Search
Latest Videos
A library of interviews with the world’s biggest thinkers.
6mins
Dynamic road pricing could solve congestion problems, but is it socially equitable?
8mins
Other countries have it. Why doesn’t the U.S.? Because we’ve been unwilling to pay.
7mins
When it comes to adopting transportation issues, the federal government has a special role as a cheerleader.
3mins
Transportation systems have to operate on these dimensions to be effective: economic development, environmental protection and social equity.
28mins
A conversation with the MIT professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering.
2mins
The creator of “thing theory” suspects his professional curiosity about objects stems from his private inability to attach much importance to them.
4mins
The UChicago critic names the works he loved best as a young reader and the author that excites him most these days.
9mins
Is the nature of “the text” changing in the Web age? Are blogs hurting criticism? And could the growing interest in “thing theory” be a response to an increasingly virtual […]
1mins
The term “thing theory” is a joke, but not a joke about physics.
3mins
By inviting us to pay close attention to the object itself, “thing theory” can tease out new meaning in the simplest artwork—even an apparent prank like Duchamp’s “Fountain.”
5mins
Many modern artists have explored the idea that the material world “might want to be organized other than the way we’ve organized it.”
7mins
From Daisy weeping into Gatsby’s shirts to Tom Hanks chatting with Wilson the volleyball, stories are as much about things as people.
3mins
The critic’s signature “thing theory” is an exploration of how inanimate objects transform us, in art and life.
3mins
Bill Brown first sensed his calling when he realized he read very slowly—a habit he thinks is integral to the critic’s discipline.
38mins
A conversation with the professor of English and visual arts at the University of Chicago.
1mins
His fellow physicist Steven Weinberg says the Nobel committee has “fleeced” Freeman Dyson. But Dyson prefers the infamy of never having won.
4mins
When the physicist expressed reservations about climate change, he stirred heated controversy. “It doesn’t disturb me at all,” he says.
3mins
“We don’t only have to worry about warming,” the physicist argues. “It could very well be the climate gets colder. Nobody knows”—and we waste time arguing when we should be […]
4mins
Last week, Obama signed an ambitious nuclear arms reduction treaty with Russia. So why does the “Weapons and Hope” author fear that George Bush, Sr. will go down in history […]
3mins
Freeman Dyson never spoke to Einstein, but revered him from afar. He was a “totally exceptional person”—as was another colleague, Nobelist and “clown” Richard Feynman.