Shared by JohnH
Two C-Span videos from 2007 just popped up. I haven’t seen either of them! I don’t seem to be able to embed the video. I’ll also look for audio downloads and post the links if I find them.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb talked about his book The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, published by Random House. In his book Mr. Taleb argues that people are too focused on what they already understand and reluctant to engage in what they don’t know. He described improbable events that have had a great effect on the world, from the September 11 terrorist attacks to the creation and success of Google. He contended that these “black swans” challenge our concept of randomness and the unknown. The guest interviewer was David Brooks.

Nassim Taleb is a former Sciences of Uncertainty professor at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He is the author of Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in the Markets and in Life.

David Brooks is a columnist at the New York Times. He has been a contributing editor at Newsweek and the Atlantic Monthly as well as a senior editor at The Weekly Standard. Mr. Brooks is the author of two books, Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There and On Paradise Drive: How We Live Now (and Always Have) in the Future Tense.