has a solution: An idea called ‘slow productivity,’ which is focused on the quality of items produced over time and based on three main principles. Timestamps for easier navigation:- 0:00 - Burnout 0:50 - Slow productivity 1:35 - Pseudo-productivity 2:25 - Principle 1 3:32 - Principle 2 4:23 - Principle 3 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ►Become a Big Think Member Get exclusive access to full interviews, early access to new releases, Big Think merch and more ►Get Big Think+ for Business Guide, inspire and accelerate leaders at all levels of your company with the biggest minds in business ---------------------------------------------------------------- About Cal Newport: Cal Newport is an MIT-trained computer science professor at Georgetown University who also writes about the intersections of technology, work, and the quest to find depth in an increasingly distracted world. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

CRISPR (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats) is a revolutionary technology that gives scientists the ability to alter DNA. On the one hand, this tool could mean the elimination of certain diseases. On the other, there are concerns (both ethical and practical) about its misuse and the yet-unknown consequences of such experimentation. "The technique could be misused in horrible ways," says counter-terrorism expert Richard A. Clarke. Clarke lists biological weapons as one of the potential threats, "Threats for which we don't have any known antidote." CRISPR co-inventor, biochemist Jennifer Doudna, echos the concern, recounting a nightmare involving the technology, eugenics, and a meeting with Adolf Hitler. Should humanity even have access to this type of tool? Do the positives outweigh the potential dangers? How could something like this ever be regulated, and should it be? These questions and more are considered by Doudna, Clarke, evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, psychologist Steven Pinker, and physician Siddhartha Mukherjee. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- TRANSCRIPT: 0:41 Jennifer Doudna defines CRISPR 3:47 CRISPR’s risks 4:52 Artificial selection vs. artificial mutation 6:25 Why Steven Pinker believes humanity will play it safe 9:20 Lessons from history 10:58 How CRISPR can help 11:22 Jennifer Doudna’s chimeric-Hitler dream - Our ability to manipulate genes can be very powerful. It has been very powerful. - This is going to revolutionize human life. - Would the consequences be bad? And they might be. - Every time you monkey with the genome you are taking a chance that something will go wrong. - The technique could be misused in horrible ways. - When I started this research project, I've kind of had this initial feeling of what have I done. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Peter Schwartz, the futurist behind Minority Report, explains 3 steps for predicting what comes next. It's very easy to imagine how things might go wrong, but it's much harder to imagine how things might go right. "Futurists" are those who study the future so that the people alive today can make better decisions for tomorrow. It is impossible to get all of the predictions right. The point of futurism, however, is to envision multiple scenarios in which we can test our decisions so that we are ready for whatever actually occurs. ------------------------------------------------------------ This video is part of The Progress Issue, a Big Think and Freethink special collaboration. In this inaugural special issue we set out to explore progress — how it happens, how we nurture it and how we stifle it, and what changes are required in how we approach our most serious problems to ensure greater and more equitable progress for all. ------------------------------------------------------------------- About Peter Schwartz: Peter Schwartz is an internationally renowned futurist and business strategist, specializing in scenario planning and working with corporations, governments, and institutions to create alternative perspectives of the future and develop robust strategies for a changing and uncertain world. As Senior Vice President of Strategic Planning for Salesforce, he manages the organization’s ongoing strategic conversation. Peter was co-founder and chairman of Global Business Network. He is the author of several works. His first book, The Art of the Long View, is considered a seminal publication on scenario planning. Peter has also served as a script consultant on the films "The Minority Report," "Deep Impact," "Sneakers," and "War Games." He received a B.S. in aeronautical engineering and astronautics from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York. ------------------------------- About Big Think | Smarter Faster™ ► Big Think The leading source of expert-driven, educational content. With thousands of videos, featuring experts ranging from Bill Clinton to Bill Nye, Big Think helps you get smarter, faster by exploring the big ideas and core skills that define knowledge in the 21st century. Go Deeper with Big Think: ►Become a Big Think Member Get exclusive access to full interviews, early access to new releases, Big Think merch and more ►Get Big Think+ for Business Guide, inspire and accelerate leaders at all levels of your company with the biggest minds in business Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Virginia Postrel, author of The Fabric of Civilization: How Textiles Made the World, describes how the pursuit of textiles has led to a vast variety of innovations throughout history. Notably, the launch of the Industrial Revolution started with the machines that mechanized the spinning of thread. The term luddite, which has now come to mean “people who have [an] ideological opposition to technology,” started with textiles. The original Luddites of the 19th century were weavers who rioted when they began losing their jobs to power looms. Postrel states that human beings throughout the world and across history independently discovered different processes for creating cloth. She goes on to say that “weaving is something that is deeply mathematical… It seems to be this kind of human activity that’s thinking in ones and zeros that’s anticipating our modern computer age.” ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- VIRGINIA POSTREL: Virginia Postrel is an author and speaker whose work spans a broad range of topics, from social science to fashion, concentrating on the intersection of culture, commerce, and technology. Postrel has also been a columnist for The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, The New York Times, and Forbes and its companion technology magazine, Forbes ASAP. Her latest book, The Fabric of Civilization: How Textiles Made the World, examines the development of technology, industry, and commerce through the history of textiles, from prehistoric times to the near future. Check out Virginia Postrel's latest book "The Fabric of Civilization: How Textiles Made the World" at https://amzn.to/2RZwJu5 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen To This Next: Adam Grant's #1 phrase to unlock potential The science of super longevity Beat anxiety with the most addictive experience on Earth Here’s how to end an angry conflict in 8 minutes, with @IrshadManjiTV. Educator Irshad Manji emphasizes that diversity is a fact of life, and it should be harnessed to unite society rather than divide it. Recognizing that humans tend to react defensively to opposing views, she offers five key skills to promote constructive conversations. These include 1) taking deep breaths to facilitate rational thinking, 2) intentionally establishing common ground, 3) genuinely inquiring about the other person's perspective, 4) actively listening to learn rather than to win, and 5) encouraging further dialogue by asking "Tell me more." Adopting these skills can lead to healthier outcomes in contentious conversations and foster collaboration. Ultimately, an individual's ability to engage in productive discussions depends on their motivation. It is essential to reflect on one's intentions, choosing between a genuine desire to solve problems or a need to assert moral superiority. Only by making the right choice can we hope to harness the power of diversity for the greater good. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- chapters: 0:00 Our defensive brains 1:52 How ‘slam dunking’ backfires 3:05 The 5-part toolkit 3:27 Skill #1: Breathe deeply (give your brain oxygen) 4:06 Skill #2: Create common ground 4:40 Skill #3: Ask a sincere question 5:16 Skill #4: Listen to learn 6:15 Skill #5: “Tell me more” 7:31 The most uncomfortable question- ------------------------ About Irshad Manji: In Arabic, Irshad means “guidance.” My mission: to teach a critical mass of people the skills of moral courage — doing the right thing in the face of our fears. This mission has been a life-long journey. Growing up in a violent household, I made a commitment to use my education for good. That meant thinking for myself. At my Islamic school, I challenged dogma and got expelled at age 14. Later, studying Islam on my own, I made a truly surprising discovery: It’s possible to reconcile faith with freedom. That discovery led me to write two internationally best-selling books about reforming Islam. I recently launched my latest book, Don’t Label Me, about how to heal the Us-versus-Them divisions that are ripping apart America and much of the world. In all that I am and all that I do, I stand for the responsibility to ask questions — and the right to do so, free from fear. ------------------------------- ►Become a Big Think Member Get exclusive access to full interviews, early access to new releases, Big Think merch and more ►Get Big Think+ for Business Guide, inspire and accelerate leaders at all levels of your company with the biggest minds in business ------------------------------- Discover Big Think | Smarter Faster™ Your top destination for expert-driven, educational content. Featuring thousands of episodes and insights from renowned figures like Bill Clinton to Bill Nye, Big Think accelerates your learning by delving into the pivotal concepts and essential skills shaping knowledge in the 21st century... Unlock Knowledge, Faster With Insights from the World's Leading Minds Remember to Follow the Podcast and Enable Notifications If you found this episode valuable, Share It Leave a 5-Star Review! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If you’ve taken a math class, it’s likely you’ve asked yourself “What am I really going to use this for?” Mathematician Talithia Williams has the answer. The key to understanding math outside of the classroom, Dr. Williams explains, is appreciating how beautiful it really is. Much like taking an art appreciation class, if one were to take a course that highlights the real-world applications of mathematics without the pressure of daunting calculations, complex equations, or graded tests. According to Dr. Williams, taking a course like this would reveal the aesthetic qualities of numbers and their values, and could transform our perception of math from being a subject to pass to a tool for understanding the world. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ About Dr. Talithia Williams: Talithia Williams, PhD, is a Professor of Mathematics and the Mathematics Clinic Director at Harvey Mudd College. She develops statistical models focused on environmental issues, including a cataract model for the World Health Organization to predict surgical rates in Africa. Known for making complex numerical concepts accessible, Williams inspires others through her dedication to STEM education. Williams has worked with NASA, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), and the National Security Agency (NSA). --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- About The Well Do we inhabit a multiverse? Do we have free will? What is love? Is evolution directional? There are no simple answers to life’s biggest questions, and that’s why they’re the questions occupying the world’s brightest minds. Together, let's learn from them. Subscribe to the weekly newsletter ► https://bit.ly/thewellemailsignup ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices