Think Again

How does creativity work? How do you get more of it in your life? Check out the links below and leave a comment with your thoughts or any additional resources you want to pass along to help frame our dialogue on the 2nd. Julia Cameron's website about discovering your creative self. Elizabeth Gilbert's 20-minute talk on nurturing creativity. Amy Tan's 20-minute talk on creativity: something out of nothing.

Topic Host: Carri Hulet Societal well-being can be measured in a number of ways. One measure is "physical capital," or the value of all the material goods in circulation. Another is "human capital," the aggregate value of the education and skills that members of the society possess. For Tuesday's discussion, we are interested in the value of "social capital," or the value of social networks (i.e. who you know and spend time with). In society, if a lot of people know and spend time with a lot of people, social capital is high. If the reverse is true, social capital is low. The value of these networks is often judged by how diverse the network (see the New Yorker cartoon above for a little tongue-in-cheek criticism of that notion). Research shows that social capital has dramatically decreased in the United States since the mid-1960s and there is strong evidence that this loss of social capital has surprisingly far-reaching negative effects on our health,...