Anya Kamenetz is the author of DIY U: Edupunks, Edupreneurs, and the Coming Transformation of Higher Education. She’s also the subject of our very first (and very beta) video interview:

DIY U

DIY U is about the future of higher education:

It’s a story about the communities of visionaries who are tackling the enormous challenges of cost, access, and quality in higher ed, using new technologies to bring us a revolution in higher learning that is affordable, accessible, and learner-centered.

For more, be sure to visit the DIY U website and follow Anya on twitter @anya1anya.

We’ll soon post a continuation of this discussion in audio form.

A Case for God

Religion poisons everything… God is a delusion… the end of faith… these are phrases lately found among the burgeoning supply of books by “new atheists” who take arms against a sea of holy rollers and jihadis.  In an age of faith-based politics, resurgent creationism, and religious terrorism, aggressive atheists like Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens have become bestselling authors.

A new book attempts to take a stand against both the religious fundamentalists and their militant atheist foes.  The Case for God is a landmark work of intellectual and theological history by the renowned scholar of religion Karen Armstrong.

The book is nothing less than a comprehensive history of human religion in just over three hundred pages.  From painted traces of Paleolithic hunter-shamans on the Lascaux Cave walls to hip postmodernist theology, Armstrong offers a lucid narrative of humanity’s relationship with the divine.  In her telling, the story of God and man unrolls like an ancient tapestry richly embroidered with scholarly insights and references from the world’s many religious traditions.

It is a compelling story, but it isn’t clear that many people—secularists or religionists—will find it persuasive.

Read the rest of my review of The Case for God at The Book Studio.

The end of "cool"?

Has coolness runs its course?  Are we living in a post-”cool” culture?

Musician and writer Ted Gioia talks about his new book, The Birth and Death of the Cool in episode 102 of The New Modern podcast.  You can listen using the embedded player above or via iTunes.  Please consider leaving a review and subscribing (for free) to future New Modern podcasts in the iTunes store.

Renowned for his important books about music, especially his History of Jazz, Ted Gioia is a prolific culture writer and literary critic.

Scott Timberg, the Los Angeles writer (and a pretty cool guy), recently posted a Q&A with Gioia on his new book.  Though many will find much to disagree with in Gioia’s arguments, there’s a unquestionably a new fashion for authenticity and sincerity.

Whether that spirit marks the death of “cool” in the sense that Ted Gioia means it, remains to be seen.  Listen to our interview, read the book, and decide for yourself.

[Watch this space for additional links and a full transcript.]

Huffduff it [huh?]

Episode 101 of The New Modern podcast is an interview with Tyler Cowen about his fascinating new book Create Your Own Economy: The Path to Prosperity in a Disordered World.

In addition to his renown as a professor of economics at George Mason University, Tyler Cowen is familiar to many habitual web surfers through his always absorbing blog Marginal Revolution.

A behavioral economist, Tyler is also deeply interested in culture, technology, and the arts.  His latest book combines all these subjects in one absorbing read.

Create Your Own Economy: The Path to Prosperity in a Disordered World is loaded with provocative ideas and surprising claims.  I still haven’t wrapped my mind around a number of Cowen’s big ideas and insights, but (like it or not) I think he has identified some profound truths about our increasingly fragmented culture. 

If, after listening to the podcast, you’d like to learn more about Tyler Cowen and the ideas he advances in Create Your Own Economy, I recommend you take a look at some of these links.

• Cowen’s video dialogue with the whip-smart Will Wilkinson at Bloggingheads.tv;
• The Marginal Revolution blog [if you use an RSS reader, you should definitely subscribe to the Marginal Revolution RSS feed];
• Tyler Cowen’s personal website points to all his books and writings [including his renowned guide to the best ethnic restaurants in the Washington, D.C. area];
• Imperial is the 1,300 page William T. Vollman book that Tyler mentions he has been reading;
• given the book and our discussion, you should be sure to check out Tyler Cowen’s Twitter feed.
• and, finally, you might enjoy viewing Tyler’s somewhat subversive TEDx talk about the dangerous allure of stories:

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There’s so much in this book, and so many provocative ideas, I doubt anyone other than Tyler Cowen would nod in absolute agreement on every page.  I’d really like to hear from readers and listeners…  What do you think?

• Is autism just another form of “neurodiversity”?  Should web surfers aspire to be more like autistics?
• Is the concept of a core curriculum entirely dated?
• Should we retire some of the increasingly antique-seeming forms of art and knowledge?
• Are today’s young people a “Dumbest Generation” or are they more culturally literate than their iPhone-deprived grandparents?
• Is storytelling a terrible way to share knowledge?

I’d love to see your reactions to these questions–and any others raised by the podcast or the book–in the comments section below…

If so moved, you can buy the book–and ensure that The New Modern receives a minute kick-back–if you order through Powell’s or Amazon.

A Life of Louis Armstrong

Pops, Terry Teachout‘s new biography of Louis Armstrong, gets a rave review in the New York Times:

Louis Armstrong, a k a Satchmo, a k a Pops, was to music what Picasso was to painting, what Joyce was to fiction: an innovator who changed the face of his art form, a fecund and endlessly inventive pioneer whose discovery of his own voice helped remake 20th-century culture.

His determination to entertain and the mass popularity he eventually achieved, coupled with his gregarious, open-hearted personality, would obscure the magnitude of his achievement and win him the disdain of many intellectuals and younger colleagues, who dismissed much of what he did after 1929 as middlebrow slumming, and who even mocked him as a kind of Uncle Tom.

The full review of Pops by Michiko Kakutani is well worth reading. This is a book about a great musician and performer, but it’s also a story about race, American history and identity, and the nature of genius.

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Hear Teachout read from the book–passages on Armstrong’s love for marijuana and his bold denunciations of segregation–in this Vanity Fair “Writers Reading” podcast.

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And enjoy this 1956 performance in London… “Mack the Knife.”