"Oh, no! I'm shooting a fish in a barrel, but also I'm in the barrel, and the barrel's going over a cliff!" — Alexandra Petri *
What does a satirist do? What is the satirist's role in society? What, in turn, is our responsibility to the satirist? And what makes for genius satire? *
Alexandra Petri (@petridishes) is a Washington Post humor columnist. In this interview she addresses the terrifying convergence of her desire to write dystopian futures with her job of covering the actual news. What's a political satirist to do when it's impossible to come up with anything more bizarre or ridiculous than a verbatim transcription of our elected leaders' words? *
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Never miss another episode of Where Genius Grows. Get each new one delivered straight to your inbox by signing up here: http://eepurl.com/ckKJ1f *
At the beginning of 2017 there are over 500,000 unfilled tech jobs in the United States. How will applicants learn the required skills to succeed in these jobs? How will employers avoid overlooking qualified candidates? How will applicants from underserved communities gain access to the training they need to compete for these jobs? *
Tess Posner (@tessposner) is the managing director of TechHire, an initiative by Opportunity@Work to connect 100,000 people to tech jobs by 2020. In this interview she describes the steps TechHire is taking to accomplish this feat and how you can participate. Tess also offers her vision of a well-rounded 21st-century education, balancing ever-evolving technical expertise against an understanding of what it means to be human. *
Further readings Tess recommends include: *
- "The World is Open" by Curtis Bonk: http://amzn.to/2iLmrI8 *
- "The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies" by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee: http://amzn.to/2iIK8Ty *
- "Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future" by Martin Ford: http://amzn.to/2iLkSdt *
- "Savage Inequalities" by Jonathan Kozol: http://amzn.to/2iXJ8J3 *
- "The Brothers Karamazov" by Fyodor Dostoevsky: http://amzn.to/2iK3F3S *
- "The Apology" by Plato: http://amzn.to/2iK7lCM *
- "The Republic" by Plato: http://amzn.to/2iK1PQC *
- "The Wealth of Nations" by Adam Smith: http://amzn.to/2hWS2Vf *
- "The Federalist Papers" by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay: http://amzn.to/2j9YDgj