Big Ideas on TVO has become one of my favorite podcasts to listen to.. well… Big ideas. I took statistics over the summer, and a lot of what we covered dealt with randomness. Unfortunately, I wasn’t familiar with Leonard Modinow before… but I am familiar with many of the points he brings up in his talk about his latest book “The Drunkard’s Walk: How Randomness Rules our Lives”
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His talk also reminded me of a show WNYC Radio Lab did on randomness. They also seek to understand the role randomness plays in our lives. In fact they used the same example that Leonard mentions about the chance of a 56 game hitting streak happening again in 10,000 baseball scenarios.
Finally, Leonard also mentions a study done with drinkers of Coke and Pepsi, which reminded me of a podcast by Malcolm Gladwell who also talked about the fragility of judgement using the Pepsi Challenge experiment. He also goes on to talk about how the Herman Miller Aron chair became first the most hated chair, and then the most popular selling chair (which reminds me of the Radio Lab episode where they tell the story of an opera that caused a riot, and years later was celebrated as a masterpiece).
I heard once that photographer Walker Evans didn’t travel more than 10 feet from his car to take many of the polaroids towards the end of his life. I took that that the process of making art should be easy and accessible. Especially the tools to create need to be light, portable, and intuitive. It makes sense that Polaroid was his tool of choice.
Lately, I have been playing with a light, portable, intuitive iPhone app Brushes. This phenomenal little studio has made it fun to look at ordinary situations as places to capture in drawings. There are a ton of drawing, painting, doodling apps out there for the iPhone, and tiny sketchpads have existed for years. What makes Brushes unique is playback. The ability to replay your drawing and watch the piece come to life. For me this is more valuable than the final piece itself. Think about how fun it would be to watch a Picasso being painted, a Degas, a Monet… or you!
Below are some recent Brush work I have done. Enjoy!
In the middle of listening to the work of Tony Schwarz, I realized, “hey, I’ve heard this on Radio Lab!” Sure, enough, back in 2007, Radiolab did a show on Time and used one of Tony’s pieces called “Nancy Grows Up”.
L. Lessig gave the keynote address at the NetRoots Nation conference on Wed. Nov. 17th. He lays out a great argument about what has lead to the corruption of our “trusted” institutions. He also suggests a possible solution, including his Change Congress org. L. Lessig is by far one of the most captivating speakers on democracy and politics today. This speech, which runs pretty long, covers a lot of previous speeches he has given over the last year or so.
I stumbled across Stephen Fry’s Podgrams while doing my monthly search for new podcasts. I was very pleased by the balance of thoughtful commentary and humor. Rarely do I anticipate a individuals podcast posting as much as his.
In this podgram, link below, Fry makes a beautiful argument in support of the BBC. He goes into the history of the BBC, points out the relevant nature of such a publicly funded organization. And finally, he imagines a future without the BBC at all.
Despite not living in England, and not being a direct consumer of the BBC, although, like many, I have enjoyed the by-products of the BBC, whether they be exports like Dr. Who, or remixed shows like the Office. Public broadcasting in the States is an entirely different beast than the BBC. Yet to hear someone talk so thoughtfully and passionately made me listen to this particular show several times.
The title of the show was:
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