Victor Mair on the Art of War

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Yesterday on WHYY's Radio Times, Marty Moss-Coane interviewed Victor Mair about his translation of The Art of War. You can listen to the interview here. (I've created a new URI for the interview, because the one in their archive for the interview has a bad time offset, and starts you off about 8 minutes in.)

A couple of passages that I found especially interesting: a discussion of Bill Bradley as an example of the role of deception, and thoughts on the crossbow as a metaphor (with a bonus digression on pants).



3 Comments

  1. Janice Huth Byer said,

    August 9, 2008 @ 3:24 am

    Bummer. I'm still working on trying to download this interesting-sounding interview. My tech skills are so poor, I'm awaiting absent colleagues' assistance.

    Meanwhile, with no one else having commented, the rare possibility the problem might not be just me compels me to post :-)

  2. Mark Liberman said,

    August 9, 2008 @ 12:40 pm

    Janice Huth Byer: I'm still working on trying to download this interesting-sounding interview.

    The links are to a RealAudio stream.

    If the links in this post don't work for you, try going to the Radio Times web site and using one of their RealAudio links. If those work but mine don't, please let me know. If those don't work, though, the problem is something about the set-up of your browser or your computer.

    You can also find Radio Times podcasts on iTunes, or (for Victor's interview) here.

  3. Mineda McCleave said,

    September 9, 2008 @ 4:36 pm

    I am not familiar with the Art of War, though I have long been appreciative of the Tao Te Ching. Mair's ability to draw on both sources and weave some similar threads into his commentary made for easy listening. The Bradley/Mair basketball competition is a class in itself showing the way to outwit an opponent through deception. HIs sense of humor made this program interesting and instructive.

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