Author: Kunal Jasty

Podcast • June 18, 2014

Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue

In advance of our show with the jazz pianist Vijay Iyer this Thursday, we dug through our old Connection archives and found this wonderful conversation about Miles Davis’ “Kind of Blue” recorded in 2000. From a humble birth in 1959 as forty-five minutes of improvised music recorded in two sessions, “Kind Of Blue” has become the best-selling classical jazz record of all-time.


In advance of our show with the jazz pianist Vijay Iyer this Thursday, we dug through our old Connection archives and found this wonderful conversation about Miles Davis from 2000.

In the Church of Jazz, Miles Davis’ album “Kind of Blue” is a holy icon. From a humble birth in 1959 as forty-five minutes of improvised music recorded in two sessions, “Kind Of Blue” has become the best-selling classical jazz record of all-time. Rock stars cite it as a clear influence. Aspiring musicians say it got them hooked on jazz. Aficionados insist it explains jazz. In 1959, Miles Davis was already the innovator who introduced Hard Bop and Cool to jazz.

He wanted his sextet for “Kind of Blue” to be a laboratory for a new experimental style he called “modal jazz” which would free the soloist forever from the old rules and structures of music. Add to that a Dream Team of talent separated by two degrees from every great jazz record ever and “Kind of Blue” became an album that almost transcended music.

Guest List

Podcast • June 12, 2014

Evan Osnos on China’s “Age of Ambition”

On the verge of my own first plunge into China, I’m in conversation with Evan Osnos of The New Yorker. He’s been eight years in the new China, reenacting the role of the foreign correspondent on the grand scale: covering an impossibly big story of politics and culture, police stories and natural disasters, with bold strokes and a novelist’s eye.

 

On the verge of my own first plunge into China, I’m in conversation with Evan Osnos of The New Yorker.  He’s been eight years in the new China, reenacting the role of the foreign correspondent on the grand scale: covering an impossibly big story of politics and culture, police stories and natural disasters, with bold strokes and a novelist’s eye.  

Age of Ambition is the title of a fine hard-cover condensation of what he sees going on in China.  It’s something new in the world – not least as a very long running and high-functioning dictatorship.  But another big pattern he began to see was a mirror of a boom era in American history, the first Gilded Age of expansion building railroads and everything else in the late 19th C.

Podcast • June 5, 2014

How Would Burke Makeover the GOP?

Next time on Open Source, the conservative hero Edmund Burke, the 18th-century British statesman who befriended the American Revolution, hated the French version, loved liberty and hated violence, and believed that empires like his and ours must answer to the whole world. Move over, Bush and Boehner. What if Edmund Burke were leading our Republicans in 2014?

Edmund-Burke-portrait-006

Guest List

David Bromwich introduces us to the conservative hero Edmund Burke, the 18th-century British statesman who befriended the American Revolution, hated the French version, loved liberty and hated violence, and believed that empires like his and ours must answer to the whole world. Move over, Bush and Boehner. What if Edmund Burke were leading our Republicans in 2014?

Ever wondered how the political map of the United States has changed over the past 225 years. Here’s an interactive map showing the liberal-conservative spectrum of the first 112 Congresses.

 

Reading List 

• Adam Gopnik offers a smart survey of the many Burkes in The New Yorker (paywall);

• Robert Kagan, “Superpowers Don’t Get to Retire”, from Foreign Policy, to be read against Professor Bromwich’s excellent essay, “Moral Imagination.”

• Yuval Levin, presented as a Burkean intellectual historian and the new Irving Kristol;

• Mike Lind on the coming realignment of the political tendencies in America, breaking along more traditional conservative lines.

Podcast • May 29, 2014

Rosamund Bartlett: Chekhov as a Modern

Speaking of the Russian playwright and short-story master, Rosamund Bartlett is a Chekhovian to the core, a translator of his stories and biographer of his life. We talked about what Chekhov's biography explains about him: the perfect esteem among his countrymen, specially writers; his generosity and decency as a person; his interest in truth beyond ideas, which he didn’t entirely trust.

Speaking of the Russian playwright and short-story master, Rosamund Bartlett is a Chekhovian to the core, a translator of his stories and biographer of his life. We talked about what Chekhov’s biography explains about him: the perfect esteem among his countrymen, specially writers; his generosity and decency as a person; his interest in truth beyond ideas, which he didn’t entirely trust. Ms. Bartlett said his “extraordinary compassion and insight into human behavior” – a lot of it – came from his training as a physician, which none of the other authors had. She described Chekhov as the most contemporary of the great Russian writers, “a Modernist with a capital M.”

