“All truly great thoughts are conceived while walking.” – Friedrich Nietzsche
Join us for a monthly TED talk viewing and discussion program! We’ll watch a TED talk for 20 minutes, discuss for 20 minutes indoors, and then, weather permitting, take a 30 minute *optional* walk to continue the discussion! Come for all or some of this program. If you just want to walk, please contact Courtney (508-358-2311) and then join us about 10:40.
In November we’ll watch What happened when we paired up thousands of strangers to talk politics, a talk by Jochen Wegner.
In Spring 2019, more than 17,000 Europeans from 33 countries signed up to have a political argument with a complete stranger. They were part of “Europe Talks,” a project that organizes one-on-one conversations between people who disagree — sort of like a Tinder for politics. Editor Jochen Wegner shares the unexpected things that happened when people met up to talk — and shows how face-to-face discussions could get a divided world to rethink itself.
Jochen Wegner never thought he could make a living out of writing, yet ultimately he found himself editing Zeit Online, one of Germany’s major media websites. With a team of 150, Zeit Online delivers around-the-clock information about breaking and developing stories, distinguished by deep reporting and data visualizations. Zeit also hosts a number of Germany’s most popular podcasts.
By taking journalism beyond reporting and into the realm of real-time discussion, Wegner is creating tools that could change the political climate by encouraging wide varieties of people to engage in public discourse. His “My Country Talks” platform organizes personal, one-on-one conversations between people from all over the ideological map, inviting them to find common ground between viewpoints that are at first seemingly irreconcilable.