I don't deny the importance of genetics. However, the fact that I might be altruistic isn't because I have a gene for altruism; the fact that I do something for my children at some cost to myself comes from a history that has operated on me.
When reality television really hit, I just had a backlash towards reality. It seemed like a cheap way to make a product. And then when music reality and 'Idol hit,' I just didn't watch it, it seemed novelty. And of course the story of 'Idol,' this is...
It is true that as people, we tend to remember only the positive. With time, the grim details fade away, and as a species we survive on this notion. In our desire to gloss over the undeniable macabre parts of our American history, we forget. That amn...
I missed my entrance in a production of 'Blade to the Heat' at Thick Description in San Francisco. I came into the scene very late and hugged the punching bag. I had no idea what to do! Unfortunately, that mishap was recorded for archives at UC Berke...
'WASP' is the only ethnic term that is in fact a term of class, apart from redneck, which is another word for the same group but who are in the lower social strata, so it's inexplicably tied up with social standing and culture and history in a way th...
If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were precisely those who thought most of the next. It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in...
With science and reason throughout history, what people believed turned out to be false. So I like to keep an open mind to all perspectives and learn and become more fully realised as a person. I just feel we're never going to know what the full pict...
As an economic historian, I appreciate what manufacturing has contributed to the United States. It was the engine of growth that allowed us to win two world wars and provided millions of families with a ticket to the middle class. But public policy n...
I think Spain will always remain inspirational, and I think French cuisine will continue to be very French and yet very relevant with its time and keep evolving. But the last thing you want for it is to become too trendy and confusing. It has too muc...
No one believes more strongly than I do that every Christian should be a theologian. In that sense, we all need to work it out. I want all Christians who can read, to read their Bibles and to read beyond the Bible - to read the history and theology.
Let me tell you, never before in the history of this planet has anybody made the progress that African-Americans have made in a 30-year period, in spite of many black folks and white folks lying to one another.
As a historian, I love every little detail, but whole long passages about wood paneling and journeys on horseback and every stop at every inn had to go out the window. I decided the history in the books should be like spice in a soup - a little went ...
Humanity has experienced many revolutionary changes over the course of history: revolutions in agriculture, in science, industrial production, as well as numerous political revolutions. But these have all been limited to the external aspects of our i...
I can fairly be called an amateur because I do what I do, in the original sense of the word - for love, because I love it. On the other hand, I think that those of us who make our living writing history can also be called true professionals.
I absolutely fell in love with Moscow. It's one of those places where you can't help but trip over history at every turn. It's a city of enormous contradictions. Within a few yards of Lenin's Tomb is some of the most expensive shopping in the world.
We've been co-evolving with our technology for a hundred thousand years. Human beings and the technology we make were always inseparable. We're finally coming into this moment where it's coming inside our body for the first time in history.
When it went on the air, the sales department hated it. It was the highest advertising pullout show in the history of NBC. At the early focus groups, people were saying, 'Who are these people? Why should we watch them?
A society whose members are united by the fact that they think in the same way in regard to the sacred world and its relations with the profane world, and by the fact that they translate these common ideas into common practices, is what is called a C...
If you look at the history of how information flows, there was a time that newspapers were kind of in the place that Google and Facebook are now - how do we get more people to buy a copy? Then there was a shift in the early 20th century. They needed ...
I like dialogue in novels. I wanted to avoid laying history on with a trowel - appearing to be lecturing, as opposed to the characters lecturing their children or students. Dialogue can humanise the story and make it go down somewhat more smoothly.
Few writers in history have ever been 'politically correct' (a notion that rapidly changes in any case), and there's no reason to imagine that gay writers will ever suit their readers, especially since that readership is splintered into ghettos withi...
