Lea Carpenter

Recent Activity

September 5, 2011
Lea wrote This is Our Greatest Generation: Reflections From A Retired Special Forces Officer in Think Tank
Editor's Note: Lea Carpenter writes the English Lessons column for Big Think about what we can learn from the writing we love. She interviewed former Navy SEAL Eric Greitens for Big Think, and wro... Read More 
August 15, 2011
Lea wrote Lesson 21: Gloria Steinem’s Aphorisms; Fish, Power, Love, Bunnies, and Life in English Lessons
It turns out that the phrase “a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle” did not originate with Gloria Steinem, but rather was inspired by another phrase: a man needs God like a fish needs a... Read More 
August 4, 2011
Lea wrote Lesson 20: JSOC-talk; When Less Is More: “For God and country: Geronimo, Geronimo, Geronimo.” in English Lessons
The military tends to talk in signs and numbers—and, perhaps most famously, in code. The use of abbreviations and alphabetical systems is efficient. In this week’s New Yorker, we learn a little bi... Read More 
July 13, 2011
Lea wrote Lesson 19: RFK; The Language of Atonement, and Classical References in English Lessons
Yesterday’s announcement that Robert F. Kennedy’s papers are being reviewed inspired us to revisit one of the former Attorney General’s finest speeches, one we have not written about here before. ... Read More 
July 5, 2011
Lea wrote Lesson 18: Sheryl Sandberg; Can A Speech Teach Ambition? in English Lessons
Ken Auletta’s profile of Sheryl Sandberg in The New Yorker is an excellent companion to Sandberg’s TED speech of last December. The latter was passed like a Dead bootleg among a certain group of w... Read More 

About Lea Carpenter

Lea Carpenter

Lea Carpenter was a Founding Editor of Francis Ford Coppola’s literary magazine, Zoetrope. She graduated from Princeton and has an MBA from Harvard. Her Harvard University Commencement Address, “Auden and The Little Things,” was about the need for poetry in our lives. She lives in New York with her husband and son where she produces programming for the New York Public Library. She formerly wrote the Think, See, Feel blog for BigThink.