In this 5-minute read for Fast Company, Prof. Kieran Setiya discusses the common “sense of repetition and futility” that comes in middle age. “We should not give up on our worthwhile goals,” writes Setiya. “But we should meditate, too, on the value of the process. It is no accident that the young and the old are generally more satisfied with life than those in middle age.”
Forbes Contributor Steve Banker highlights Prof. Yossi Sheffi’s new book, Balancing Green, which focuses on sustainability in business. As Sheffi explains, “many companies engage in sustainability initiatives to prevent them from having to react to a rising tide of sentiment,” writes Banker. “Getting ahead of these kinds of campaigns can be at the heart of a robust risk management program.”
DUSP Prof. Anne Whiston Spirn and Prof. Neri Oxman of the Media Lab were among the ten winners of this year’s Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum awards, “also known as the Oscars of the design world,” writes Aileen Kwun for Co.Design. Spirn received the “Design Mind” honor, while Oxman was selected for “Interaction Design.”
The Economist explores the basics of free trade, its benefits and downsides, with Prof. John Van Reenen. “With free trade, you come into more contact with foreign companies, new ideas, new people and so on,” explains Van Reenen. “That’s mutually beneficial. And it is a political force for cooperation.”
In a Q&A with The Boston Globe’s Sarah Shemkus, Prof. Yossi Sheffi discusses his new book, Balancing Green, which examines “the challenges and benefits of ‘going green’ in a multilayered global economy.” Sheffi suggests green practices can be advantageous for companies because “certain things also cut costs and increase profit, like energy savings.”
Assistant Prof. Lydia Bourouiba is highlighted in a documentary series that aims to inspire future generations of women in STEM. Producer Emily Driscoll writes in Scientific American that Bourouiba’s work studying droplets from sneezes and toilet flushes “could mean new designs for hospitals and our understanding of disease transmission.”
Prof. Parag Pathak, winner of the John Bates Clark Medal, speaks to The Wall Street Journal’s Michelle Hackman about his research on school choice. “What I sometimes find frustrating in conversations about student achievement is they often get sidetracked from the issue of school quality,” Pathak says. “Our job as researchers is exploring the nuances and subtleties.”
60 Minutes correspondent Bill Whitaker sits down with Prof. Feng Zhang, “a scientist at the center of the CRISPR craze,” to help explain how the gene-editing tool works and its potential. “There are about 6,000 or more diseases that are caused by faulty genes,” says Zhang. “The hope is that we will be able to address most if not all of them.”
Former MIT Visiting Artist Pedro Reyes returns to the Institute with the premiere of his latest puppet play, “Manufacturing Mischief,” writes Jeremy Goodwin of The Boston Globe. Partially based on the writings of Prof. Emeritus Noam Chomsky, and featuring puppets of famous figures like Chomsky, Steve Jobs and Elon Musk, the play is “about staging a conflict between opposing worldviews and opposing ideologies,” says Reyes.
Davide Castelvecchi of Nature explores the “ambitious scientific quarry” that gravitational-wave scientists are after, including what happened in the first few moments after the Big Bang. Castelvecchi, who speaks with MIT physicist Rainer Weiss for this piece, notes that the field has already “delivered discoveries at a staggering rate, outpacing even the rosiest expectations.”
60 Minutes previews an upcoming episode where Scott Pelley visits the MIT Media Lab “and finds a crystal ball full of technologies that may someday become a part of our everyday lives.” Pelley highlights the history of the lab, started in 1985, and showcases some of the new projects being developed there.
Prof. Duane Boning, faculty co-director of MIT’s Leaders for Global Operations (LGO) program, talks to Forbes contributor Jim Lawton about preparing future leaders and workplace learning in the digital age. “The LGO model,” says Boning, “gives students a different way of thinking about their roles.”
Andrea Shea of WBUR writes about the life of retired senior lecturer and conductor John Oliver, who died on April 11. Oliver influenced “many music-making communities in Boston, Cambridge and beyond,” writes Shea.
Prof. Tod Machover speaks with Mary Louis Kelly and Audie Cornish of NPR’s All Things Considered about capturing the everyday sounds featured in his latest symphony, “Philadelphia Voices.” When recording the Commonwealth Youth Choir, for example, Machover explains that he “asked them to each sing the word Philadelphia in a way that showed something about how they felt about Philadelphia and also something about themselves.”
Prof. Tod Machover details his experience creating “Philadelphia Voices,” which is “the latest in a series of Machover symphonies inspired by cities,” writes Michael Cooper for The New York Times. “To help organize his library of Philadelphia sounds he used software developed at M.I.T. called Constellation, which can analyze hundreds of sound files by volume, frequency and shape, then visually display them.”