Manifold #25: Ted Conover on Immigration, Prisons and 21st Century Homesteading

Steve and Corey talk to Ted about his article from the August issue of Harper’s Magazine, The Last Frontier. Ted describes how Trump’s election led him to this new project on people living off the grid in Colorado’s San Luis Valley (“Appalachia without the Trees”). The three discuss how immigration has changed since he wrote Coyotes in 1987. Ted explains how working as a prison guard in Sing Sing led to the uncomfortable realization that he was getting comfortable with unnecessary violence, and offers advice to young people seeking to write interesting stories in the new media landscape.

Transcript

Ted Conover (web site)

The Last Frontier: Homesteaders on the margins of America

Coyotes: A Journey Through the Secret World of America's Illegal Aliens

Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing

Rolling Nowhere: Riding the Rails with America's Hoboes


man·i·fold /ˈmanəˌfōld/ many and various.

In mathematics, a manifold is a topological space that locally resembles Euclidean space near each point.

Steve Hsu and Corey Washington have been friends for almost 30 years, and between them hold PhDs in Neuroscience, Philosophy, and Theoretical Physics. Join them for wide ranging and unfiltered conversations with leading writers, scientists, technologists, academics, entrepreneurs, investors, and more.

Steve Hsu is VP for Research and Professor of Theoretical Physics at Michigan State University. He is also a researcher in computational genomics and founder of several Silicon Valley startups, ranging from information security to biotech. Educated at Caltech and Berkeley, he was a Harvard Junior Fellow and held faculty positions at Yale and the University of Oregon before joining MSU.

Corey Washington is Director of Analytics in the Office of Research and Innovation at Michigan State University. He was educated at Amherst College and MIT before receiving a PhD in Philosophy from Stanford and a PhD in a Neuroscience from Columbia. He held faculty positions at the University Washington and the University of Maryland. Prior to MSU, Corey worked as a biotech consultant and is founder of a medical diagnostics startup.