“I’ve just come to the end of translating Anna Karenina and writing a biographer of Tolstoy. My relationship with Tolstoy has been very different than with Chekhov. My relationship with Tolstoy has been quite tough; I’ve been fighting with him, battling with him. He’s a very hard character, and there’s no room for me in the relationship. Whereas with Chekhov, even though he’s dead and I’m not engaging with a living person, it’s always a playful relationship, and I’m always discovering new things about him. I’m always reading him in a different way… his incredible compassion, tenderness, and understanding of ordinary people.”

Rosamund Bartlett in conversation with Christopher Lydon

May 29, 2014

Reading Chekhov

Our “Reading Chekhov” series culminates in a full hour on the Russian physician who spun the small happenings of old Russia into some of the most popular plays in the world and into stories that stay with us and feel new. We're talking through the dreams, the heartbreak, and the truth of the writers’ writer.
Reading Chekhov IV: "The Student"
Reading Chekhov V: "The Teacher of Literature"
From Andre to Anton: The Writer's Writer
Chekhov's World, In Pictures

chekhov

Our “Reading Chekhov” series culminates in a full hour on the Russian physician who spun the small happenings of old Russia into some of the most popular plays in the world and into stories that stay with us and feel new. Andre Dubus III, Maxim D. Shrayer and Rosamund Bartlett are taking us through the dreams, the heartbreak, and the truth of the writers’ writer.

Chekhov’s phrases, scenes and lines keep expanding when they’re spoken aloud. He has the further peculiar effect of inviting digressions as we go – conversations and asides about all manner of things, philosophical and emotional, and not at all specially Russian. For our podcast project “Reading Chekhov,” we’ve assembled actors and storytellers to bring these Russian classics to life.

Guest List

"The Cherry Orchard" performed for the first time at the Moscow Art Theatre, January 17, 1904

“The Cherry Orchard” performed first at the Moscow Art Theatre, January 17, 1904

More Reading

  • Ben Greenman’s provocative, funny ‘translation’ of Chekhov’s stories into the language and world of contemporary celebrity, called Celebrity Chekhov;
  • An interview with Rosamund Bartlett in Passport magazine on her biography of the man himself — she calls Chekhov “one of the few people you end up admiring more rather than less having probed the details of his life”;
  • Maxim Shrayer discusses Nabokov and Chekhov with Five Books:

Nabokov’s stories go back to Chekhov and Bunin and the great Russian love story, in which desire and memories interact, mostly in unhappy ways for the characters, but happily for the reader.

I think that in Anton Chekhov’s presence every one involuntarily felt in himself a desire to be simpler, more truthful, more one’s self…

May 17, 2014

Where Does All That Money Go?

College tuition is rising faster than medical costs, inflation, and certainly the income of 99% of Americans. Four years at a private university now costs as much as a new Ferrari, and a student at a public university can expect to graduate $25,000 in debt. But does anyone know where all that money is going?

By Kunal Jasty

College tuition is rising faster than medical costs, inflation, and certainly the income of 99% of Americans. Four years at a private university now costs as much as a new Ferrari, and a student at a public university can expect to graduate $25,000 in debt. But does anyone know where colleges are spending all their money?

Glossary

Academic Support – Academic administrators, academic deans, libraries.

Instruction – “General academic instruction, occupational and vocational instruction, community education, preparatory and adult basic education, and regular, special, and extension sessions.”

Research – Funding for research institutes, laboratories, and individual research.

Public Service – “Activities established primarily to provide noninstructional services beneficial to individuals and groups external to the institution. Examples are conferences, institutes, general advisory service, reference bureaus.”

Student Services – Admissions, registrars, student activities and organizations, student counseling.

Institutional Support – General administration and management, legal operations, fiscal operations, logistical expenses, public relations.

Operations and Maintenance – Utilities, insurance, maintaining campus buildings and grounds.

Depreciation – Losses in capital assets per year.

Scholarships and Fellowships – Grants, stipends, awards.

Auxiliary Enterprises Expenses – Residence halls, dining services, student health services, athletics, faculty housing.

Hospital Services – All expenses at a university affiliated hospital.

Independent Operations – Expenses “unrelated to the primary missions of the institution (i.e., instruction, research, public service) although they may contribute indirectly to the enhancement of these programs.”

