Remake the World
Over the last decade, author and activist Astra Taylor has helped shift the national conversation on topics including technology, inequality, indebtedness, and democracy. The essays collected here reveal the range and depth of her thinking, with Taylor tackling the rising popularity of socialism, the problem of automation, the politics of […]
Rupert Murdoch and the rise and fall of the press barons: how much power do newspapers still have?
Simon Potter, Professor of Modern History, University of Bristol Global media tycoon Rupert Murdoch has announced his retirement as chairman of Fox and News Corp, making way for his son Lachlan. He has been demonised as a puppet master who would pull the strings of politicians behind the scenes, as a man with […]
The Age of Unpeace
-Mark Leonard In the three decades since the end of the Cold War, global leaders have been integrating the world’s economy, transport and communications, breaking down borders in the hope of making war impossible. In doing so, they have unwittingly created a formidable arsenal of weapons for new kinds of […]
Ways to accelerate grassroots innovation and build a more inclusive future
Entrepreneurs can provide mentorship to facilitate development towards a sustainable circular economic framework. Consensus building and collective action is required to convert the ideas and innovations of knowledge-rich but economically poor individuals and communities, into viable means of raising income, addressing social needs and conserving the environment. Unless we build […]
A Field Guide to Getting Lost
By Rebeca Solnit Rebecca Solnit is one of those freelance intellectuals you hardly hear about anymore—unattached to any academic institution, dependent (I’m guessing) on the kindness of publishers. An apprentice to the world at large, she has made a life’s work out of scavenging for connections. Solnit’s offbeat oeuvre veers […]
What is degrowth?
a radical economic theory born in the 1970s. It broadly means shrinking rather than growing economies, to use less of the world’s dwindling resources. Detractors of degrowth say economic growth has given the world everything from cancer treatments to indoor plumbing. Supporters argue that degrowth doesn’t mean “living in caves […]
Elon Musk by Walter Issacson
Walter Isaacson is the author of biographies of Jennifer Doudna, Leonardo da Vinci, Steve Jobs, Benjamin Franklin, and Albert Einstein. This is the intimate story of one of the most fascinating and controversial innovators of our era—a rule-breaking visionary who helped to lead the world into the era of electric […]
What makes a good life?
-Oscar Davis, Indigenous Fellow, Assistant Professor in Philosophy and History, Bond University, Australia. How do we live good, fulfilling lives? Aristotle first took on this question in his Nicomachean Ethics – arguably the first time anyone in Western intellectual history had focused on the subject as a standalone question. He formulated a […]
Selling a Fantasy Future of the Metaverse, Mars, and Crypto
Jonathan Taplin is director emeritus of the Annenberg Innovation Lab at the University of Southern California and author of Move Fast and Break Things, which was nominated for the Financial Times / McKinsey Business Book of the Year. This is a brilliant takedown and exposé of the great con job of the twenty-first century—the metaverse, […]
Wasteland: The Secret World of Waste and the Urgent Search for a Cleaner Future
-Oliver Franklin-Wallis An award-winning investigative journalist takes a deep dive into the global waste crisis, exposing the hidden world that enables our modern economy—and finds out the dirty truth behind a simple question: what really happens to what we throw away? In Wasteland, journalist Oliver Franklin-Wallis takes us on a […]
Wifedom
Is the story of the marriage behind some of the most famous literary works of the 20th century —and a probing consideration of what it means to be a wife and a writer in the modern world. At the end of summer 2017, Anna Funder found herself at a moment […]
Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right
-Jayne Mayer Why live in an age of profound economic inequality? Why, despite the desperate need to address climate change, have even modest environmental efforts been defeated again and again? Why have protections for employees been decimated? Why do hedge-fund billionaires pay a far lower tax rate than middle-class workers? […]
Remake the World
Over the last decade, author and activist Astra Taylor has helped shift the national conversation on topics including technology, inequality, indebtedness, and democracy. The essays collected here reveal the range and depth of her thinking, with Taylor tackling the rising popularity of socialism, the problem of automation, the politics of listening, the possibility of rights for the natural and non-human world, the future of the university, the temporal challenge of climate catastrophe, and more. Addressing some of the most pressing social problems of our day, Taylor invites us to imagine how things could be different while never losing sight of the strategic question of how change actually happens. Curious and searching, these historically informed and hopeful essays are as engaging as they are challenging and as urgent as they are timeless. Taylor ‘s unique philosophical style has a political edge that speaks directly to the growing conviction that a radical transformation of our economy and society is required.