How can we achieve healthy growth, the kind that is more regenerative than wasteful, more equitable than unjust? Per Espen Stoknes and L. Hunter Lovins believe they have the answers. Both are experts in the field, having written books that offer blueprints for an inspiring regenerative economy that avoids collapse and works for people and the planet. Learn more about the Doughnut-Theory of Economics discussed in the program: “Three Cities Switching To Life-Affirming Economies” https://www.yesmagazine.org/issue/eco… “Amsterdam Is Embracing a Radical New Economic Theory to Help Save the Environment. Could It Also Replace Capitalism?” https://time.com/5930093/amsterdam-do… This talk is part of the Cambridge Forum’s series, Transformations. GBH Forum Network ~ Free online lectures: Explore a world of ideas
Yale professor and Jacobin contributor Greg Grandin talks to The Dig’s Dan Denvir about how Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s “Good Neighbor Policy” a radical break with the old American empire but ended up ushering in the modern American empire that continues to exert undo influence across Latin America. Edited by Malcolm Barnes. Produced by Dan Denvir and The Dig, a podcast from Jacobin. Listen to the full interview here: https://www.thedigradio.com/podcast/e…
Catastrophic floods in Tennessee have left 22 people dead and 50 missing. Meanwhile, wildfires and historic drought continue to plague the American West. Wildlife expert Dr. Reese Halter joins Rachel Blevins (in for Rick Sanchez) with his passionate appeal for awareness of the human role in the climate crisis and our need to take collective responsibility.
A physician and award-winning novelist, Dr. Kopano Matlwa Mabaso leads the Grow Great campaign to fight malnutrition and stunting in South Africa. Learn more at https://gatesnot.es/3cagZK7
Berkeley LabAug 23, 2021
Mountain watersheds provide 60 to 90% of water resources worldwide, but there is still much that scientists don’t know about the physical processes and interactions that affect hydrology in these ecosystems. The Surface Atmosphere Integrated Field Laboratory (SAIL), led by scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), is an unprecedented climate observatory located in the Upper Colorado River Basin. This collaborative research effort is an ambitious campaign to collect a vast array of measurements that will allow scientists to better understand the future of water in the West.
Image credits: Los Alamos National Laboratory; Julie Chao, Ken Williams, Berkeley Lab
New digital techniques for scanning and replicating old maps of Africa can be deployed with QR Codes and Zoom conferencing for a new kind of education experience on a global basis. Students of all ages and on all levels from elementary school through college and graduate students as well as post-doctoral scholars can now study and analyze rare and delicate maps as primary documents in constructing new narratives of history based on historical cartography.
Prosser Gifford (Rhodes Scholar, Yale’s first African Historian, the first Dean of Faculty at Amherst and Director of numerous scholarly programs at the Smithsonian’s Woodrow Wilson Institute and subsequently at the Library of Congress) pioneered some of the thinking behind these new achievements and served as the inspiration for the development of the current-day group of scholars and researchers known as “The Africa Map Circle.”
Scholars and students the world over can now deploy technologies and techniques to create self-directed “Ken-Burns-like” documentaries based on unique, scarce, fragile and historically valuable documentation in much the same manner that Ken Burns himself created his magisterial documentary commentaries on topics like the American Civil War.
High school instructors and college professors do not need to “teach” students how to use an iPhone in our day. Most teenagers and now have mastered that “skill set” long before their formal “teachers” and professors. In fact, it is most often the case that the students need to instruct their teachers on how to use these new phones — complete with the QR codes that can be scanned now with many widely-available photo-aps built-in to contemporary phones.
What needs to be undertaken now is the educational task of mobilizing the student’s skills and inviting them to become the architects of their own education. Students who already possess the requisite skills need to be challenged to create meaningful and moving documentaries on their own from new sets of digitized historical material.
Based on the insight and inspiration of the late Prosser Gifford this is what “The Africa Map Circle” intends to enable among students and scholars around the world.
As Prosser Gifford emphasized, who is in the “circle” to be enabled to ask the questions is critical for an understanding of any history.
Who built the seven gates of Thebes? The books are filled with names of kings. Was it the kings who hauled the craggy blocks of stone? And Babylon, so many times destroyed. Who built the city up each time? In which of Lima’s houses, That city glittering with gold, lived those who built it? In the evening when the Chinese wall was finished Where did the masons go? Imperial Rome Is full of arcs of triumph. Who reared them up? Over whom Did the Caesars triumph? Byzantium lives in song. Were all her dwellings palaces? And even in Atlantis of the legend The night the seas rushed in, The drowning men still bellowed for their slaves.
Young Alexander conquered India. He alone? Caesar beat the Gauls. Was there not even a cook in his army? Phillip of Spain wept as his fleet was sunk and destroyed. Were there no other tears? Frederick the Great triumphed in the Seven Years War. Who triumphed with him?
Each page a victory At whose expense the victory ball? Every ten years a great man, Who paid the piper?
Welcome to Transition Studies. To prosper for very much longer on the changing Earth humankind will need to move beyond its current fossil-fueled civilization toward one that is sustained on recycled materials and renewable energy. This is not a trivial shift. It will require a major transition in all aspects of our lives.
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