Who am I? What is the meaning of my life? Humans have been asking these questions from time immemorial. Every generation needs a new answer, because what we know and what we don't know keeps changing. Given everything we know and don't know about science, about God, about politics, and about religion, what is the best answer we can give today. These topics will be explored among many other topics we will discuss  in this SDG.

This SDG will use Yuval Noah Harari's  "21 Lessons for the 21st Century" as our core book. In Sapiens, Yuval Noah Harari explored our past; in Homo Deus he speculated about our future. Now, the bestselling author and one of the most innovative thinkers on the international stage turns to the present, helping us make sense of the most pressing issues facing humankind today.

Religion, terrorism, war, politics, fake news, human migration, the environment, nationalism are topics that will be discussed in this SDG. 21 Lessons for the 21st Century is a probing investigation into the big subjects that we are confronting on a daily basis in the media and in our lives, and the issues of crucial importance to understand as we move into the uncharted territory of the future. As technology advances faster than our understanding of it, hacking becomes a tactic of war, terrorism and fundamentalism rise, and the world feels more polarized than ever. Harari makes sense of it all and raises the important questions we need to ask ourselves if we are to survive. In 21 Lessons for the 21st Century the questions Harari raises are both provocative and profound. Harari provides advice on how to think about these topics and how to act in order to prepare for a future unlike anything we can dream of. This SDG course should be of interest to all PLATO members interested in how to navigate the world they live in today.

We consider four American masters of the short story: Lucia Berlin (1936 - 2004), Mary Gaitskill (1954 - ), Denis Johnson (1949 - 2017), and Tobias Wolff (1945 - ). Their work has gained widespread acclaim. The movie This Boy's Life was adapted from a book by Wolff; it starred Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert De Niro, and Ellen Barkin. The 2002 film Secretary, featuring Maggie Gyllenhaal and James Spader, was inspired by one of Gaitskill's stories. 

Stylistic mastery—the graceful velocity—characteristic of great short fiction that goes deeper than fashion is one focus of our SDG. Just as important as technique, however, is attention to thematic motifs. Sexuality, substance abuse, and day-to-day futility are at the core of the writing of Berlin and Johnson, not to mention Gaitskill. With an acute sensitivity to moral dilemmas posed by impassioned betrayal and conflicting loyalties, Wolff is not far behind. To paraphrase the indelicate Emily Dickinson, this is the stuff that breaks your heart and blows your head off. 

Besides an emphasis on style and substance, a third goal of this SDG is to familiarize members of PLATO with "the unusual suspects"—with world-class literature that should be better known.

This SDG was approved and presented as a 14week experience in Fall 2019. At the request of many Plato members, it has been transformed as a revised 7week SDG, revised to meet the current needs of the global pandemic of covid-19 (SARS-CoV-2). Whereas the previous SDG focused on the immune system and a number of fundamental concepts in the field of immunology, this revised SDG focuses on the science of infectious diseases (viral, bacterial, and yeast/fungi) as illustrated in our current covid19 global crisis. Specifically, the interface between a highly infectious RNA coronavirus, the human immune system, normal versus dysfunctional immune responses, the role of the dendritic cells to regulate antigen presentation and antibody formation, and opportunities for therapeutic treatments as well as prevention by human behaviors and vaccines. 

     Once upon a time, there were three sisters. One loved money, one loved power, and one loved her country.

    They were the most famous sisters in China.  As the country battled through wars, revolutions, and seismic transformations from the closing days of the Qing dynasty to the dawn of its ascension into a superpower, the three Soong sisters were at the center of power, and each of them left an indelible mark on history.

    Red Sister, Soong Ching-ling, married the "Father of China," Sun Yat-sen, and rose to be the vice-chair of Mao Ze-dong's Communist China.

    Little Sister, Soong May-ling, became Madame Chiang Kai-shek, first lady of Nationalist China and a major political figure in her own right.

    Big Sister, Soong Ei-ling, became Chiang's unofficial chief financial advisor and made herself one of China's richest women.  She married a lineal descendant of Confucius.

