Top Political Podcasts: In-Depth Interview With Sen. Elizabeth Warren (NYT)

Senator Elizabeth Warren has based her presidential campaign on a promise to reform the rules of the economy.Credit Todd Heisler The New York TimesIn Part 3 of our series on pivotal moments in the lives of the 2020 Democratic presidential contenders, we spoke with Elizabeth Warren about how she came to be known as the blow-it-up candidate. The Massachusetts senator describes her transformation from Republican law professor to progressive candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination.

NY Times The Daily PodcastWith help from Andrew Ross Sorkin, a financial columnist at The Times and founder of DealBook; Harry Reid, a former Senate majority leader; and David Axelrod, a former Obama adviser, we explore Ms. Warren’s rise to prominence as an advocate for overhauling the financial system — and why those beliefs can help us understand her run for president now.

To read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/13/podcasts/the-daily/elizabeth-warren.html?te=1&nl=the-daily&emc=edit_dy_20191213?campaign_id=110&instance_id=14530&segment_id=19595&user_id=415092ec82728104b9ca7bbb44eeb7d3&regi_id=7441254120191213

Top New Travel Videos: “Amazing Amorgos” In Greece” By Joerg Daiber

Filmed, Edited and Directed by: Joerg Daiber

I will never understand why so many people go to such an obvious Insta-tourist-trap like Santorini when there are so many amazing alternatives in Greece. Take Amorgos for instance. It’s the easternmost island in Greece’s Cyclades island group. With a land area of just 121 square kilometers, the island has a population of nearly 2000 people. It’s incredibly beautiful and no mass tourism is spoiling the fun so far.

Amazing Amorgos Greece Timelapse Travel Video by Joerg Daiber 2019

The island was featured in Luc Besson’s film “The Big Blue.” Enjoy this trip around Amorgos and let me know what you think in the comments below. Shot by Joerg Daiber during the Yperia Film Festival in Amorgos.

Website: http://www.spoonfilm.com/

Art Criticism: “A Poet’s Response To Carpeaux’s ‘Why Born Enslaved!'” (MetCollects Video)

“It is critical to reckon with the power imbalance enacted when a white male artist transposes the body of a black woman into an emblem of enslavement.”

Why Born Enslaved! was first conceived in 1868 by Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux, one of the greatest French sculptors of the nineteenth century. The bust portrays a woman straining against a rope pulled taut around her arms, back, and breast. Her shoulders project forward and the right tendon of her neck protrudes as she twists her body in one direction and turns her head sharply in the other.

A poet's response to Carpeaux's Why Born Enslaved! MetCollects Video

In The Gallery by Wendy S. Walters

The figure’s defiant, uplifted gaze extends her spiraling movement and conveys her perseverance through pain as the work’s rhetorical title, inscribed on the sculpture’s base, proclaims, “Pourquoi Naitre Esclave!”

To read more: https://www.metmuseum.org/art/online-features/metcollects/why-born-enslaved

Housing Trends: “Empty-Nester” Boomers Are Now Downsizing To Luxury “Jewel-Box Homes” (WSJ)

From a Wall Street Journal online article:

The single-level home has high windows and travertine floors throughout. Photo by Amy MIKLER FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
The single-level home has high windows and travertine floors throughout. PHOTO: AMY MIKLER FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

The jewel-box home—small, but loaded with amenities and costly finishes—is luring more home buyers. An analysis by Home Innovation Research Labs, a subsidiary of the National Association of Home Builders, found that the number of new-construction luxury homes at 3,000 square feet or less has increased nearly 20% since 2013—with a corresponding decline in larger-size, high-price homes.

Changing demographics might be driving the trend. More than half of all households now consist of single people or couples, U.S. Census Bureau data shows—with traditional nuclear families accounting for just 20%.

“Empty-nesters want to downsize, but they want luxury homes not starter homes—luxury kitchens, marble surfaces, all the latest and greatest,” said Tim Costello, CEO of Builder Homesite, a consortium whose New Home Source website—an online clearing house for new-construction homes—tracks home buyers’ preferences.

To read more: https://www.wsj.com/articles/luxury-homeowners-put-a-ring-on-jewel-box-homes-11576081060

Cultural History Books: “Wicked City – The Many Cutures Of Marseille”

From a Literary Review online review:

Wicked City The Many Cutures of Marseille Nicholas Hewitt 2019The Toulousain Charles Dantzig wrote, ‘I find the Marseillais tiresome, especially those who, as soon as you speak to them, start to bang on about the uniqueness of being Marseillais, adding with a particular sort of whining machismo that no one likes them and everyone defames them. Their humour is nothing more than pitiable braggadocio.’ Régis Jauffret, who grew up there, is pithier: ‘Marseille is a tragic city. It formed my imagination.’ (It’s an imagination of peerless bleakness.)

