大象传媒

Philip Dodd reviews Derek Jacobi as King Lear, discusses whether the web or the street is the more effective medium of protest and interviews risk guru Nassim Nicholas Taleb.

As tuition fees protesters take to the streets and the Wikileaks revelations continue on the web, Alex Callinicos and Peter Hitchens discuss whether the web or the pavement is the more effective and legitimate place for protest.

Derek Jacobi has been a fixed star in the British theatrical firmament since playing Laertes in the National Theatre's 1963 production of Hamlet. Thirty seven years later, he is playing King Lear. Jacobi and director Michael Grandage received huge acclaim for their 2008 production of Twelfth Night at the Donmar Warehouse in London and this new venture is hugely anticipated. Completing Lear's dysfunctional ruling family are Gina McKee playing Goneril and Justine Mitchell as Regan.

The Tourist opens this week, the new film from the director of The Lives of Others. It stars Angelina Jolie as a mysterious stranger to Johnny Depp's American tourist in Venice. George Clooney's current film, The American, also puts an American outsider into a European setting. Philip Dodd is joined by Nigel Andrews and John Freemon to reflect on what Europe represents to Americans as a setting for films and novels, from Henry James to Patricia Highsmith and Woody Allen.

The Lebanese born financier and risk guru Nassim Nicholas Taleb has been called 'the hottest thinker on the planet'. Progenitor of black swan theory, he argues that history is driven unpredictable 'black swan' events such as the financial crisis. The answer is not to seek to predict them but to prepare ourselves for their very unpredictability. Now he's published a book of provocative and idiosyncratic aphorisms about the habits and boundaries of human thinking.