Entrepreneur and 2020 Democratic candidate Andrew Yang tells NewsHour Weekend he was ‘honored and disappointed’ to be the lone candidate of color at the last debate. He joins Yamiche Alcindor to discuss his plan to give every American adult $1,000 a month, why he believes headlines about the economy are misleading, and how he would handle North Korea if he became president.
Category Archives: Interviews
Interview Podcasts: Singer Paul McCartney Reminisces (Penguin)
In a special Christmas edition, Sir Paul McCartney tells Nihal about persuading John Lennon to believe in himself, the one famous person that even he feels nervous around, and his new children’s book ‘Hey Grandude’ and how being a grandad inspires him.
Top New Interviews: Art Historian And Louvre Director Michel Laclotte
From a BrooklynRail.org online interview:
“…I am almost more interested in the paintings I didn’t get! I wish I could do a small photo exhibition of all the works that we failed to get. Of the early titans, we have two important ones, Giotto and Cimabue, but we don’t have Duccio, the third master of the birth of painting in Europe, if I may say. There was one in the Stoclet collection in Brussels, that we were following through dealer friends, but finally it was purchased by the Met. Also Velázquez, our biggest weakness!”
Michel Laclotte, President of the Louvre (1987 – 1995)
Joachim Pissarro (Rail): The premise of these three interviews is that all three personalities, each one, of course, with its own personal intonation and distinctive input, took charge of this antiquated and august institution, the Louvre, and you especially, Monsieur Laclotte, accompanied it towards the 21st century, end of the 20th century to 21st century. I think this was an incredible challenge. How did you take charge of such an ancient—two-century old—institution and how did you bring it into its present and prepare its future?
To read more: https://brooklynrail.org/2019/12/art/Michel-Laclotte-with-Joachim-Pissarro
Top Political Podcasts: In-Depth Interview With Sen. Elizabeth Warren (NYT)
In 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.
With 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.
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.
British 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/
1960’s Music: Kenneth Womack Discusses “The Beatles” Early “Proto-Feminism” (Harvard)
From a Harvard News online article:
Rock ’n’ roll, or even popular music, [was] often highly gendered and sexist. It certainly was paternalistic in the ’60s and prior, in terms of songs being directed at women as objects, women as needing to be “counseled” about love, [or] it was about coming on to them, even if it was just something innocent and romantic, “I Want to Hold Your Hand.” And the Beatles very consciously in 1965 began to change their tone. They created a very specific type of female character who would think for herself and did not need a man.
Looking back at your favorite classic rock songs through the lens of today’s attitudes about women’s empowerment, male privilege, and even sexual violence can be cringeworthy at best. But just as they were trailblazers in music, film, fashion, and popular culture, the Beatles were ahead of their time in embracing feminism, argues Kenneth Womack, a well-known authority on the band and dean at Monmouth University, evolving from early patronizing “hey, girl” entreaties to songs filled with independent women who don’t need a man, not even a Beatle. Ideological Diversity, a Harvard Kennedy School student organization, hosts a free talk with Womack on Thursday about how the group explored issues of feminism, gender, and inclusion in ways few rock bands dared in the 1960s.
Interview Podcasts: 2019 Pulitzer Prize Winner “The Overstory” Author Richard Powers (PBS)
Richard Powers, author of our November pick for the NewsHour-New York Times book club, Now Read This, joins Jeffrey Brown to answer reader questions on “The Overstory,” and Jeff announces the December book selection.
Interviews: Anthony Hopkins On The “Nature Of Existence”, Having Fun In “The Two Popes” (WSJ)
From a Wall Street Journal Magazine online interview:
“The script is about questioning the nature of existence. I think about that every day of life. What is the purpose of life? As I get older, I look back on my own life as if it’s a novel written by someone else. To me it’s all a mystery. I started out over 60 years ago. My first job was, my God, 62 years ago and here I am. I don’t understand any of it. They gave me work, and I continued to work. It’s only just recently looking back, I thought, ‘My goodness, who designed this life? I certainly didn’t.’ I don’t know what’s life or destiny or kismet or God. I don’t want to get too philosophical about it. I’m fascinated about the mystery of life, about how we get through it, how we survive. I have no answers and I can’t take credit for any of it.”
Anthony Hopkins, who plays Pope Benedict XVI in this month’s Netflix movie The Two Popes, has a personal philosophy of not taking anything too seriously. “When I was younger, I was much more intense,” he says. “I got to a certain age, maybe 10 years ago, and thought, ‘Come on, just relax. Have some fun with it. Let’s have a ball!’” Hopkins’s surprising approach to playing the pope was to be as laid back as the actor, 81, appears on his lively Instagram account: He captures himself singing, dancing in his Thor costume and playing the piano with his cat perched on his lap.
To read more: https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-anthony-hopkins-doesnt-research-his-roles-11574343089?mod=read_more
Retirement Planning: Nobel Prize Economist William Sharpe Offers Free E-Book For Retirees
Feom a Barron’s online interview article:
Right now, you tend to have investment advisors for retirees, and insurance advisors or salespersons for retirees, and it’s fairly rare to go to somebody who can sell you annuities or invest your money and has no financial incentive to tilt one way or the other. Ultimately, what I’d like to see are people who have knowledge of both annuities and investments, and who are compensated in a way that doesn’t influence the decision.
The idea is that you segment your money. It’s similar to using “buckets” but with a time component. A retiree might have a box for 2020 and a box for 2021, and 2022, etc.
Nobel Prize–winning economist William Sharpe has spent most of his career thinking about risk. He’s behind the Capital Asset Pricing Model for gauging systemic risk and the eponymous Sharpe ratio, which captures risk-adjusted return.
A few decades ago, Sharpe turned his attention to what may be the biggest risk of all for most Americans—running out of money in retirement. The professor of finance, emeritus, at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business created a computer program that eventually covered 100,000 retirement-income scenarios based on different combinations of life spans and investment returns for a retired couple. Sharpe has made this program available in a free ebook, Retirement Income Scenario Matrices.
To read more: https://www.barrons.com/articles/william-sharpe-how-to-secure-lasting-retirement-income-51573837934
Top Interviews: Mark Cuban, 61, Talks Capitalism, Politics & NBA At Harvard
From a Harvard Gazette online article:
“When you live paycheck to paycheck, there are times you fall behind. There was a healthy dose of fear, but I knew that my business would grow if I kept pushing.” Getting an M.B.A. felt superfluous. “I would rather be paid to learn,” he said. “There’s not a lot you can learn in an M.B.A. program that you can’t learn online or through other mechanisms. I’m not a big fan of taking those years and spending money that you could put to better use.”
Billionaire tech entrepreneur Mark Cuban discusses value of real-world education, Trump, Warren, and sexual harassment on his NBA team.
(The) former high-tech executive and celebrity entrepreneur… may be one of the few people who can get away with telling a packed auditorium of Harvard Business School (HBS) students that getting an M.B.A. is a “mistake these days” — and get a round of applause in response.
Boomers Daily 