Welcome to Life Raft! We’re your survival guide for a changing planet.
If you’re like us, climate change leaves you with a lot of questions, and they’re not about the rate of ocean warming — they’re about practical things that affect our everyday lives.
Each episode explores a different question about climate change, submitted by a real person.
“How can I reduce flooding in my neighborhood?”
“Have I had my last good oyster?”
Hosts Lauren Malara and Travis Lux talk to scientists, oyster shuckers, tree planters, and a whole host of other people who are asking big questions and working on solutions. And they do it all with a little bit of levity.
In other words: climate change is scary, but Life Raft is not.
Episodes come out every two weeks. First up: extreme heat.
Reporting by The Economist reveals deepening efforts by Chinese authorities not just to imprison the Muslim-minority people but also to reduce their number, to wipe out their culture and to hound them wherever in the world they may go. Yet a visit to Yunnan province reveals that the party’s hostility to ethnic minorities is not absolute.
Originally from Berlin Germany, Tim Specht started programming for fun, during high school. He had no plans to make a career out it - in fact, he wanted to become an experimental physicist. When the startup scene in Berlin started to pick up pace, Tim got interested. His first couple of gigs were in mobile engineering, which influenced him to continue to pursue startups further. Now a days, he is a dog foster-er - that is, he rotates dogs through his apartment in Brooklyn, taking are of their special needs while a good home is found for them.
In 2014, he and his co-founders had been experimenting with video and music related apps, tinkering with creation inside of the different mediums - for example, integrating with the iTunes library. And then, of course, sharing those creations with friends. They realized that the features they were creating were too complex for most users... but the ones they created for themselves - just for kicks - were the most interesting pieces of tech. So they spent some time scrapping the complex features, and centering around the short, quick, fun video creation to share.
In which an MIT professor worried about a digital future accidentally creates the field of human-machine conversation, and John flirts with a 54-year-old computer program. Certificate #36441.
Partially-owned by publicly-traded Discovery Inc, The Dodo is known for adorable 3-minute cat videos — but now it’s launching pet insurance. Energy legend Halliburton is selling shovels to an oil goldrush that isn’t getting rushed into. And Walmart is bringing its app to life… as a store (1,000 of them).
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Winning November’s presidential election will likely mean turning out a whole host of people who have never voted before. In our new series, First-Timers, we speak with voters from around the country and across the political spectrum to ask them what’s bringing them to the ballot box for the first time.
Guest: Dewayne Comer, a formerly incarcerated first-time voter from Syracuse, New York.
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Randall Munroe, the cartoonist behind the popular Internet comic xkcd, finds complicated solutions to simple, real-world problems. In the process, he reveals a lot about science and why the real world is sometimes even weirder than we expect. His latest book is called How To: Absurd Scientific Advice for Common Real-World Problems. (Encore episode.)
In my old age, I try to argue more quietly, though I still believe that sharp disagreement is a sign of political seriousness. What engaged citizens think and say matters; we should aim to get it right and to defeat those who get it wrong. I understand the very limited impact of what I write, but I continue to believe that the stakes are high.
– Michael Walzer (2018)
These thoughts, from the preface of A Foreign Policy for the Left (Yale University Press, 2018), reflect the understated wisdom of a highly regarded 85-year old political theorist, Michael Walzer. His many books include the influential Just and Unjust Wars, and others mentioned in this interview including: Thick and Thin – Moral Argument at Home and Abroad, Spheres of Justice – A Defense of Pluralism and Equality, and Obligations: Essays on Disobedience, War and Citizenship – the last one being published in 1970 at the height of the divisive Vietnam War era when Walzer was teaching at Harvard.
Much of the material for Michael’s books derives from his long affiliation with Dissent magazine – he apprenticed as a young leftist partisan under the prolific Irving Howe whose writing, social role and politics helped shape the young Walzer. Evidence of Michael’s current and ongoing political engagement, as well as the clarity of his thought and seriousness of his message can be seen here: ‘A Note on Racial Capitalism’ from Dissent in July 2020. In his note Michael references K. Sabeel Rahman’s Dissent article ‘Dismantle Racial Capitalism’ in his first paragraph; a month later two scholars write ‘A Reply to Michael Walzer’ from which comes: ‘A Reply to Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò and Liam Kofi Bright’.
Professor Walzer published his first Dissent article in 1956 which provides some timeline context for one of the first questions in this interview about whether the Hiss-Chambers testimonies before the House Committee on Un-American Activities (1948) might represent the opening confrontation of our polarizing culture wars. As you will hear, Michael thinks it could date back further; and shares a few thoughts on teaching at Harvard in the sixties, and pivotal moments in his career as a young leftist partisan. He comments about scholars like Rawls, Nozick and Geertz; and offers opinions related to our current polarization including a recent Rolling Stone article, the origins of resentment, engaged citizenship and voting, 9/11 and its aftermath, justice, ‘complex equality’, ‘formative’ books and a poet.
An overview of Michael’s life and work, Justice is Steady Work – A Conversation on Political Theory (Polity Press 2020) with Astrid von Busekist at SciencesPo (originally published in French) out soon.
Michael Walzer is professor emeritus at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, and editor emeritus at Dissent magazine. Professor Walzer studied on a Fulbright Fellowship at Cambridge and completed his PhD in government at Harvard University.
Keith Krueger lectures at the SHU-UTS Business School in Shanghai.
The overwhelming majority of small businesses in America are one-person operations. Unfortunately, there are aspects to running a business that even prepared minds don’t think of. Laura Adams, personal finance expert and author of Money-Smart Solopreneur: A Personal Finance System for Freelancers, Entrepreneurs, and Side-Hustlers, shares the most common mistake people make when starting a new business.