    Their story is a gripping tapestry of love, war, intrigue, bravery, glamour, greed, and betrayal.  Together, these three fascinating women helped shape the destiny of modern China.

    We will read a newly published 2019 biography by a well-known Chinese-born, British author Jung Chang, entitled Big Sister, Little Sister, Red Sister.  From additional selected readings (provided by the Coordinator), we will contextualize their lives through major historical themes that include the impact of Western colonialism and Japanese invasion on China's state and society, the role of internal rebellions, and the Nationalist and Communist Revolutions.

Billy Wilder: what great movies he made!  But, we forget that Wilder was part of a film industry, first in Germany and later, memorably, in Hollywood.  His movies were meant to make money.  Whether writing, directing or producing films, sometimes all three, he made films to sell tickets.  How did he know how to make successful films?  He knew because he remade films that had already done well at the box office, just as other film makers years later successfully remade his films.

Some of these films are no longer available to be seen.  Wilder's Some Like it Hot was remade from a German film, which was remade from a French film; unfortunately we can't see those earlier films.  Wilder wrote the 1941 film Ball of Fire, which was remade into a Danny Kaye musical, and we can't see either film today.

Fortunately, many other films are available to us.  In this 14 week SDG, we will watch seven pairs of films.  In each pair is a Billy Wilder films.  The other film in the pair, not made by Wilder, was inspired by the Wilder film, or had inspired Wilder's film, or perhaps not. 

Double Indemnity, Wilder's famed film noir, was remade 37 years later as Body Heat. Wilder wrote Ninotchka which was remade as the musical Silk Stockings.  The Apartment has been judged by some critics as a humorous and ribald remake of the David Lean and Noel Coward film Brief Encounter.  Irma La Douce has much in common with the earlier von Sternberg film that Wilder would have seen in Germany, The Blue Angel.   And one critic said that the sensibility of Fritz Lang’s Scarlet Street inspired Wilder’s Ace in the Hole six years later—well, maybe.  

In the SDG we will discuss whether, and how, the seven other films inspired Wilder, or were inspired by Wilder.  You will enjoy every film.  Join us and be inspired.

Many women in colonial America had the right to vote in their colonies, and then lost it around the time of the ratification of the Constitution, and then spent over a century—a century of struggle—to regain it. 

 We are celebrating that the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment in 2020.   This SDG is about that struggle and its relationship to the rest of the women's rights agenda.  Along the way, we will meet many women who led the movement for suffrage, and some of the women (and men) who opposed it.  We will assess the quality of this achievement. 

Among the issues we will consider is the relationship between the right to vote and the black struggles for equality and the women’s struggles for equality—from abolition to the ratification of the Civil War Amendments to the Constitution; from the era of Jim Crow to the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960’s; from affirmative action to the Democratic Presidential Primary of 2008 which pitted the first woman candidate against the first black candidate?  How ironic is that!

We will consider what the American suffragists learned from the British suffragettes.  And we will study the campaign in Tennessee—the final state to ratify the 19^thAmendment—as a microcosm of the entire century. We will close with assessing the political power of American women today.  Will the ERA finally enter the annals of American law?  Will the right to abortion survive the current Supreme Court?  And what remains to be accomplished?

Every four years our nation goes through a political paroxysm of (pick one):  furious activity, anxiety, fear, or loathing.  The Presidential election -- this year may be the worst ever.  The nation has gone through a grueling time since the 2016 election.   Now, not only must we choose our president & vice-president, 1/3 of all Senators, all members of the House of Representatives, countless governors and state legislators – we are faced with two very different philosophies of governance. 

This SDG proposes to study Election 2020 in each of the three terms in 2020.  While we will focus on the Presidential race, we’ll also discuss important local and national trends & issues as they emerge.

We will discuss how the campaigns are faring… and then, after the results are in, we’ll analyze them.

