The conference fee is $1,575. You may take every class — i.e., there will be no overlap as only one class will be going on at a time. Classes are only offered when we’re at sea.
England and the United States, France and Germany, Brazil and Argentina — these pairs of countries used to be bitter enemies, but they are now fast friends. We’ll explore when and how peace breaks out, demonstrating how deft diplomacy can succeed in replacing enmity with amity.
As China, India, Brazil, Turkey and other rising states continue their ascent, a global order long dominated by Western democracies will give way to one dominated by no one. For the first time in history, an interdependent world will be without a guardian or center of gravity. Learn how this is happening, and what the implications will be.
The political center in American politics has hollowed out. Learn why political moderates are a dwindling breed, and what can be done to help combat the destructive partisanship that has afflicted the country.
Globalization has led to growing prosperity and interdependence. However, it has also diminished the control that democratic electorates have over their destinies. We’ll examine the economic and political impact of globalization and discuss how to restore vitality and responsiveness to democratic institutions.
Though melody is central to music, it’s actually quite hard to define. A catchy tune is one thing. But the great theme of a symphonic work or an aria is something else. Melody is one of those elements in music that we music-lovers think we know all about. But in fact, it’s an elusive matter. We’ll take apart the concept of melody and learn what Chopin stole from Bellini, and what Bach has in common with Bacharach.
In this session we’ll probe how music became “modern.” Learn about the so-called crisis in tonality at the beginning of the 20th century, and the innovations of pioneering composers like Stravinsky and, in particular, Schoenberg, with his much-demonized 12-tone system. We’ll focus in particular on what’s been going on in contemporary music during the last 20 years, and I’ll highlight some of the living composers I find most exciting, including Thomas Ades, Stephen Hartke, Judith Weir and David Lang.
An opera is not just a story told in music, but a musical composition. And composers use motifs (short themes or mini-themes), often associated with a character or an element of the story, as building blocks to erect an organic musical work. In this session we’ll look especially at Wagner’s “Die Walküre” and Puccini’s “Tosca,” as well as excerpts from Mozart, Verdi, Debussy and Britten.
You often read that classical music, alas, is dying. The field is certainly facing enormous challenges similar to the economic challenges facing many fields, including journalism. And the dearth of music education in most of America’s schools has had terrible consequences. But there are signs that the field of classical music is adapting and growing. Young artists, but also established orchestras, realize that classical music has to become more entrepreneurial. What are the signs of hope and the evidence of growth? We’ll discuss what institutions like the Metropolitan Opera and the New York Philharmonic are doing, and must do, to thrive. Finally, we’ll focus on the evolving role of the critic today.
Learn why China has gained an unfortunate reputation among foreign investors. Chinese companies steal technology that enables them to compete with the countries that developed the technology. Chinese companies lie to foreign investors and the Chinese government does not cooperate with the S.E.C. when it seeks to investigate the frauds. In other words, China is behaving pretty much the same as another developing economy — the United States — did in the 19th century.
After more than four years of crisis, much of the euro zone continues to struggle along. The decision of the European Central Bank to print all the money that was needed has reassured investors that no more countries will default on their debts. But we’ll discuss why it is far from clear that Europe has anything approaching a recovery plan that can work if countries remain in the euro zone.
Both American political parties say they want tax reform, and they even claim to agree on the overall picture: lower rates and fewer loopholes and deductions. But chances for agreement do not look good. We’ll look at how high taxes really are, who pays them and which deductions would have to go if such tax reform really arrived.
Regulators in Europe and the United States were not even close to being up to the task of overseeing large banks before the recent financial meltdown. Now they have new rules and new plans — and even bigger banks to try to regulate. We’ ll look at the prospects of success this time.
Con artists are a staple of popular culture. From “The Sting” to “Oceans 11” to “The Producers,” Hollywood films love a well-dressed, smooth-talking grifter on the make. The result is a public image of con men that is amusing, clever — and almost entirely wrong. Learn the truth about the con men of the past and pick up some tips on protecting yourself from the Ponzi schemers of the future with this look at the criminals who seem “too good to be true.”
One of the most durable impressions of the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, the worst since the Great Depression, is that “no one has gone to jail for it.” That conclusion is both true and false — and the devil is in the details. What do the statistics actually show about criminal prosecutions in post-crisis cases? What kinds of people have been prosecuted? What more could be done? Learn why accountability is the name of the game, but it’s not always an easy game to win.
It was a brilliant concept: A government agency that could police Wall Street without stifling its growth. In 1933, Congress created the Securities and Exchange Commission to be that agency. We’ll discuss the successes and failures of the SEC. The good news is that it worked much better than the crazy quilt of state regulation it replaced, and much better than heavier-handed regimes in other countries. The bad news? Well, there’s quite a bit of it, but a bit of hope, too.
He pulled off the largest Ponzi scheme in history. His arrest in December 2008 erased almost $65 billion in wealth his investors believed they had — wealth he had “created” out of thin air. His victims number in the tens of thousands, and hail from Palm Beach to the Persian Gulf. Learn who the real Bernie Madoff is, what motivated his crime, and what it cost him and his victims. In the process, you’ll enter the mind of history’s most notorious Ponzi schemer, which will change the way you look at this historic crime.
The year started with the identification of genes involved in hearing loss, then with the discovery that red snapper served in popular restaurants wasn’t actually red snapper, and continued with the finding that genetic analyses can be important in the preservation of Asian leopards and tigers. We’ll review the exciting advances of the year so far, showing how DNA information, which has become available more quickly and cheaply than ever, has been used lately for a better understanding of nature.
Here are the slides (10mb file).
What used to be science fiction is now science fact: You can fit your entire DNA sequence on a computer flash drive. Now, what to do with the information contained in these billions of “letters”? Learn how and why this technology was developed, the surprising knowledge that the human genome has revealed, and how you can use the information not just to make decisions about health, but to find out more about yourself.
Here are the slides (11mb file).
Europeans ban them. Americans are concerned. Farmers have benefitted from them with greater production of crops. Environmentalists are split: Some worry about genetic contamination and super-weeds, while others acknowledge the benefits of tailoring a food crop to the environment instead of vice-versa. This session will give you a taste of the scientific recipes for genetically modified foods and why they are so controversial.
Here are the slides (7mb file).
In the Western world, one person in three gets malignant cancer at some point. Until now, progress in the war on cancer has been slow and steady. But lately, spectacular revelations of the reality deep inside cancer cells hold promise for rapid improvements in diagnosis, treatment, screening and prevention. As a laboratory researcher and teacher on cancer for the general public, I’ll review the science behind what is already a revolution in understanding and may soon become a revolution in treatment.
Here are the slides (11mb file).
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