in Conversation with Stewart Brand
February 21, 02017
After sitting at the feet of Martin Luther King at the University of Michigan in 1962, Larry Brilliant was swept up into the civil rights movement, marching and protesting across America and Europe. As a radical young doctor he followed the hippie trail from London over the Khyber Pass with his wife Girija, Wavy Gravy and the Hog Farm commune to India.
Then one of India’s greatest spiritual teachers, Neem Karoli Baba, told him his destiny was to work for the World Health Organization to help eradicate smallpox. He became a key player in eliminating that 10,000-year-old disease that killed half a billion people in the 20th century alone.
Larry and Stewart have a freewheeling conversation and bring the audience in as well, including Wavy Gravy and his wife Jahanara who are on the front row. A really special night where the past is present, and a reminder that we will all make the future.
From 01960s political protests to successfully eradicating smallpox, Brilliant recalls his long, strange trips around a changing world. His personal stories include icons of the last century from Steve Jobs to MLK to the Grateful Dead. Recollections of a visionary physician, technologist, and seeker, in conversation with Long Now's Stewart Brand with whom Dr. Brilliant founded The Well online community in 01985.
Upcoming Talks
Videos
Johanna Hoffman
Speculative Futures: Design Approaches to Foster Resilience and Co-create the Cities We Need
October 12, 02022
Creon Levit
Space Debris and The Kessler Syndrome: A Possible Future Trapped on Earth
April 26, 02022
Brittany Cox
Horological Heritage: Generating bird song, magic, and music through mechanism
August 20, 02019
Elizabeth Lonsdorf
Growing Up Ape: The Long-term Science of Studying Our Closest Living Relatives
April 30, 02019
James Holland Jones
The Science of Climate Fiction: Can Stories Lead to Social Action?
January 29, 02019
Kevin Kelly, Stewart Brand, Alexander Rose
Siberia: A Journey to the Mammoth Steppe
January 22, 02019
Caroline Winterer
The Art and Science of Deep Time:
Conceiving the Inconceivable in the 19th Century
September 4, 02018
Esther Dyson
The Short Now: What Addiction, Day Trading, and Most of Society’s Ills Have in Common
July 17, 02018
Hannu Rajaniemi
The Spirit Singularity: Science and the Afterlife at the Turn of the 20th Century
July 10, 02018
Shahzeen Attari
Facts, Feelings and Stories: How to Motivate Action on Climate Change
June 26, 02018
Renée DiResta
Disinformation Technology: How Online Propaganda Campaigns Are Influencing Us
April 10, 02018
Scott Kildall
Art Thinking + Technology: A Personal Journey of Expanding Space and Time
August 15, 02017
Miles Traer
The Geological Reveal: How the Rock Record Shows Our Relationship to the Natural World
June 27, 02017
Andrew Lakoff
How We Became “Unprepared”:
Imagining Catastrophe from the Cold War to Bird Flu
May 30, 02017
Jennifer Petersen
Why Freedom of Speech Is More Than Speech:
Expressions in Media and Code
April 18, 02017
Tara Behrend
The Psychology of Surveillance:
How Being Watched Changes Our Behavior
February 28, 02017
Ben Novak
The Next Flight of the Passenger Pigeon: Engineering Nature's Engineers
September 27, 02016