Quentin Tarantino is one of America’s most original filmmakers.  His films have garnered both critical and commercial success as well as a dedicated cult-following. He has received many industry awards, including two Academy Awards, two BAFTA Awards, four Golden Globe Awards^[4] and the Palme d'Or, and has been nominated for an Emmy and Grammy. In 2005, he was included on the annual Time 100 list of the most influential people in the world.^[5] Filmmaker and historian Peter Bogdanovich has called him "the single most influential director of his generation".^[6] 

Tarantino’s  films are characterized by nonlinear storylines, satirical subject matter, aestheticization of violence, extended scenes of dialogue, ensemble casts, references to popular culture and a wide variety of other films, soundtracks primarily containing songs and score pieces from the 1960s to the 1980s, alternate history, and features of neo-noir film.

Come Join us as we enjoy, study, and discuss the 10 films he wrote and directed, and one that used his screenplay.  

Hannah Arendt [1906-1975] and Isaiah Berlin [1909-1997] rank among the premier political theorists of the postwar years. They understood that the totalitarianism of Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Russia had exploded all the accepted categories of political thought and moral principles of the Western tradition. Their wide-ranging response was to expose the flaws of the Western political tradition that had permitted totalitarianism to appear and to reconstruct political philosophy on anti-totalitarian premises. This SDG covers their unique analyses of the historical causes of totalitarianism and their controversial solutions as well as other contributions to political theory.

We will examine Arendt’s analyses of the historical Jewish social and political situation in Europe pre Hitler, the nature and causes of totalitarianism, the most important of which is Plato’s disparagement of the active life in the Greek polis as inferior to philosophy, her take on Machiavelli’s principles of “good” government, the absence of the respect for authority in contemporary society and her controversial report on the trial of Adolf Eichmann.

Berlin also seeks the causes of totalitarianism and identifies one such cause as monism, the view that all moral questions have but one answer and are in principle knowable. He accuses Plato as the origin of this fallacy and defends pluralism, the view that genuine values are many, may conflict with one another and, in many cases, there is not one right moral answer. We will address Berlin’s perspective on “positive” and “negative” liberty, and his extensive dialogue with Enlightenment and Counter-Enlightenment figures in his exploration in the history of ideas.   

Since at least the time of Socrates, there has been tension between religion and the state and within religious denominations.  Sometimes this tension has played out in violence and even open warfare, by political restrictions, by argument alone, but sometimes by formal trials.  Many of the arguments have played out in trials and their results, have been crucial in the history of the West.  This SDG will explore some of the most important of these trials.

              The discussion each week will deal with the historical background, the biographies of the main participants, the issues at stake, the trial itself and the religious and political results.  Discussions will include questions such as these:  Can traditional religion and religious reformers accommodate each other?  What role should religion and religious leaders play in government?  Are the interests of formal religion and the state ever identical?  When does dissent become insurrection?  What happens when someone concludes that his obligations to the State conflict with his obligations to God?  Is religious uniformity in a society important to the society's cohesion?

              We will not use a core book, but there are many, many materials on all of the trials, both on-line and in books.  Anticipating that most SDG members will concentrate on on-line sources, a number are included below.  Numerous other on-line sources will also be suggested. In addition, five superb plays are included in order to see how skilled playwrights bring large ideas down to a human scale.

LIFE AND FATE is regarded by many as the greatest novel of World War II, a War and Peace for the 20th Century. Born to a Jewish family in !905, Vitaly Grossman was one of the greatest writers/journalists of the Stalinist era.  Written in the 1950's and submitted for publication in 1960, the book and all typewriter ribbons were immediately confiscated by the KGB.  It was not published until 1980, in the West, and was widely unknown until the Chandler translation in 2006.  LIFE AND FATE is an epic tale of the war from the standpoint of Soviet citizens and a profound reckoning with the dark forces that dominate the last century.  Largely from his own life experience, Grossman interweaves a gripping account of the Battle of Stalingrad with the story of an extended family, scattered by fate from Germany to Siberia.  He fashions an immense tapestry, depicting a time of almost unimaginable horror and even stranger hope.  LIFE AND FATE juxtaposes bedrooms and snipers' nests, scientific laboratories and the Gulag, and Stalinism and Nazism, taking us deep into the hearts and minds of unforgettable characters. Literature and/or History buffs will be enthralled with this tale of unsparing realism and moral intensity, a "supreme achievement" in understanding World War II from the perspective of those who endured the most. 