Literary Review December 2019Nicholas Hewitt died in March, less than a month after completing the text of Wicked City. It’s a fine monument to his curiosity, compendious knowledge, resourcefulness and measured enthusiasm. He calls it ‘a series of snapshots’, which is perhaps too modest. If they are snapshots, they have been photoshopped and retouched to accord with his vision of the city and its well-rehearsed mythology of outsiderdom and exceptionalism, edginess and banditry. And his aspiration to explore Marseille’s hold on the ‘nation’s imagination’ is also too modest. The ‘international imagination’ would be more apt.

To read more: https://literaryreview.co.uk/babylon-on-sea

British Politics: “How Boris Johnson Won The 2019 General Election” (Telegraph Video)

Boris Johnson has won historic landslide victory today for the Conservatives in the 2019 General Election. On a catastrophic night for Labour, Jeremy Corbyn’s party was predicted to end the day with just 196 seats, down 66 on the last election in their worst result since 1935.

Interviews: 84-Year Old British Architect Norman Foster On His First High-Tech Building (Video)

“High-tech is something to do with the expression of the technology – the means by which the building stands,” the award-winning architect told Dezeen in an exclusive interview at his London practice.

Dezeen Video InterviewsBritish architect Norman Foster reflects on his first high-tech building and how it shaped offices to come, in this exclusive video produced by Dezeen. Named after the electronics manufacturer that commissioned the building,

Reliance Controls was an industrial facility located in Swindon in Southwest England. Completed in 1967, the building was the last to be designed by Team 4, an architecture practice comprising Foster, Richard Rogers, Su Brumwell and Wendy Cheesman, before the group disbanded. The single-storey rectangular shed, which was designed to house the company’s factory and offices, was one of the first buildings labelled as high-tech – a style of architecture that Foster defines as a celebration of a building’s functional components.

Reliance Controls was the first building to dissolve the traditional boundaries between factory workers and office workers. “There was only a glass screen that would separate the assembly line for electronics from those who are managing the sales force,” said Foster. “They would all share the same kitchen and dining facilities, the same bathrooms. That we take for granted now but at that time it was it was really revolutionary – unheard of.”

Website: https://www.dezeen.com/2019/12/13/norman-foster-reliance-controls-video-interview/

Top New Podcasts: “The History Of Coffee” And Its Social Impact (BBC Radio)

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the history and social impact of coffee. From its origins in Ethiopia, coffea arabica spread through the Ottoman Empire before reaching Western Europe where, in the 17th century, coffee houses were becoming established.

There, caffeinated customers stayed awake for longer and were more animated, and this helped to spread ideas and influence culture. Coffee became a colonial product, grown by slaves or indentured labour, with coffea robusta replacing arabica where disease had struck, and was traded extensively by the Dutch and French empires; by the 19th century, Brazil had developed into a major coffee producer, meeting demand in the USA that had grown on the waggon trails.

With

Judith Hawley
Professor of 18th Century Literature at Royal Holloway, University of London

Markman Ellis
Professor of 18th Century Studies at Queen Mary University of London

And

Jonathan Morris
Professor in Modern History at the University of Hertfordshire

Producer: Simon Tillotson

Website: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000c4x1

New History Books: “American Disruptor – The Scandalous Life Of Leland Stanford” (De Wolk)

It is also the saga of how Stanford, once a serial failure, overcame all obstacles to become one of America’s most powerful and wealthiest men, using his high elective office to enrich himself before losing the one thing that mattered most to him – his only child and son. Scandal and intrigue would follow Stanford through his life, and even after his death, when his widow was murdered in a Honolulu hotel – a crime quickly covered up by the almost stillborn university she had saved.  Richly detailed and deeply researched, American Disruptor restores Leland Stanford’s rightful place as a revolutionary force and architect of modern America.

American Disruptor is the untold story of Leland Stanford – from his birth in a backwoods bar to the founding of the world-class university that became and remains the nucleus of Silicon Valley. The life of this robber baron, politician, and historic influencer is the astonishing tale of how one supremely ambitious man became this country’s original “disruptor” – reshaping industry and engineering one of the greatest raids on the public treasury for America’s transcontinental railroad, all while living more opulently than maharajas, kings, and emperors.

New Health Studies: 43% Of Americans Prescribed Antibiotics Improperly

From a British Medical Journal (BMJ) online article:

BMJ journal cover Dec 2019…primary care providers (general practice, paediatrics, and internal medicine) performed the best, giving a considerably lower percentage of antibiotic prescriptions without a documented indication (12%) than other specialists such as gynaecologists and urologists, who commonly prescribed antibiotics (24%), as well as those in all other specialties (29%).

As many as two in five antibiotic prescriptions (43%) provided in outpatient settings in the US could be inappropriate, a study published by The BMJ has found.1

Researchers from Oregon, USA, looked at prescriptions in ambulatory settings such as primary care and found that a quarter (25%) were deemed to be inappropriate, while a further 18% did not have an indication.

To read more: https://www.bmj.com/content/367/bmj.l6961