I’ve been swimming in some murky waters lately (and that doesn’t include the Gulf of Mexico). While conducting research on plastic pollution over the past year, I’ve been inundated with images and information about the impact of plastic on our oceans, our environment, and our health. Many of these images have literally made me sick. Those emotional responses have been driving my artistic and intellectual engagement with the topic.

Our third and final installment of the Stepen Duncombe interview begins with the way those on the Left and Right (with all caveats about generalizations acknowledged) think about and use power and persuasion.

Since our first installment of interview highlights with Stephen Duncombe, there's been a big announcement concerning our interviewee. It seems that Steve will be leaving NYU to take become co-director of the the Comparative Media Studies program at MIT (the chair formerly held by Henry Jenkins). Congrats to Steve on this very prestigious post, and congrats to MIT for having the courage and foresight to grab one of the freshest thinkers (and doers!) out there.

The "Manoa School of Futures Studies," led by Jim Dator at the University of Hawaii, has been training students (including me) in the theories and methods of futures studies for almost 40 years.

As part of our Future of Persuasion research, we are conducting interviews with scholars, activists, technologists, and other experts who have been thinking deeply about influencing human behavior. This week, I had the privilege of talking with NYU media, culture and politics professor Stephen Dreampolitik Duncombe.

A recent survey by the University of Texas/Texas Tribune showed that 30% of Texans believed that humans and dinosaurs lived together at the same time--and not over 60 million years apart as all our current science indicates.

On January 18-20, 2010 Alvaro Fernandez and his team at SharpBrains put together a splendid line-up of speakers on a wide range of topics related to emerging brain fitness research, technologies, and markets, and clinical cognitive and mental health issues. IFTF was proud to be a sponsor of this event.

The recent Supreme Court decision in Citizens United vs. FEC has received more attention and soul-searching commentary about the nature of our democracy and the role of corporate spending in the political system than any other case in recent memory. This decision is big for many reasons, but what will it mean for how political influence and persuasion is practiced?

There has been a long history of critique of undue influence of money--rising to the level of out-and-out bribery--in American political history.