Program Description

Plastic: A Toxic Love Story

Using eight familiar objects as guides, Freinkel takes audiences on an eye-opening multimedia journey tracing the rise of plastic and touching on some of its more lasting impacts on the economy, culture, health, and the environment. Focusing on some of the interlocking themes explored in the book — the rise of throwaway culture and its environmental impacts; the new kinds of health risks posed by synthetic chemicals used in plastics, and the politics of regulating them — Freinkel explores both the benefits and problems stemming from our tight embrace of synthetics.

Moreover, Freinkel addresses the problem of plastic waste and pollution and the challenges of dealing with plastics at the end of their useful lives.  And, in doing so, she poses and attempts to answer some of the tougher questions to grow out of this discussion: Is recycling the answer?  Could bioplastics be the materials of the future, and do their benefits outweigh the risks?

Whether or not we as a species can come to grips with our reliance on, and addiction to plastic is a question that will play itself out over the decades to come, but Freinkel’s talk can help audiences better understand our role in perpetuating plastic’s ubiquity, and by the same token, give us the tools to attempt to create a more enlightened consumer future.

The American Chestnut: A Parable of Our Time

In her award-winning book American Chestnut: The Life Death And Rebirth Of A Perfect Tree, Freinkel details one of the worst ecological disasters to ever hit North America: the near extermination of one of the country’s most important forest trees.

Her lecture, based on the book, draws fascinating parallels between this early almost-catastrophe and the ecological problems of invasive species and loss of biodiversity afflicting American landscapes today.  Freinkel tells the story of the chestnuts’ near demise and the decades-long effort of various scientists and amateur botanists to save and restore this beloved tree.  Once one of the most plentiful trees in East Coast forests – source of sustenance for all living beings in its range, from hares to hogs to human and a cultural icon for mountain folk of southern Appalachia — the chestnut was driven to near-extinction by a virulent newly-arrived pathogen

Freinkel discusses the notion that while the natural world is constantly evolving and seeking it’s own equilibrium, we must be more vigilant stewards of our own environment.  If we don’t act responsibly, then we run the risk of setting events in motion that can’t easily be undone.

Bio

A science writer whose work has appeared in a variety of national publications including: Discover, Reader’s Digest, Smithsonian, The New York Times, OnEarth, Health, and Real Simple, Freinkel was awarded an Alicia Patterson Fellowship in 2005, which allowed her to conduct much of the research for American Chestnut. The book won a 2008 National Outdoor Book Award.

A graduate of Wesleyan University and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, Freinkel began her career as a reporter at the Wichita Eagle-Beacon in Wichita, Kansas.  Her interests run wide. She has covered subjects ranging from adoption to weight control, coyote hunts to mad cow disease, new psychiatric treatments to the quest to develop a blue rose — not to mention trees and plastic.

In Free Ride, Robert Levine, business journalist and former Executive Editor of Billboard, details how Congress helped create this situation, how tech companies convinced politicians not to regulate the online world, and how the media business can save itself (in spite of itself).

Free Ride: How Digital Parasites are Destroying the Culture Business and How the Culture Business Can Fight Back

Piracy?  It’s only part of the problem.  While piracy obviously has an economic cost in addition to its cultural consequences, the real problem is that an Internet without restrictions is an Internet without a functioning market. Some technology pundits see this as progress – but many of them have made valuable businesses out of information and entertainment funded by the media companies that have been devastated by their actions. In the long term, this can’t last: Google won’t be nearly as useful without newspaper journalism, and Spotify won’t work without major label music.

Levine presents some revolutionarily new, yet simple ideas that could reverse the current situation — demonstrating how European Internet regulations present some hope for the media business, especially since countries like France and Germany aren’t afraid to regulate Google. But, ultimately, the solution is both as simple and as complicated as the fact that we can’t have an online economy without some kind of property rights – and some way to enforce them.

Program Descriptions

Free markets and free information: an anatomy of an unsustainable economy

The Internet promised an “information economy,” but information is worth less than ever. While the companies that move information are thriving, those that actually create it – movie studios, record labels, newspaper companies – are struggling. Over the long term, this can’t last: Google won’t be nearly as valuable if there isn’t as much professional content to search for.  Levine’s thesis is a simple but powerful one: We can’t have an working online economy without a market, we can’t have a market without property rights, and we can’t have property rights without some means of enforcing them. This isn’t just about protecting a few media businesses – it’s ultimately about preserving the value of the work that the prosperity of advanced economies depends on.

At what price success?

In 2010, when record companies raised the prices of the most popular songs on iTunes, most bloggers thought it would be a disaster, and sales declined more than 10 percent. But since the most popular songs were selling for about 30 percent more money, record companies made more revenue – and more profit. Although the digital world seems to demand lower prices, in order to hold back piracy, most of the evidence shows that this isn’t a good strategy. Instead, media companies need to adopt more flexible pricing and introduce different products aimed at different consumers – much as airlines do. Levine offers practical advice on how to maintain pricing power in the digital age.

