Writer and investigative journalist Patrick Radden Keefe interviewed by my colleague Ignasi Gozalo. In about 10 minutes, he offers a masterful ristretto with some of the skills or qualities that any scholar should have. For example, a sense of empathy–moving away from moral vanity as a starting point; a sense of scale–connecting specific topics with broader issues; a sense of literariness–using narrative as a way to fight for attention. Or the ambition for complexity–allocating the time/extension that complicated problems deserve:
I like complicated subjects, I usually have a lot to say. So something like Tik Tok is very hard for me. I have children (…) and for them if you can do it in a minute you are going on too long. And that’s a scary thought for me because the truth is that life is complicated and sometimes it takes some time to explain a complex issue.