Earlier this week, news came out that a group of U.S. students had won the 2016 International Math Olympiad. As the Washington Post noted, such news is surprising, particularly since the U.S. team was the reigning champion from 2015, a title they finally snagged after losing for 21 years. I was encouraged reading about the
READ MOREWith threats both without and within, some have surmised that the West is on the cusp of a new Dark Age. We at Intellectual Takeout have wondered the same thing ourselves. Traditionally, the term “Dark Age” has been assigned to the period that followed the Fall of the Roman Empire in the fifth century. It
READ MORECBS News recently ran a brief segment featuring Ken Ludwig, a playwright and author of How to Teach Your Children Shakespeare. During the course of the interview, Ludwig explained that his purpose in writing the book was not only to get kids reading Shakespeare, but also to fill in the Shakespearean holes of the parents
READ MOREGaius Plinius Secundus (more commonly known simply as Pliny or Pliny the elder) was a Roman naturalist and physician who lived during the dawn of the Roman Empire. Pliny was born in 23 A.D. in Lombardy, a province in Northern Italy, and spent many years in the Roman army as an officer. In his
READ MOREWith the increasing swirl of interest around mindfulness, resilience and innovation we can’t forget that there are many who have trodden this path before us with important lessons we can borrow. Stoicism is the branch of ancient western philosophy that focuses on mindfulness, resilience, creativity and more, all of which allows us to flourish and
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READ MOREMany in our audience express dismay about people not being able to discuss hot-button issues – politics, religion, race, sexuality – without it devolving into anger and name-calling. Why is it that people can’t have a disagreement without taking things so damn personally? Well, one obvious reason is human nature. Our positions on controversial topics
READ MORESurveying news headlines in recent years, it seems that cheating is rampant. In the athletic arena, Lance Armstrong was stripped of his seven Tour de France titles for using performance-enhancing drugs. In business, some of the world’s largest banks have paid nearly $200 billion – the equivalent of the GDP of New Zealand – in
READ MOREBy any objective standard, it would be difficult to claim that the Constitution really matters at any practical level in the United States. At a symbolic level, it still means a great deal. But, what a disconnect: that it matters so much in our minds and language but that it means nothing in our day-to-day
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