Grapes
I’ve always loved grapes. As a kid, whenever my parents left me alone for the evening, they’d set me up with a big bunch of grapes to go with my homework. When my mom dropped me at boarding school for the first time, she softened the shock with some yummy grapes.
I love the look and feel of vineyards. If I walk through a vineyard in the late fall, I can’t help stuffing myself with the overripe grapes still on the vine.
My latest guest on Brave New World is legendary winemaker Joel Peterson, the “godfather of Zinfandel.” Joel brought the Zinfandel grape front and center to the world through Ravenswood, one of the early iconic wineries in Sonoma California.
My conversation with Joel is about the art and science of winemaking. We also talked about the impacts of climate change, which is playing havoc with vineyards. To quote Joel, “if you have doubts about climate change, you’ve never worked in a vineyard.”
Science plays a big role in winemaking. Grapes are to wine what paint is to painting, and science helps produce better paint. There’s some basic physics and chemistry involved. Indeed, on the one extreme is the view that wine can be reduced to its “flavonoid” chemicals – tannins, terpenes, phenols, and anthocyanins – which affect texture, aroma, taste, and color, and are the foundations of its quality. This data-centric approach to wine was pioneered by Leo McCloskey, who relates wine chemistry to the “ideal” wine. Scores from influential tasters like Robert Parker serve as proxies for the ideal wines. Leo has created a machine that “tastes” a wine and predicts what score an expert like Parker would give it. This is great news for most wine drinkers who don’t know much about wine, and just want a good drinking experience. Trust the machine!
The view at the other end of the spectrum is that winemaking is largely an art. You work with the materials mother nature gives you through “terroir.” There is a “soulful connection between the artisanal winemaker and wine.” In this world, the language used to describe wine is different. The veteran winemaker Randall Graham expresses a good Pinot Noir as being captivating, deep, seductive, fragrant, and complex. A longtime associate of Graham’s and former Sotheby employee Dennis Overstreet goes further: Wine is like falling in love. My nipples get hard.”
So, tune in and listen to Joel!
What’s Wrong With Social Media and How Can We Fix It?
There’s something wrong with social media, but how to fix it isn’t obvious. It’s a subject I’ve been writing about for some time, and have hosted several episodes on the topic with Sinal Aral, Jonathan Haidt and Chris Bail. So, I am pleased to announce that I’ll be hosting a Zoom webinar called “What’s Wrong With Social Media and How Can We Fix It?” with my Stern colleagues Jonathan Haidt and Paul Barrett on Monday May 23 at 5PM EST. Jon recently wrote a piece in the Atlantic that went viral, called “How Social Media Dissolved the Mortar of Society and Made America Stupid.” Check it out if you haven’t already.
Tune into the webinar. Given that all three of us have written a fair amount about the problem, I’m hopeful we will agree on the key challenges and start discussing potential solutions, including specific amendments to Section 230.
The event will feature as a future episode of Brave New World, so if you miss it you can still listen to the event when it releases.
Will Twitter Work?
In a previous episode of Brave New World with James Robinson, we talked about the importance of public-private partnerships in the history of America. The railroad and postal service are early examples of successful partnerships between the government and private enterprise.
Musk has been successful in creating a new kind of public-private partnership for space exploration between SpaceX and NASA. Could Twitter become the driver for a new public-private partnership for designing the digital public square?
As former president Obama has noted on several occasions, running the digital public square requires a new kind of business model that provides the public with more transparency into how a platform operates, and balances profits and social good. What could this look like? A proposed bill by senators Coons, Portman and Klobuchar is a move towards more transparency. Another bill by senator Schatz is a nudge towards more moderation and a process of appeals on social media platforms. These are steps in the right direction if we want to protect and enhance liberal democracy.
More on these developments shortly.
Until then.
V/