Full disclosure, this is the opinion of this journalist and is not reflective of the opinion of the Oredigger as an organization nor the opinion of this journalist as a student of the Colorado School of Mines.
There is an art to an interview; a good interviewer has five articles worth of questions before showing up. All of the questions focused towards a handful of ideas which do not just give glimpses into the thoughts of the interviewee, but tell a story from their perspective. A disjoint collection of questions is an entertaining conversation but an entertaining conversation does not make a convincing article.
All of the Michio Kaku lecture attendees already know ninety percent what was said in the meet and greet before the lecture. Public speakers focus so much of their attention on what they will say when they take the stage that their responses to questions before they have been in the spotlight default to what they will present. Gaining a different perspective and not being given a summary of the lecture is not possible without a carefully crafted set of questions.
The most interesting glimpse of Michio Kaku I can draw from the meet and greet where I represented The Oredigger is a small amount of motivation for the rest of the semester. A photo in a newspaper is what gave Michio a dream which drove his interest in physics in a way that the pull of wealth that the US government offered him to develop thermonuclear warheads could not. This photo was printed in newspapers across the world in April of 1955.
On the desk pictured below rests a notebook holding the beginnings of a single equation which promised to unify the fundamental forces. Left unfinished by the original hand of the owner of the notebook. Michio picked up the pen to finish this equation, which sent him down the path of founding string theory, so much farther than the writer of that unfinished equation ever dreamed. When the workload gets hard, find inspiration in the impossible and know that the homework problem or project you are stuck on is teaching you how to finish all of the unfinished equations scrawled by someone else’s hand.
Thank you for reading. I would love to hear your comments at respectfulhatemail@gmail.com. No, really, this is actually a contact email.
'Homecoming Lecturer: Michio Kaku' has 1 comment
October 8, 2017 @ 11:34 am dave
An interview with a well-respected and accomplished individual should focus
on the person being interviewed.
For example, a year ago the Oredigger had
an excellent interview with featured speaker Bill Nye
https://oredigger.net/2016/10/featured-interview-with-bill-nye/
in which readers could read the words of the person interviewed.
The “opinion of the journalist” has a place … on the editorial page.
The journalist touting his/her individual opinion is a transparent ego attempt
by that journalist to elevate himself/herself to the same high level
of the accomplished person being interviewed.