The structure of the show was simple: Gordon, bathing in his aloof charisma, would interview scientists and scholars about their work and other burning intellectual issues. Given tight budgets and the low prestige of scientists today, it is lamentable that Gordon moved on to more conventional television routines. The books amend this, even if their audience is inevitably smaller.
The thematic scope of these dialogues is boundless, ranging from ancient Egyptian religion to Antarctic research and global warming, from mysterious creatures inhabiting the lowest layers of the ocean to black holes and the origins of the universe. Sociologist Igor Bestuzhev-Lada and physicist Sergei Kapitsa argue about demographics, the former offering disaster scenarios of depopulation in Europe, the latter using arcane physical models to prove that the scarcity of natural resources is a myth.
Meanwhile, historians Viktor Zhivov and Sergei Ivanov talk about the fascinating phenomenon of yurodiviye, the half-divine village fools who pop up in so many works of Russian literature. In their opinion, the existence of such people is dependent on stable social environments, since people of such psychological disposition tend to become martyrs when kingdoms and religions are in flux.
Popular science, which once commanded such a wide audience in Russia, is in deep decline these days, and Gordon's books are among the few exceptions. Unfortunately, independent Moscow publishing house Predlog printed the conversations without editing them first, to uneven results. Stripped of body language and explanatory drawings, the quality of the texts depends on each guest's rhetorical talents. Even more surprising is the total lack of proofreading, for which the first volume of "Dialogues" had already been awarded the anti-prize Absatz, given for worst editorial practices by the book fairs directorate and Knizhnoye Obozreniye.
Gordon stays active in the popular science community. Several collections of scientific articles have been published under his patronage, lavishly illustrated and expensively produced. This past March, he awarded 1 million euros ($1.34 million) to biophysicist Dmitry Chernavsky after guests of "Gordon" voted him best interlocutor. It might seem extravagant (Chernavsky subsequently split up the money between the contestants), but whatever draws attention to Russian science these days can't be bad.
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