Gerard Senehi Performs on Camera
Question: Can you do a trick on camera?
Gerard Senehi: It’s possible. It’s very unusual. I mean, it’s…because part of the impact is how…Part of the mystery of what happens is what happens between me and the other person. So it’s not just the kind of…But I can try something.
Topic: The spoon bender.
Gerard Senehi: All right. Watch this. Let’s just try.
Topic: Another spoon trick.
Gerard Senehi: Tell me how this looks. This is a little experiment with this spoon. Watch.
Topic: The magic business card.
Gerard Senehi: This is just a fun little thing but let’s just try this. This is the Big Think business card. I want you to catch it.
Recorded on: June 4, 2009
The mentalist takes the Big Think business card to places it has never been.
Adam Gopnik on the rhinoceros of liberalism vs. the unicorns of everything else
Torn between absolutism on the left and the right, classical liberalism—with its core values of compassion and incremental progress whereby the once-radical becomes the mainstream—is in need of a good defense. And Adam Gopnik is its lawyer.
- Liberalism as "radical pragmatism"
- Intersectionality and civic discourse
- How "a thousand small sanities" tackled drunk driving, normalized gay marriage, and could control gun violence
Why the south of Westeros is the north of Ireland
As Game of Thrones ends, a revealing resolution to its perplexing geography.
- The fantasy world of Game of Thrones was inspired by real places and events.
- But the map of Westeros is a good example of the perplexing relation between fantasy and reality.
- Like Britain, it has a Wall in the North, but the map only really clicks into place if you add Ireland.
Fascism and conspiracy theories: The symptoms of broken communication
The lost practice of face-to-face communication has made the world a more extreme place.
- The world was saner when we spoke face-to-face, argues John Cameron Mitchell. Not looking someone in the eye when you talk to them raises the potential for miscommunication and conflict.
- Social media has been an incredible force for activism and human rights, but it's also negatively affected our relationship with the media. We are now bombarded 24/7 with news that either drives us to anger or apathy.
- Sitting behind a screen makes polarization worse, and polarization is fertile ground for conspiracy theories and fascism, which Cameron describes as irrationally blaming someone else for your problems.
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