Regulation in an age of free information (and free access)

Technology executives often say that the Internet can’t be regulated, that the spread of open communications technologies is inevitable. But that’s not exactly true: While technological advances are inevitable, the ways we use them are up to us – specifically, network designers and the governments that mandate what they can do. In the case of the Internet, we have an open system with no enforceable rules. Ultimately, that’s not nearly as good for users as it is for technology companies – which are running rampant over copyright, but also privacy, antitrust, and consumer protection laws. Levine takes audiences through the history of network regulation, and, more importantly, lays down a blueprint for what its future should look like.

Bio

Robert Levine has been covering pop culture, technology, and the awkward dance between them for 15 years. Most recently, he was the executive editor of Billboard, charged with running the influential music business trade magazine. He has also been a features editor at New York magazine and Wired. His first job was at HotWired.com, the Wired Web publication, where he was hired several months after it sold the first online banner ad.

His writing has appeared in Vanity Fair, Fortune, Rolling Stone, and the arts and business sections of the New York Times. He has offered commentary on the media business for CNN, CNBC, and VH-1, and spoken at the CMJ music conference and the World Copyright Summit in Brussels. He holds a B.A. in politics from Brandeis and an M.S.J.  from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism.

His first book, Free Ride: How Digital Parasites are Destroying the Culture Business and How the Culture Business Can Fight Back (Doubleday), was called “brilliant if depressing” by the Times (U.K.) and garnered praise from the Guardian and the Financial Times. He now covers the culture business from New York and Berlin.

The personal is political for Liza, and she believes the struggle for human rights can be traced to the individual’s struggle for expression of self.  Liza’s work exposes cultural stereotypes in all forms, not just in women’s rights, and she works with international cartoonists, curating exhibits and is editor of World Ink, a site dedicated to political cartoons from around the world.

Program Descriptions

Finding Voice

In her interactive, multimedia lecture, Liza draws on her three decades as a cartoonist for The New Yorker, Liza speaks about the (sometimes joyful) struggle of finding one’s voice as an artist, framing it in terms of the need for creative space, “a room of one’s own,” free from cultural pressures.  Using slides of her own work, Liza delivers a talk that is at once humorous and serious, discussing issues of sexism and the stereotypes women face as they search inside themselves for their own expression and for the freedom to be what they want to be and not what our culture expects.

Having taught Women’s Studies at Vassar College, Liza’s understanding of the issues is deep, and, combined with her personal story, her lecture provides a rich experience wherein the seriousness of the difficulties women face is delivered with humor. Liza is forever trying to dispel the notion that women do not have a sense of humor, and that through laughter, difficult issues can not only be addressed, but changed for the better.

International Cartoons

As a world traveler passionate about political cartoons, Liza is uniquely positioned to lends her skills as a cartoonist, editor and writer to help audiences understand the power cartoons wield in to making sense of world events.

In her lecture/slide program, Liza speaks to the way this art form can communicate across borders with amazing power. Cartoons can visually distill global events in an instant, and particularly when drawn by women, they often enlighten in ways not heard of before. A member of Cartooning for Peace, and editor and creator of World Ink, a website devoted to international cartoons, Liza works with cartoonists from around the world.  Given the role of women as tradition holders in each society, they have unique perspectives to bring to the table of political cartoons.

New Yorker Cartoons

Everyone loves New Yorker cartoons.  As a contributor to The New Yorker for thirty years, Liza has a personal understanding of the art of the magazine, as well as friendships with many of the artists and editors. Author of “Funny Ladies: The New Yorker’s Greatest Women Cartoonists and Their Cartoons” (Prometheus), which required years of research at The New Yorker and The New Yorker Archives, Liza has a deep understanding of the cartoons and cartoonists  of the magazine, both as pieces of art but also in context of their time.  An overview of the art form can reflect cultural trends, political events and social norms in a way that is unique. Liza speaks to the impact of cartoons on us as individuals, and of the manner in which they reflect on us as a society. With slides, she contrasts current cartoons with past ones, analyzing the changes in mores, styles and humor.

Bio:

Author of numerous books, including Funny Ladies: The New Yorker’s Greatest Women Cartoonists and Their Cartoons, Sex and Sensibility: Ten Women Examine the Lunacy of Modern Love…in 200 Cartoons, among others, Liza’s written work has also appeared in The Daily Beast, CNN.com, The New Yorker and elsewhere.  Liza has spoken at TED, has been profiled on CBS Sunday morning, and has appeared on numerous radio shows . Liza recently curated a show of global political cartoons for TED, and online for CNN.com, and has taught “The Cultural History of Cartoons”, “Women and Humor” and Women’s Studies at Vassar College.

Tom works with organizations that want to stimulate action and involvement. His high-intrigue, high-energy programs catalyze creativity and challenge constituents to open up their thinking. Let Tom Clynes give your audience something substantial to talk about—and move them forward with an enduring sense of expanded possibilities.

Program Descriptions

Can One Person Really Change the World?

