To the Best of Our Knowledge: Cultural Commons

By: Jim Fleming

Narrated by: Jim Fleming

Length: 52 mins

Publisher's Summary

In this hour, Lewis Hyde, MacArthur Fellow, Creative Writing Professor and author of Common as Air: Revolution, Art and Ownership tells Steve Paulson that he is skeptical of the entertainment industry's insistence that intellectual property is just like physical property. He invokes the cultural commons – that vast store of art and ideas from the past that enrich everybody's present.

Then, Aram Sinnreich teaches journalism and media studies at Rutgers. He's also the author of Mashed Up: Music, Technology, and the Rise of Configurable Culture. He talks with Anne Strainchamps about what he means by configurable culture.

Next, Steven Johnson is the author of several books including Mind Wide Open and The Invention of Air. His new one is Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation. Johnson tells Jim Fleming how he uses the coral reef as a metaphor for a creative environment throughout the book.

And finally, Ricardo Pitts-Wiley is the co-founder of the Mixed Magic Theatre Company. He also contributed to an essay by Henry Jenkins called "Multiculturalism, Appropriation, and the New Media Literacies: Remixing Moby Dick." The essay appears in a book called Mashup Cultures by Stefan Sonvilla-Weiss and focuses on the contemporary re-staging of Melville's classic novel. Ricardo Pitts-Wiley tells Anne Strainchamps about his project and how it emerged from work he did with incarcerated youth at the Rhode Island Training Facility. [Broadcast Date: September 29, 2011]

Want more To The Best of Our Knowledge?

Subscribe for one month or 12 months.

Get the latest issue.

Check out the complete archive.

(P) and ©2011 Wisconsin Public Radio