Terry Gilliam - The impossible dream
The film becomes the story of the making of the film. From his Monty Python days to now, Don Quixote is a metaphor for Terry Gilliam's whole career, and for his 30 year project of making a film about a film about the knight of the woeful countenance. We talk about Muppets, time, and basically everything else two humans can talk about.
- An American barbarian in Monty Python
- Chaos Muppets vs. Order Muppets (and which one Terry Gilliam is)
- Artistic ego: avoiding the fate of Icarus, Job, etc.
Ross Kauffman - Tigers and the humans who love them
Love + fear = awe. And awe can inspire the best and the worst in us. From 100,000 wild tigers a century ago, we're down to around 5,000. Oscar winner Ross Kauffman's TIGERLAND tells the story of the lengths some will go to to protect them.
- Making friends with The Tiger Man of Russia
- Looking for beauty and humor in the darkest places
- "I love meeting people…I love spending time with people…part of me hates picking up a camera and pointing it at somebody. I feel like a parasite."
Frans de Waal (primatologist) – You’re such a social animal
Love, grief, and moral disgust aren't unique to humans. Like chimps, humans sometimes struggle for dominance, but our first impulse is trust and connection. Frans de Waal has spent decades showing that most of what we believe about animals, humans, and the differences between us is wrong.
- The lifelong gratitude of a chimp de Waal taught to bottle-feed and adopt an orphan
- Trump's alpha male display during the 2016 debates
- How B.F. Skinner screwed up behavioral science for half a century
Aml Ameen – how the world teaches you who you are
For Idris Elba's directorial debut YARDIE, actor Aml Ameen (Sense8, Kidulthood) went back to his family's Jamaican roots, learning patois and sound clash chat—using method acting to become "D" - a lost soul on a quest for revenge. The process changed him forever.
Jason Gots is a New York-based writer, editor, and podcast producer. For Big Think, he writes (and sometimes illustrates) the blog "Overthinking Everything with Jason Gots" and is the creator and host of the "Think Again" podcast. In previous lives, Jason worked at Random House Children's Books, taught reading and writing to middle schoolers and community college students, co-founded a theatre company (Rorschach, in Washington, D.C.), and wrote roughly two dozen picture books for kids learning English in Seoul, South Korea. He is also the proud father of an incredibly talkative and crafty little kid.