Other expenses – “The amount of money (estimated by the financial aid office) needed by a student to cover expenses such as laundry, transportation, and entertainment.”

Net grant aid to students – The difference in the money a school receives in tuition, fees, room and board, and the amount of scholarships and fellowships it awards.

Source: National Center for Education Statistics IPEDS glossary. Data from NCES.

Podcast • May 15, 2014

Chris Cooper & Marianne Leone: Becoming Actors

For the perspective of experience and solid accomplishment, we're asking two pro’s in the middle of enviable careers what they learned in and out of school, where they’d be looking for training, how much they’d pay, if they were starting out again. Chris Cooper is a Hollywood hero in supporting roles. He won an Academy Award for one of them, in Spike Jonze’s Adaptation. His wife Marianne Leone played the gangster mama Joanne Moltisanti in The Sopranos on HBO.

We’re digressing here from our ongoing conversations about higher education in general, and arts education in particular. For the perspective of experience and solid accomplishment, we’re asking two acting professionals in the middle of enviable careers what they learned in and out of school, where they’d be looking for training, how much they’d pay, if they were starting out again. Chris Cooper is a Hollywood hero, often in deep supporting roles. He won an Academy Award for one of them, in Spike Jonze’s Adaptation. His wife Marianne Leone played the gangster mama Joanne Moltisanti in The Sopranos on HBO.

May 12, 2014

Dealing in Dreams

We're drilling down on the essential question around the higher ed challenge - namely why does it cost so much, and it is it worth it in the end? Here are 1500 American colleges and universities plotted by their 4-year sticker price on the x-axis and 30-year net return on investment (based on the median salary of graduates) on the y-axis.

It just seems absurd, to pay 60 grand a year so that you can read Rousseau. I mean I can read Rousseau right here. Hell, I can hire sometime to read it to me, teach me French, and then read it to me in French for that kind of money. It’s absolutely nuts!

By Kunal Jasty

We’re drilling down on the essential question around the higher ed challenge – namely why does it cost so much, and it is it worth it in the end?

Here are 1500 American colleges and universities plotted by their 4-year sticker price on the x-axis and 30-year net return on investment (based on the median salary of graduates) on the y-axis. All data is taken from Payscale’s annual report on the earnings of college graduates. Look to the top right of the graph for high-price schools with high future salaries, the bottom right for high-priced schools with low future salaries, and the top left for (relatively) affordable schools with high future salaries.

Notes:

  • Payscale has a great explanation of their methodology on their website.
  • The dataset is by no means perfect, but I believe it is accurate enough for illustrative purposes.
  • We’re not taking into account the net price of colleges (i.e. financial aid and grant aid).
  • Future earnings by no means the only way to judge a college or the “college experience.” It’s hard to put a price on the value of a college education, but I believe the average earnings of graduates is an extremely important data point.
  • Thank you to nsonnad for providing invaluable code examples.

May 8, 2014

Who Needs College Anyway?

On the way to commencement season, what’s college really good for, if the cost is out of sight, and your degree doesn’t point you to a job; if there’s too much drinking, cheating and grade inflation; if it’s not safe enough for women; what if the whole bloated model is outdated in a digital age? Who’s got a better idea? Schools are almost out, but will they still be there in September?
Higher Ed By The Numbers
Thomas Frank: The Higher-Ed. Dream Factory

Guest List

• Liz McMillen, editor of the Chronicle of Higher Education

• Joseph Moore, president of Lesley University

• Siva Vaidhyanathan, professor at the University of Virginia and cultural historian

• Thomas Frank, founding editor of The Baffler.

On the way to commencement season, what’s college really good for, if the cost is out of sight, and your degree doesn’t point you to a job; if there’s too much drinking, cheating and grade inflation; if it’s not safe enough for women. What if the whole bloated model is outdated in a digital age? Who’s got a better idea? Schools are almost out; will they still be there in September?

Reading List

• In a New York Times blog, Suzanne Mettler argues that college is not leveling the playing field, it’s doing the opposite;

• Thomas Frank’s essay from The Baffler, “Academy Fight Song;”

• Siva’s blog post, “Going Public the UVa Way;”

…We must stop using business language to describe universities. It’s not only misguided and inaccurate, but it also sets up bad incentives and standards. The University of Virginia is a wealthy and stable institution, a collection of public services, a space for thought and research, a living museum, a public forum, a stage for athletics competition, and an incubator of dreams and careers. But it’s not a firm, so it’s certainly not a “brand.”

