33 - Melissa Chen - Toward a New Arab Enlightenment

4:06 Melissa’s Methodist upbringing in Singapore
8:49 Press censorship in Singapore; Singapore society in general
14:30 Why Melissa decided to come and study in the US; her studies in genetics (transcriptomics)
21:50 Her meeting with Faisal al Mutar
24:10 Their secular humanists Facebook page
27:55 On the right way to make tea
35:00 Melissa’s early work with Faisal
36:30 Ideas Beyond Borders
49:45 Literacy in the MENA region
51:55 Bringing a new Enlightenment to the Arab world
1:06:30 The books that most influenced us

Find out more about Ideas Beyond Borders here: https://www.ideasbeyondborders.org/;

Follow Melissa on Twitter @MsMelChen

Other References
S. Frederick Starr, Lost EnlightenmentCentral Asia's Golden Age from the Arab Conquest to Tamerlane (2015)

Steven Pinker, Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress (2018)

Sam Harris, Lying (2011); The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values (2010)

Deeyah Khan, documentary filmmaker: http://deeyah.com/

Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion (2006)

David Deutsch, The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations that Transform the World (2011)

“Donald Trump” [Tony Schwartz] The Art of the Deal (1987)

George Eliot, Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life (1871–2)

Annika Harris, I Wonder (2013)

Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene (1976)

John Rawls, The Theory of Justice (1971)

Derren Brown, Happy: Why More or Less Everything is Absolutely Fine (2016)

My review of Happy for Areo: https://areomagazine.com/2019/01/21/in-praise-of-stoicism-derren-browns-happy-book-review

Letter
Find out more about our new partners, Letter:
https://letter.wiki

I’ve written about it here:
https://areomagazine.com/2019/07/12/lets-change-the-nature-of-public-debate-an-introduction-to-letter/

And I’ve written about one of our letter exchanges here:
https://areomagazine.com/2019/07/10/human-cultural-evolution-a-letter-exchange/