An evening with Dr. John Casti
Dr. John Casti's new book X-Events: the Collapse of Everything sounds apocalyptic, but it actually aims at enlightening us about extreme events in the human sphere, which he describes as "human nature's way of reducing a complexity overload that has become unsustainable." His bracing insights about "outlier events" are provocative advances toward what he calls a much-needed "theory of surprise": a consideration of where our increasingly complex way of life is taking us.