70. Margaret Atwood (Author) - The Good, The Bad, and The Stupid

Think Again - a Big Think Podcast

Big Think / Panoply

Arts, Society & Culture

4.6 • 594 Ratings

🗓️ 29 October 2016

⏱️ 42 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Since 2008, Big Think has been sharing big ideas from creative and curious minds. The Think Again podcast takes us out of our comfort zone, surprising our guests and Jason Gots, your host, with unexpected conversation starters from Big Think’s interview archives. Today's guest is novelist, essayist, poet, and as of late, comic-book writer Margaret Atwood. She’s also got some really funny mini-comics about bad interviews, so Jason tries extra-hard to bring his a-game here. She’s the Booker prize winning author of The Blind Assassin, Oryx & Crake, The Handmaid’s Tale, and around 40 other beloved books. Her latest, Hag-Seed, is a total and delightfully wicked reimagining of Shakespeare’s The Tempest. In this episode Margaret talks with Jason about genomes in the cloud, Bob Dylan's Nobel prize, the elusiveness of dead authors, and why technology's a three-edged sword. Surprise conversation starter interview clips in this episode: Michael Schatz on storing our genomes in the cloud, Alison Gopnik on Narcissism Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi there, I'm Jason Gots and you're listening to Think Again a Big Think podcast.
0:09.0	Since the early days of the public internet, Big Think has curated more than 10,000 surprising, brain bending, significant ideas
0:17.0	and shared them through video, text, and social media.
0:21.6	The Think Again podcast remixes this formula, surprising me and my guests with conversation
0:26.7	topics we didn't necessarily come here prepared to discuss.
0:31.0	Today I am about to die of literary fan-nerddom because I'm sitting here with novelist,
0:36.3	essayist, poet, and as of late,
0:39.3	no, not as of late, for many years, apparently, comic book writer, but only recently with an illustrator
0:44.4	other than herself, Margaret Atwood. She's also got some really funny mini-comics on her website
0:50.5	about bad interviews, so I'm hoping to not to be the subject of one of those
0:55.8	in the future.
0:56.7	She's the Booker Prize winning author
0:58.2	of The Blind Assassin, Oryx and Crake, The Handmaid's
1:01.5	Tale, and about 40 other beloved books.
1:04.8	Her latest hag seed is a complete reimagining
1:08.1	of Shakespeare's The Tempest.
1:09.9	Welcome to think again, Margaret.
1:11.6	Thank you.
1:12.6	So Bob Dylan, Nobel laureate, what do you think of that?
1:16.6	Should it have been Leonard Cohen?
1:18.6	Should it have been a writer of books?
1:21.6	Well, I think right now at this moment in time,
	...

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