Narratives drive our lives. Human beings think in stories, understand the world through stories, make plans and decisions in stories and organize their lives in stories. Although stories drive our decisions about how and where to invest, how much to spend and save, and help propel major economic events and policies, economists have systematically neglected the role of narrative.

This SDG will use Nobel Prize winning economist Robert Shiller’s new book, Narrative Economics to understand this concept. The book is a magisterial account of more than a century of history of ten pairs of “perennial economic narratives,” in which one narrative emerges, only to be replaced by its counter-narrative, which in turn is replaced by the original narrative in a new form, and so on.

In this SDG we will study narratives of panic versus confidence; frugality versus conspicuous consumption; currency stories; machines as job creators versus job killers; artificial intelligence; real estate and stock market booms and busts; and evil business vs evil workers.  Further, we will attempt to show how old tools like focus groups and new tools like textual analysis of social media can shed fresh new light on what is occurring in the economy, to supplement the standard economic tool-set. 

The genome is a palimpsest that retains strong traces of the past, so current populations can reveal something of previous population movements. Since recently (2010) it has been possible to sequence DNA directly from ancient human remains, sometimes as old as 40,000 years. Studies in ancient DNA dovetailing with archaeology and linguistics have become the best source of knowledge on prehistoric human populations and migrations.

The Indo-European languages and the genetic makeup of Europe and north India today stem from migrations around 5,000 years ago from the vast Steppe, the grass plains bordering the Black and Caspian seas. The population in any one place has changed dramatically many times since the great human post-ice age expansion, and that recognition of the essentially crossbred nature of humanity overrides any notion of some mystical, longstanding connection between people and place.

We shall study the effects of migrations and the crossbred nature of humanity using advances in DNA sequencing.

in the U.S. more people are living alone than ever before. In 2004 the New York Times launched a series of op-ed length essays on relationships. The most memorable are collected in Daniel Jones's anthology Modern Love. The essays also blossomed into the Amazon Original series featuring Tina Fey, Andy Garcia, Anne Hathaway, and other luminaries. 

Everyone has a story; here are précis of a few . . .

A young woman goes through the five stages of ghosting grief. A man’s promising fourth date ends in the emergency room. A female lawyer with bipolar disorder experiences the highs and lows of dating. A widower hesitates about introducing his children to his new girlfriend. A divorcée in her seventies looks back at the beauty and rubble of past relationships.
 
Some of the stories are unconventional; others hit close to home. Some reveal the way technology has changed dating forever; others explore the struggles experienced by anyone who has searched for love. Still others focus on sexistence. Together, they tell the larger story of how relationships begin, often fail, and—sometimes—endure.

Let's dive into the mysterious, surreal, revealing and sometimes scary world of Science Fiction.  Our SDG will introduce you to world-renowned, Science Fiction authors who happen to also be women.   During our 10 weeks we will read and study:  Ursula Le Guin, C.L. Moore, Tannith Lee, Octavia Butler, Leonora Carrington, Nnedi Okorafor as well as a selection of less well-known but equally talented authors.  We will discuss their captivating and innovative writings, while exploring their fascinating lives. 

Our readings will cover alternative physical and emotional futures for humans, alien life-forms on far-flung planets, and the technological advances that make these situations feasible.  These stories will take us out of our everyday reality and into extraordinary realms of future possibilities and cautionary warnings. 

Each week we will read two–three short to medium length stories.

Octavia Butler's psychological, humanistic parables of the modern world;

Leonora Carrington's surrealistic imaginings of reality;

Ursula Le Guin's iconic fantasy and science fiction;

Nnedi Okorafor's African-based magical realism;

Early classics of science fiction of the 1930's–1970's; and

Modern classics of science fiction from the 1980's–2017.

