Conversations
A Writer on the Water
“If you're a writer,” Boyne asks, “how can you be authentic by just really relaxing into your own personal comfort zone?”
Exploring Spirituality and Civic Life
Dan P. McKanan’s ’89 work outlines anthroposophical teachings concerned with the biological and spiritual interconnectedness of agriculture. “There's an understanding that certain spiritual forces stream down to earth from various cosmic realms, and the farmer is working with those spiritual forces,” he explains.
Combating Climate Change with Robert Stavins
Fifteen Minutes sat down with Professor Robert N. Stavins, Director of the Harvard Environmental Economics Program, to talk about cap-and-trade, the Peace Corps, and what individuals can do to combat climate change.
Creating Pottery to Destroy
Striving to meet Nakazato’s — and his own — high standards, Everard made more than 5,000 plates during his first six months of apprenticeship. Most were destroyed before they reached the kiln, and their clay was recycled for later use. Every piece that enters the kiln must be perfect.
Fifteen Minutes with Mayor Pete
FM sat down with Mayor Pete in a second-floor office at the Institute of Politics, an old haunt from his time as IOP president. We talked about his college days, “The West Wing,” and his Supreme Court-packing proposal. Today’s IOP student leaders have placed a poster behind him for the occasion that reads: “Mayors ask what youth can do.”
In Other News, How Is This Man Still Alive?
Ashrita Furman holds the record for breaking Guinness world records, but, curiously, his philosophy centers on the the search for happiness and the practice of meditation.
ouijaboard
Collecting a group of friends and my Ouija Board — gifted to me years ago by an aunt — we assemble in a circle on the hardwood floor of the Co-op library.
The Hidden Curriculum
“What the ‘privileged poor’ and the ‘doubly disadvantaged’ force us to think about is how social inequalities like poverty and inequality, especially in our neighborhoods and in our secondary schools, manifest themselves on our campus.”
A Lathe Night Turning Wood in Mather Basement
“Whenever trees come down around campus, I try to be the first one there,” Smith says. “People text me when they hear chainsaws.”
Christian Siriano Thinks Clothes Are Just Clothes
For Christian Siriano, a fashion designer and member of the Council of Fashion Designers of America, making headlines is nothing new.
Lessons Learned from a 28 Year Leave of Absence
“I wrote Harvard a letter: how can I come back and study history when I'm busy making it?” Ganz says.
There's Always Gelt in the Banana Stand
Aspects and fragments of Yiddish have become ubiquitous in our common vocabulary, operating, in Rachelle T. Grossman’s words, as “cultural capital, a cultural currency, as a symbolic language.”
Engineering the Earth
Year after year, the threat of an impending climate catastrophe looms larger in the public consciousness. David W. Keith, an applied physics professor, is working on a solution.
Buddhism Behind Barbed Wire
“Once she told me that story… I thought, 'One day I need to write a book about what families like hers went through.'”
Is Andrew Yang the Anti-Trump?
“I certainly do not relish being compared to Donald Trump,” Yang says in an interview with Fifteen Minutes, calling such comparisons “unfortunate, because Donald Trump gives real entrepreneurs a bad name, and entrepreneurs like myself regard him as more of a marketing charlatan than a real builder.” As he tells the crowd, “the opposite of Donald Trump is an Asian man who likes math.”