Tom’s provocative and visually stunning presentation answers this question with dramatic and inspiring stories of real people who shaped once-ordinary lives into world-changing adventures. Discover how they did it, why they did it, and why the world needs us to pursue the goals we really care about. By artfully weaving the stories of your own “heroes” with the achievements of world-changing heroes, this program is designed to boost energy, involvement and enthusiasm.

The Art of Audacity

Audacity is the missing ingredient in far too many worthy endeavors. But some people seem to have it in abundance: The explorer whose jungle expedition led to the biggest African conservation victory in three decades…the “elephant whisperer” who rescued the animals in the Baghdad Zoo…the virus hunter whose ambitious plan to stop epidemics before they start is shifting the way the world confronts infectious diseases. Via astonishing stories and photos, this program challenges audiences to believe in their boldest dreams—and energizes your meeting with an anything-is-possible spirit.

The Seven Habits of World-Changers

People who succeed in changing the world are not born—they’re self-made. In this enlightening—and surprising—presentation, you’ll discover the intriguing life lessons behind the success of people who dared to challenge and change the status quo. Expect to be entertained, provoked, and wowed by these spectacular images and stories.

Ends of the Earth

Expect to question your own personal and cultural truths during this rollicking tour of the Earth’s natural and cultural extremes. From Thailand’s Vegetarian Banquet for Monkeys, to the man who risked his life to rescue the animals in the Baghdad Zoo, to the world’s roughest sport, Tom is your guide to the world at its most thrilling, open, colorful, and alive. Audiences will be entertained, provoked, and wowed by these spectacular images and stories.

Bio

For the past decade, Tom Clynes has been a contributing editor and photographer at National Geographic Adventure, covering environmental issues, science, and adventure travel. He also contributes to Popular Science, Men’s Journal, The New York Times, GQ, and other publications, and is the author of the book “Wild Planet.” Tom’s magazine stories often appear in Houghton-Mifflin’s “Best American” series of magazine-writing anthologies.

Program Description

The Observing Self: How living in our highly mediated culture can lead to increased self-consciousness and isolation, and what to do about it.

“Why do I have 600 Facebook friends yet feel so alone?”

From a lead column in the New York Times Magazine lamenting the “Twitterati’s unnatural self-consciousness” and their blurred “lines between the authentic and contrived self,” to the existential loneliness depicted by many celebrated modern novelists (Jonathan Franzen, the late David Foster Wallace, etc.) to recent sociological studies, it’s more and more evident that we are leading increasingly isolated lives, even though we are more technologically connected than ever. Zweig’s powerful multi-media presentation explores this paradox and offers launching points for ways to combat the alienating nature of our mediated culture while still living within the mainstream, or even the vanguard, of our technologically-dependent world.

“I love my iPhone, but the best way to enjoy it is to know when to turn it off.”

Through an interdisciplinary approach, Zweig examines how, today, we are living in an “observational reality” rather than the historically dominant “experiential reality.” For the first time in history people are spending more hours of their day immersed in Fiction (television, movies, the internet, social media, ubiquitous advertising, even the news) than living “in the moment” (i.e. engaged directly with others or the environment). A 2009 study showed that American teenagers are spending nearly eleven hours a day immersed in media. This is a fundamental change in how humans have lived for all of history. And, living this highly mediated life — which, for many of us, means being immersed in Fiction for the majority of our waking hours — inevitably alters the way one perceives oneself and reality itself.

Zweig addresses how our minds work differently when we are observing media (yes, even interactive media like the web) than when we are engaged directly with each other or our environment, and how this can lead to an altered sense of self — the most extreme version of which is depersonalization, a dissociative disorder where one literally views oneself from afar, as if in a movie or a dream.

Rigorously researched and academically lauded, Zweig’s theory, Fiction Depersonalization Syndrome (and its broader hypothesis The Observing Self), has exploded within the academic community since it was introduced as the thoughts of the protagonist in his 2009 novel, Swimming Inside the Sun. Zweig has been invited to lecture about his hypothesis at numerous prestigious scholarly meetings, including the Media Ecology Association’s annual convention at the University of Maine, the Junge Philosophie Conference at the Technische Universität Darmstadt in Darmstadt, Germany, and the Institute of General Semantics annual symposium at Fordham University in New York City. The hypothesis has gained the international support of renowned academics from a variety of fields, including neuroscientists, communications theorists, psychologists, philosophers, and anthropologists. It has been referenced in multiple scholarly papers and PhD dissertations. Lastly, Fiction Depersonalization Syndrome has been added to the curricula at several universities for classes starting fall 2010.

Bio

David Zweig is the author of the acclaimed novel, Swimming Inside the Sun, called a “terrific debut from a talented writer” by Kirkus Reviews.  Heralded as a “symphonic pop prodigy,” Zweig has released two critically praised record albums, All Now With Wings and Keep Going, both charting in the Top 50 on college radio.  He is currently developing a book and documentary centered on his groundbreaking philosophical hypothesis Fiction Depersonalization Syndrome.