he adopted a very healthy lifestyle as he grew older tolstoy takes third place in our ranking at some stage the writer decided to do without alcohol cigarettes and. he said to have served his aunt a live chicken once along with a big knife and then supposedly told her you wanted chicken but none of us would kill it so you'll have to do it yourself. you know a month old going from good to born in frankfurt in seven hundred forty nine had a lifelong hunger for knowledge is your petition as a writer and poet is stellar and he also devoted much time to the natural sciences it was also health conscious and therefore opted for vegetarian fare putting him in second place on our famous vegetarians drinking. a good deal was convinced that abstaining from meat was good for his brain and besides that he couldn't stand animal cruelty either. but this man arguably surpasses them all leonardo da vinci born in fourteen fifty two in italy is one of the brightest minds ever to have walked this earth davinci was an artist scientist architect and inventor he takes the top spot in our ranking not for his

. >> as a writer i would say tolstoy. but what is interesting the explorers that i had written about had outward goals they were exploring regions that were less known to outsiders. so with that element of discovery searching for a lost city and then to have the source of the river but these later expeditions that people are grasping to external objects becauseng the world has been discovered with google maps. so they have the external object to be the first to do something but these great earlier feats but i would rank the expedition with that endurance shift into the ice before they reach their base at antarctica the boat sank than they were trapped on a floating ice flow more than 1000 miles from the nearest island from any inhabitation this was and then to figure out a way to get them back out alive. . >> and then i quit flying planes for a bunch of good reasons that i love the story of charles lindbergh with 43 consecutive hours in most the time it was a dark pit and cannot see what he was going with very basic instr

. >> as a writer i would say tolstoy but i don't know if that really counts but that's a really goodquestion but in earlier stages explorers had outward goals because they were exploring regions never left not surly to outsiders so there was that element of discovery if they were searching for all lost city like in my book or trying to find the source of a river but what's interesting of the later expeditions is people are grasping onto external objects because we have google maps in the world is discovered so they have the external object as the first to do something but it is really an inward quest and i suspect the great earlier feats but i would certainly rank the expedition is one of the greatest feats but that endurance ship was frozen in the ice before they reached their base on antarctica and the boat that sank and they were trapped on the floating ice flow more than 1000 miles from the nearest island with any habitation in this was in an age before radio so no way to signal for help and he had to try to figure out a way to get them all back alive. >> two years ago i started

even teaching the great thinkers such as russo, tolstoy, mont skew is risky unless one is also willing to condemn them. because these thinkers articulate too many ideas that krigt the prevailing ideology. the result is to take the dishonored cannon entirely off the table as a source of wisdom and reflection. think about the effects on student life. would christian groups be allowed to meet, maintain membership under that circumstance? let's go back to the distinction between the research and the scientific arm of the universities and the liberal arts arm. the traditional worry was that the scientific way of knowing would overwhelm the liberal arts commitment. but today's system of diversity with its origins in the liberal arts now poses the threat to the scientific arm of the university. the system of diversity is imperial, and it will corrupt the sciences. it will do to engineering what it has done to english. we have seen this taking place already in many ways in the criteria for entering medical school and how the nih and the nsf evaluate proposaled in the light of diversity criteri

there's lots of french in the novels of tolstoi. you could make the same argument about music. these are things that anybody who studies this will tell you. one of the cases i discuss in the book is the deep interdependence of our understanding of the ancient greek classical world, the understanding of it that was developed by the arabs during the so-called european dark ages which were not so dark, but they were a time when, for example, aristotle was missing from much of the conversation and the form that was there was very catholicized. it was sir thomas. so i just think that if you care about those things, you wouldn't want to stop that kind of hybridity, wouldn't want to stop that kind of coming and going. however, of course when people are working across cultures, there are many possibilities of bad behavior. one is stealing, i mean, i take a musical idea, i work with it from some people who don't know much about the world, i don't pay them, i take their ideas, i go away, i get rich making music in the world. i have exploited somebody. that's not about cultural appropriat