Historians have defined Europe between 1900 and 1945 in their book titles: “The Age of Extremes”, “The Dark Continent”, “To Hell and Back”, to name a few.  Barbara Tuchman, just past the mid-century point, while researching the 14^th century, stated that only the 20^th century surpasses the 14^th in suffering and destruction.

The century did not look bleak to Europeans in 1900. It was a period of optimism, regional peace, economic prosperity, innovation, and the creation of cultural masterpieces in literature, art, and music. The 20^th century promised to be Europe’s best century, one in which Europe would tackle social ills to improve the health and welfare of its citizens. Representative government, the rule of law, economic freedom, and recognition of individual rights had been expanding from west to east across 19^th century Europe.  Science in 1900 promised increasing prosperity and improving quality of life.  Optimism shaped European thinking from the Russian Empire to Britain in 1900.

By the 1945, this optimism lay in ruins, crushed against the reality of modern war and ideologies. European culture, with its roots in the Scientific Revolution starting in the 16^th century, and the Enlightenment of the 18^th century, had been destroyed as completely as the bombed-out buildings that littered the European landscape. This was not the result of a non-European invasion; Europeans were the makers of their own destruction.   

Why did European societies, in effect, commit cultural suicide? This will be the main question for this SDG as we study the impact of war, the rise of dictators championing new ideologies, the crisis of democracy and the final Armageddon that was WWII.  In looking at Europe as a whole, we will concentrate on culture, science, the arts, and society, as well as politics.  The roots of the world we live in today lie in the first half of the twentieth century, and we hope you will join us in our journey. 

The Body: A Guide for Occupants

 This SDG a, will take us on a head-to-toe tour of the marvel that is the human body,  how it functions, its remarkable ability to heal itself,  and (unfortunately)  the ways it can fail-- and  lead us  to a deeper understanding of the miracle that is life in general, and of you and me  in particular. 

 
Our core book: The Body A Guide for Occupants, by noted author, Bill Bryson, is undoubtedly the best popular book on the subject. 

In his lucid, amusing style, Bryson takes us through each body system, what we’re made of, how we are put together, and how it all works.  And along the way, in his  informative and entertaining way,  provides historical information, expert interviews, and biographical details of about the astonishing characters who have been figuring humans out.

 We'll supplement our core book with videos and other materials from the internet and other sources on  each topic.

Come join us for this most  fascinating look –at us!

Some Reviews of Our Core Book 

"Delightful. . .Reveals the thousands of rarely acknowledged tasks our body takes care of as we go about our day. . .Informative, entertaining a. . . Bryson... good at allaying fears and busting myths.” —A.J. Jacobs, The New York Times Book Review 

"Mr. Bryson’s latest book is a ..., a fact-studded survey of our physiques, inside and out. ... none have done it quite so well as Mr. Bryson, who writes better, is more amusing and has greater mastery of his material than anyone else. . .[He] is a master explainer, with a gift for the pithy simile and all-encompassing metaphor. . .[His] love of language is often on display, and he can’t resist occasional indulgences on the origins of terms medical and anatomical. . .Mr. Bryson’s account is enlivened by his excellent command of the history of medicine. . .Brisk, provocative and entertaining throughout." —The Wall Street Journal 

 Bryson launches himself into the wilderness of the human anatomy armed with his characteristic thoroughness and wit. He ably dissects the knowns and unknowns of how we live and die and all the idiosyncrasies of our shared infrastructure. . .This book is full of such arresting factoids and,..."A witty, informative immersion. . .The Body—a delightful, anecdote-propelled read—proves one of his most ambitious yet, as he leads us on a head-to-toe tour of a physique that’s terra incognita to many of us. . .Playful, lucid. . .[Bryson] cover[s] a remarkably large swathe of human corporeal and cerebral experience." —The Boston Globe