…and the case he makes in Bookforum for “academic calling in a neoliberal age”;

• Clay Shirky on the coming money crunch in higher ed;

The number of high-school graduates underserved or unserved by higher education today dwarfs the number of people for whom that system works well. The reason to bet on the spread of large-scale low-cost education isn’t the increased supply of new technologies. It’s the massive demand for education, which our existing institutions are increasingly unable to handle. That demand will go somewhere.

• We’re also reading two public worries about the university from two different sides of the conversation. The first is Noam Chomsky’s recent talk, “The Death of American Universities,” published at Jacobin. Chomsky sees universities caught in a corporate drift; he wants us to double back in search of the old Enlightenment idea of  learning. Education’s not filling a vessel, but

…laying out a string along which the student progresses in his or her own way under his or her own initiative, maybe moving the string, maybe deciding to go somewhere else, maybe raising questions. Laying out the string means imposing some degree of structure… But the goal of it is for the student to acquire the capacity to inquire, to create, to innovate, to challenge—that’s education.

• David Brooks wrote about Isaiah Berlin and Anna Akhmatova meeting in Berlin in his column “Love Story.” Two thinkers meet, turn over the canons in their heads and recognize each other. The story ends with Berlin collapsing, lovestruck, on his bed back at home.

I’m old enough to remember when many people committed themselves to this sort of life and dreamed of this sort of communion — the whole Great Books/Big Ideas thing. I am not sure how many people believe in or aspire to this sort of a life today. I’m not sure how many schools prepare students for this kind of love.

Does this sound nostalgic, or are minds meeting in this way on American campuses? What do you think? Leave a comment or send us a message.

Podcast • April 29, 2014

A Piketty Primer: “Capital” in 10 Graphs

In the Piketty surge to the top of the best-seller list, there's a misleading polemic evolving (and not from people who have read the book, it turns out): it's been attacked on the right as a new call for communism and heralded on the left as proof that capitalism simply doesn't work. Here's my take on Piketty's arguments, in 10 figures from the book.

By Kunal Jasty

In the Piketty surge to the top of the best-seller list, there’s a misleading polemic evolving (and not from people who have read the book, it turns out):  it’s been attacked on the right as a new call for communism and heralded on the left as proof that capitalism simply doesn’t work. Here’s my take on Piketty’s arguments, in 10 figures from the book. 

1. A person’s income in the United States is comprised of labor income and capital income. Let’s look at labor income first. The top 10% of American earners currently receive 35% of all wages (labor income), while the top 1% receive 12%. Europe, and especially the Scandinavian countries, has far lower levels of labor income inequality.

DIVA

 2. But both Europe and the United States have high levels of capital inequality, with the top 10% owning 60% of all capital in Europe and 70% of all capital in the United States. We’re not yet at European turn of the century levels, though, when the top 10% owned 90% of all capital, but we’re certainly heading in that direction.

DIVB

3. When we combine labor income and income from capital, we get total income. 50% of total income goes to the top 10% in the United States, while 20% goes to the top 1%. In 2030, Piketty predicts that 60% of all income will go to the top 10% of Americans.

DIVC

4.  In the United States, the top 1% are doing well because of extraordinarily high wages, which leads to rapid capital accumulation. Piketty calls these high-earners “supermanagers,” the financial and non-financial executives who set their own salaries.

Screen Shot 2014-04-29 at 10.46.24 AM

5. Taxes, combined with huge capital losses in WWI and WWII, resulted in a rate of return to capital (r) lower than the global growth of GDP (g) during the last century. Because r < g, income inequality decreased during the postwar period and stayed flat until 1980.

Screen Shot 2014-04-29 at 10.51.31 AM

6. But global economic growth is largely an effect of population growth, which can’t continue at current rates. If today’s growth rate continued at 1.1% per year, the world’s population would be over 26 billion by the year 2100.

Graph 5

7. And top marginal tax rates are still low, especially in the United States.

Income tax rates

8. With r < g, income inequality dropped dramatically in the United States during the postwar period. Now that r > g,  income inequality is on the rise once again.

Graph 1

9. So is the world capital/income ratio

Screen Shot 2014-04-29 at 10.59.37 AM

10. And who benefits most from capital income (in other terms, who receives the majority of their income from capital income rather than labor income)? Not the top 10% or 5%, but the top .1%!

l vs c2