Posts Tagged ‘sociology’
13
Aug
2010
On Words
A modern-day Helen Keller moment, or why the currency of communication is more complex than we think.
Words matter. They shape how we relate to one another and the world at large, they frame what matters and why. They can break your heart (“My feelings for you have changed…”), tickle your mind (“The more I learn, the more I learn how little I know…”) and enlighten your soul (“I have a dream…”). They can steer entire ideologies and even spark the extinction of species.
Words, a fantastic new episode of WNYC’s always-excellent Radiolab, examines the importance of words by imagining a world without them. From a look at Shakespeare’s linguistic chemistry to a first-hand account of what it’s like to have the language center of your brain wiped out by a stroke (yep, we’re talking about Jill Bolte Taylor of blockbuster TED Talk fame) to a woman who taught a 27-year-old man the first words of his life and revealed the worldview-changing insight that everything has a name, the hour-long program offers a profound perspective shift in this currency of our day-to-day that we take for granted.
What is it that happens in human beings when we get symbols and we start trading symbols? It changes our thinking, it changes our ideas.” ~ Susan Shaller
The episode is available as a free mp3 download and we highly recommend you subscribe to the full series podcast in iTunes, also free.
For further reading, these four books referenced in Words are absolutely fascinating and paint a rich, comprehensive portrait of the layered significance of language in culture and human psychology.
- A Man Without Words by Susan Shaller
- A Thousand Days of Wonder: A Scientist’s Chronicle of His Daughter’s Developing Mind by Charles Fernyhough
- Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare? by James Shapiro
- The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature by Jill Bolte Taylor
Also of note and highly recommended, a trio of books by Steven Pinker, whom we consider one of the sharpest thinkers on language today:
- The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language
- Words and Rules: The Ingredients of Language
- The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language
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11
Aug
2010
What I Eat: Around the World in 80 Diets
From Bangladesh to Brazil, or what photojournalism can reveal about food and cultural context.
In case you ever wondered, the most popular Brain Pickings post to date is our review of photographers Peter Menzel and Faith D’Alusio’s Hungry Planet — a grounding portrait of what the world eats, from the $376.45 an Australian family spends on food per week to the $1.23 weekly budget of a same-sized family in Chad’s poorest refugee camp. This week, Menzel and D’Alusio are back with their much-anticipated new book, What I Eat: Around the World in 80 Diets — a fascinating project telling the global story of our relationship to food through portraits of 80 people from 30 countries and the food they eat in one day.
I want people to understand their own diets better — and their own chemistry and their own biology. And make better decisions for themselves.” ~ Peter Menzel on NPR
38-year-old Maasai herder, 5 feet 5 inches tall, 103 lbs, typical daily caloric intake: 800 calories. Food staples: Maize meal and milk.
Image copyright Peter Menzel, menzelphoto.com
40-year-old Egyptian camel broker, 5 feet 8 inches tall, 165 lbs, typical daily caloric intake: 3,200 calories. Some food staples: Eggs with butter, fava beans, country bread, potato chips, feta cheese, soup, rice, black tea.
Image copyright Peter Menzel, menzelphoto.com
From a Japanese sumo wrestler to an American competitive eater to a Massai herdswoman, the book offers an exploration of demography through photography, contextualized by compelling essays from some of today’s leading food activists and thinkers, including indispensible voices on the issue like Brain Pickings favorite Michael Pollan.
20-year-old US Army soldier, 6 feet 5 inches tall, 195 lbs, typical daily caloric intake: 4,000 calories. Food staples: Mostly instant ready-to-eat meals.
Image copyright Peter Menzel, menzelphoto.com
36-year-old Latvian vocal teacher and composer, 6 feet tall, 183 lbs, typical daily caloric intake: 3,900 calories. Some food staples: Egg, rye bread with ham, cheese and butter, chicken, potato with mayonnaise, cookies.
Image copyright Peter Menzel, menzelphoto.com
Alongside each of Menzel’s photographs, text by D’Alusio outlines the specifics of the daily diet depicted and places it in a cultural context that explains why, for instance, a Brazilian fisherman of average build can consume 5,200 calories per day and an American truck driver who consumes a comparable amount is clinically obese. Ultimately, the project aims to illuminate the relationship between food and where we are, in life and in the world.
16-year-old Chinese acrobat, 5 feet 2 inches tall, 99 lbs, typical daily caloric intake: 1,700 calories. Some food staples: Yogurt, pork ribs, noodles, eggs, broth, green tea.
Image copyright Peter Menzel, menzelphoto.com
45-year-old Tibetan head monk, 5 feet 5 inches tall, 158 lbs, typical daily caloric intake: 4,900 calories. Some food staples: Butter tea, dried cheese curds, barley flour cake, noodle soup with potato.
Image copyright Peter Menzel, menzelphoto.com
Part Food, Inc., part FridgeWatcher, the project is a potent antidote to Neil Burgess’s recent rant about the death of photojournalism — What I Eat: Around the World in 80 Diets is a bundle of storytelling and humanity that unravels itself before your eyes, leaving you hungry to better understand the correlation between food, environment and quality of life.
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