Journalist Misha Glenny leaves no stone unturned (and no failed state unexamined) in his excavation of criminal globalization.
"Philip Zimbardo was the leader of the notorious 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment -- and an expert witness at Abu Ghraib. His book The Lucifer Effect explores the nature of evil; now, in his new work, he studies the nature of heroism."
"rt Wright thinks the crises the human species now faces are moral in nature, and that our salvation lies in the intelligent pursuit of self-interest. In his book Nonzero, Wright argues that life depends on a non-zero-sum dynamic. While a zero-sum game depends on a winner and loser, all parties in a non-zero-sum game win or lose together, so players will more likely survive if they cooperate. This points to an optimistic future of ultimate cooperation among humans -- if we recognize the game.
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"Marcin Jakubowski is open-sourcing a set of blueprints for 50 farming tools that can be built cheaply from scratch. Call it a "civilization starter kit.""
"Sanjit “Bunker” Roy is the founder of Barefoot College, which helps rural communities becomes self-sufficient."
An advocate of human-computer symbiosis, Shyam Sankar looks for clues in big and disparate data sets.
"In 2004, Salman Khan, a hedge fund analyst, began posting math tutorials on YouTube. Six years later, he has posted more than 2.000 tutorials, which are viewed nearly 100,000 times around the world each day."
"Neurologist V.S. Ramachandran looks deep into the brain’s most basic mechanisms. By working with those who have very specific mental disabilities caused by brain injury or stroke, he can map functions of the mind to physical structures of the brain."
"Michael Sandel teaches political philosophy at Harvard. His book "Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do?" explores some of the most hotly contested moral and political issues of our time."
"Neil Turok is working on a model of the universe that explains the big bang -- while, closer to home, he's founded a network of math and science academies across Africa."
"Shaffi Mather is the founder of 1298 for Ambulance, Education Access for All, and co-promoter of Moksha-Yug Access."
"Elizabeth Pisani uses unconventional field research to understand how real-world behaviors influence AIDS transmission -- and to overhaul antiquated, ineffective prevention strategies."
"Science educator Arvind Gupta uses simple toys to teach."
"Massimo Banzi co-founded Arduino, which makes affordable open-source microcontrollers for interactive projects, from art installations to an automatic plant waterer."
"From his home base in Bulgaria, Ivan Krastev thinks about democracy -- and how to reframe it."
"A professor of economics at the University of Waterloo in Canada, Larry Smith coaches his students to find the careers that they will truly love."
"Yves Behar has produced some of the new millennium's most coveted objects, like the Leaf lamp, the Jawbone headset, and the XO laptop for One Laptop per Child."
"The founder of the MIT Media Lab, Nicholas Negroponte pushed the edge of the information revolution as an inventor, thinker and angel investor. Now he's the driving force behind One Laptop per Child, building computers for children in the developing world."
"Our environment changes faster than we can learn about it, Eddie Obeng says. How do we keep up?"
"Ernesto Sirolli got his start doing aid work in Africa in the 70's -- and quickly realised how ineffective it was."