"A directory of wonders. . .Extraordinary. . . A tour of the minuscule; it aims to do for the human body what his A Short History of Nearly Everything did for science. . .The prose motors gleefully along, a finely tuned engine running on jokes, factoids and biographical interludes. . .Wry, companionable, avuncular and always lucid . . .[The Body] could stand as an ultimate prescription for life." —The Guardian


"A delightful tour guide. . .Bryson's stroll through human anatomy, physiology, evolution, and illness (diabetes, cancer, infections) is instructive, accessible, and entertaining."  —Booklist,  

The Italian Renaissance has been much written about.The author of our core book, Lauro Martines takes up an old theme, the relation between "society" and "culture," with new terms--"power" and "imagination"--in an effort to shed fresh light on the sources of Renaissance artistic and intellectual achievements. Martines argues that the socioeconomic transformations which accompanied the rise of the Italian city-states out of the medieval communes set the foundation for the cultural flowering that marked the 14th to 16th centuries.

In so doing Martines  traces the growth of commerce and the evolution of governments; he describes the attitudes, pleasures, and rituals of the ruling elite; and he seeks to understand the period's towering works of the imagination in literature, painting, city planning, and philosophy-not simply as the creations of individual artists, but as the expression of the ambitions and egos of those in power.

While we will not ignore famous artistic and literary Renaissance figures such as Dante, Donatello, Machiavelli, Michelangelo, and Petrarch, the focus of this sdg will be on Italian history and on the conditions that made the flowering of the Renaissance possible at this time and in this place.

The story of political/ military intelligence and counterintelligence is as old as Moses’ spies and as new as the famous 300-pound hacker siting on his bed and disrupting our election.  Numerous interesting examples of both are exhaustively collected in “The Secret World, A History of Intelligence” by Christopher Andrew, best-selling author of "The Sword and the Shield."  In this core book the author recounts many well -known and many lesser known examples of effective and ineffective spy and counterspy efforts.  Uniquely, perhaps, it also examines the actual fate of important discoveries on events and leads us to some important conclusions about the actual impact of such discoveries. Impacts may be beneficial to the clients who receive intelligence, such as the ULTRA intercept program in World War II, or damaging,  such as paranoid refusal of Stalin to believe the reports of his best agents, and the impact of “blowback” by undue fear of misdirection. The information to be studied is a different perspective on history and the SD/G will reach its own conclusions about the efficacy of such data in the hands of all too human clients.  It will sometimes be necessary to augment the materials with more detail about the political and military circumstances of the period. 

The stately, structured march of great European music through the Baroque, the Classical, and the Romantic periods falls apart and goes wild around the turn of the twentieth century.  A hundred years hence this chaos still surrounds us. We cannot give it a name—other than “Twentieth Century Music”— nor can we confidently designate which works will survive. Our core text—The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century by Alex Ross of The New Yorker—will help us bring order to this messy but exhilarating scene. Ross brilliantly discusses the music against the background of world war, depression, totalitarianism, revolutions, space travel, and exploding technology.  And we’ll listen, carefully and repeatedly—via both recordings and live performances—to the fantastic array of music created by artists of our century reacting to our world. They're speaking to us. Let's hear what they have to say!

This SDG will use U.S. foreign relations as the lens through which to tell the story of America's rise from the end of World War II as it became the world's greatest superpower.  This course will cover America's interaction with other peoples and nations of the world.  This story is one of stunning successes and sometimes tragic failures which illuminates the central importance of foreign relations to the existence and survival of the country and highlights its ongoing impact on the lives of ordinary citizens.  It will further show how policymakers defined American interests broadly to include its 50 year struggle with Communism,access to growing markets, and the spread of "the American way of life."  Statesmen such as Henry Kissinger, John Foster Dulles and Harry Truman played key roles in America's rise to world power.

The core book for this SDG will be the last part of award-winning From Colony to Superpower by George Herring which is part of the distinguished Oxford History of the United States.  Herring argues that United States foreign policy has been "spectacularly successful," but he notes that its claims to being morally superior, a light to all nations, has frequently given way to great-power actions.  And, though enjoying all the benefits of a great power, it has been sadly unaware of the limits of that power.