Another Interesting Talk tonight and it certainly lived up to its name. Professor Todd Landman spoke on whether Democracy is good for the world. The answer was a rather optimistic yes, although I wish I had been able to capture more of why that was. 

Someone asked me recently whether I find it hard when the speaker waffles, generally I don’t as the salient points they make really sing out. It is much harder when you are trying to capture everything because the talk is so rich with information. This talk was packed to the gills with interesting facts and anecdotes, I captured too much at the start, when I should have focused on some of the summarising statements towards the end. 

If you are interested in reading more about democracy, Professor Todd Landman has a book coming out on Human Rights and Democracy: The Precarious Triumph of Ideals which I’ve just added to my wishlist. Update: Apparently the book will be available for free via Open Access when it comes out in September. 

This is an oldie from the BBH (Big Baby Hiatus of 2012). This was a talk at the Royal Institution (RIGB) entitled Wired for Culture by Professor Mark Pagel. He was promoting two books which were released this year which are Wired for Culture: The Natural History of Human Cooperation and Wired for Culture: Origins of the Human Social Mind. Note: Am not sure why there are two books with very similar titles, they were published around a week apart. 

Audio archive of the event (Player at the bottom of page). 

Another night, another Interesting Talk. This time, Judy Rees was talking about how to improve your interviewing. One the most insightful points Judy made was about how interviewing people is a skill that almost everyone uses but it isn’t something that many people have formal training in. That number is dwindling further with the decrease in the tradional print media structure. 

Am really happy with the sketchnote tonight, although my drawing doesn’t have a very good likeness of Judy. Really want to experiment with some more type styles, hopefully HR Smallness will start taking those amazing 2 hour naps during the day again!