51 Min Released Nov 5, 2016

71. Jelani Cobb (Historian) - Shiny New Skin, Same Old Snake

Since 2008, Big Think has been sharing big ideas from creative and curious minds. The Think Again podcast takes us out of our comfort zone, surprising our guests and Jason Gots, your host, with unexpected conversation starters from Big Think’s interview archives.

Historian and journalist Jelani Cobb is the author of Substance of Hope: Barack Obama and the Paradox of Progress and other books, and one of our most powerful writers on the complexities of race in America. Jelani is a staff writer at the New Yorker, where he’s given readers nuanced insight into gun culture, police brutality, the #blacklivesmatter movement, and much more, and a professor of Journalism at Columbia University. 

Although Jelani was hoping the surprise format might involve watching fun nature videos, the topics that came up included mathematical symmetry as a defining principle of the universe, whether and to what extent liberals should try to empathize with Trump supporters, and the ethics of human-animal and human-robot relations. Sorry, Jelani.

Surprise conversation starter interview clips in this episode: Jim Gaffigan on Political Intolerance, Glenn Cohen on AI Ethics, [and Frank Wilczek on Symmetry
](http://bigthink.com/videos/frank-wilczek-explains-symmetry "")

Think Again – a Big Think Podcast

Think Again – a Big Think Podcast

We surprise some of the world's brightest minds with ideas they're not at all prepared to discuss.

Go To Show Page

More Episodes

Mariah Drops The Ball?

In The Limelight

Julie and Josh analyze Mariah Carey’s N.Y.E. meltdown, Queen Elizabeth’s health, and Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie’s holiday apart.

33 Min

Jan 4, 2017

Working: The "How Does a Self-Defense Instructor Work?" Edition

Slate's Working

In the Season 4 premiere of Working, the host of WNYC’s Micropolis series, Arun Venugopal, interviews Elena Waldman, a self-defense instructor at MKD Karate in Queens, NY. Elena explains how she came to be a martial artist, demonstrates to our host how

27 Min

Sep 13, 2015

90 Seconds With Slate: Unelectable You

Slate Magazine Daily Feed

Behind the scenes of Slate and the Second City's political comedy extravaganza.

0 Min

Jul 27, 2016