Caring for our Brains
Conversation with Professor Lionel Naccache (part one)
What is the brain, if not an exceptional organ, a machine of fascinating performance, I asked Professor Lionel Naccache of Paris Brain Institute?
“What is the brain in 2024?” as Naccache rephrased my question.
Last March 5th, Naccache, a neurologist/neuroscientist/thinker/author, was the guest of a fundraising, intimate dinner hosted by Le Bilboquet Palm Beach and Paris Brain Institute America, the philanthropic arm of Paris Brain Institute in the United States, which Martine Assouline—of the eponymous publishing house—chairs.
So, based on what we know, what is the brain today?
Category: Society
How Are You?
How are you?
In the midst of winter, I found that there was within me an invincible summer. Albert Camus
“How are you, Olivier Goy?”
This was not the question I sent you via WhatsApp last Tuesday morning, January 23 to be exact, to begin our short epistolary conversation; it was your first answer. You asked me to ask you: “How are you?”
We have never met, dear Olivier, but as hundreds of thousands of people do in France by now, I know who you are. Colleagues and friends at the Paris Brain Institute introduced us formally by email a few weeks ago. Your story is at the heart of a unique, powerful, poetic documentary film, Invincible Summer.
When I asked if I could interview you and write this post, you were waiting to hear French Movie Academy Les César’s final selection of nominated films. You and journalists in France lobbied, campaigned and whispered to the voters, ‘Choose Invincible Summer,’ not to enjoy a few minutes of fame on stage but to use this platform to raise awareness about your disease. Fame is, after all, a fleeting commodity. Art, nonetheless, grows as a tree to eventually become a forest.
I learned about you only recently, Olivier. Last June 29, my younger brother sent me a note and a picture of you in an electric wheelchair, sitting on the running tracks of a stadium in the seaside town of La Baule, France. You were answering Alexandre Kouchner’s questions at Les Napoléons’ summer conference.
Listen to the Women and Girls of Iran
Listen to the Women and Girls of Iran
It was gigantic and staring at me. Everyone around seemed as mesmerized by it as I was: an eye, wide open. It was staring at the sky, too, and it covered most of the steps of Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms Park at the far end of the oblong Roosevelt Island on the East River, an unlikely urban cable car stop away from Manhattan. In the background, lurking in the shadows, stood the 39-story United Nations building, proud and self-confident.
In that park, at the bottom of the steps that morning of November 28, 2022, every spoken word and every single stare were targeted at the United Nations, at the United Nations and Iran.
Jumai Victor
JUMAI VICTOR
Entretien avec Bernard-Henri Lévy, à l’occasion de la première américaine à New York de son film
Une Autre Idée du Monde—The Will to See à New York le 16 janvier 2022.
Jump to the English version of this post below: Click Here
À la fin de l’année 2019, Bernard-Henri Lévy rentre du Nigeria avec un reportage d’une force rare. Il décrit les actes meurtriers, odieux et terroristes d’un groupe « plus ou moins liés à Boko Haram », « des islamistes d’un genre nouveau » : les Fulanis. De village en village, ils attaquent, brulent et assassinent les Chrétiens du Nigeria. Bernard-Henri Lévy nous présente une de leurs récentes victimes, Jumai Victor. Cette femme, « une évangéliste », se recueille sur une tombe, celle de son mari et de ses quatre enfants assassinés. Elle survit à cette attaque. Enceinte, les Fulanis ont épargné sa vie, mais certains d’entre eux lui ont tranché, l’un après l’autre, les doigts, puis la main et l’avant-bras.
Are You Game?
ARE YOU GAME?
French Version of this post, click here.
Special thanks to Delphine Schrank for editing this story
They didn’t just want to give to their favorite foundations. Some New Yorkers wanted to have some fun while doing it, playfully bidding for things both secret or less than significant. In the end, the cost matters less than the price of elegance.
What about you? Would you take the gamble and surprise a gathering of bow tied, long-dressed revelers, the accoutrement of traditional New York galas whose ‘in-person’ season just wound down with the closing year? How much would you be willing to pay to blindly acquire the contents of an evening clutch or a surprise bag – to promote Franco-American friendship?
It all started with a challenge, “un pari” in French. Un jeu, a game.