Ladies and gentlemen, welcome at this event, Last for Life. Welcome to all the participants in the auditorium here of the university, and welcome to all the participants watching us through the live stream. This event is of course part of the top week that has started today, and I hope that you will enjoy your week, and of course I hope you will enjoy this program. Welcome of course also on behalf of Studium Generale. My name is Richard, and my last name in English is Horrible, so let's call me Richard, and I will be your moderator today. This event will take place until nine o'clock, and it is interactive. For all the people watching us by the live stream, my telephone number is on the screen, so if you have a question, simply send me a text message, send me a WhatsApp message, which are question or which are remark, and I will simply read it out. It is up to you, feel free to add your name, but it's also okay to do it anonymously, and don't be afraid afterwards I will delete all the messages. I won't be spamming you, but I hope that you will be spamming me, because the best question will be honored by this book, Dutch Dance, which is written by one of the speakers of today. So try to ask as many questions as you can, and you can win this prize, this book. But now let's start of course with the content of this event, and I must say I was not so happy with the first sentence in the invitation saying that after a long period of crisis and uncertainty, it seems it is finally time to let our hair down. Well, as you can see, I don't have any hair to let down, but luckily we have someone who is still able to do that, and please give a warm welcome for Nienke Lapien, who is involved in the Top Week. Nienke, welcome. Yes, thank you. We hear a big round of applause from the auditorium here, yes? And welcome to you all. A lot of people here, and of course a lot of people to the live stream. Nienke, for the people who don't know you, who are you, and what do you do in the Top Week? Well, I'm Nienke, I'm a student at Tilburg University, and this year I'm also a committee member at Top Week, which means I help the board organize this amazing week for the new students in Tilburg. Yeah, and how is it to organize such an amazing week in corona times? Tricky, but also a lot of fun. Yeah. We're really busy, and I think we made it work. It was a lot of stress, but we have a nice program. Everybody can join physically, so we're really happy about it. And can you remember your own Top Week a couple of years ago? How different was that from what you are organizing now with corona? Well, it was in 2018, so no corona yet. It was really different, a lot of partying, no distance. But it was a lot of fun, but I think also in this scenario, it will also be a lot of fun. But it was really different. We just could go to the clubs, go to the parties and don't stress about it. And I think that really changed this week. There's more stress that's different, and we are going to talk about all those differences, but most of all, of course, we're going to talk about lust for life. And how hard is it, do you think, to keep finding your lust for life as a student, starting now this week for the first time in Tilburg, when you probably don't know anyone? And how do you think? Well, this week I don't think it's going to be a problem because of our amazing program, of course. But apart from that, I think it can be quite tricky. I've also spent the last year mostly inside, in my room, with only four roommates. So I know it can get quite lonely, but I would advise people to just try to keep in contact with people and maybe do some stuff online. But I know it can be quite hard for my own experience. And how many ideas did you have when you started organizing how many scenarios there were? Like, this can happen, and this can happen, and maybe tomorrow the prime minister will turn on a new lockdown? Is that something in the back of your mind the whole time? Yes, definitely. We started with three different scenarios, and right now we are following one that we didn't have before. So we had to keep improvising, keep changing our plan to eventually get a week that we are happy about, but also that the government thinks is fine. And of course, thank you for all your hard work that you're doing, and thank you for being here. You will represent, of course, the student perspective. So for you, also feel free to comment, to ask questions to all the guests that we have, and it's great to have you here. And of course, also, again, ask all your questions, all the people also here in the audience. Our first speaker, and also give him a round of applause, is Professor at the Tilburg School of Social and Behavioral Sciences, specializing in group and interpersonal processes, Ilja van Beest. Yeah. Ilja, is that a correct introduction? Yeah. Thanks. And when we're talking about lust for life, is this also how you introduce yourself at parties, or do you talk about yourself differently then? Well, I would then say Professor Doctor, Ilja van Beest. Professor Doctor, Ilja van Beest. Well, well, well. And in the invitation, I've read another interesting sentence. They said that it is safe to say that everyone has struggled. Over the past year or two, we have lived through some tough times, but we are hopefully on our way back. Slowly but surely, life will finally return to normal. Is that also your experience, or are you still thinking maybe, just as Nienke also said, well, we have to see, we don't know how it's, if it's going back to normal? Well, professionally, but also as a parent or as a teacher, I think we're all social animals, and we always find our ways to quench our social thirst.  And so in that way, I do believe that everything adapts, if you forget the better word. So I would predict that in a year from now, if it's still corona, people would not even know it's still corona. Because it's just the new way of life. It's a new way of our life. And do you think we'll go back to everything we were used to, like shaking hands, or are we going to do boxing, or just simply say hi? Now we already had a little bit of a conversation about that, that it's intriguing that if you think about different countries, like in some countries in the United States, the first time that I was there, people approached me, like... And that was very strange to me. I was like, so they give hugs, and in France, they give more kisses than some people would like, or maybe fewer than some people would like. And we shake hands. And I can see how now our repertoire of things that we do has expanded. We have the box, the wave, which we had to dab for sometimes. We'll see what will happen, and I think that it will also be strategically implemented. I can see how my daughter, when her uncle, who is sweaty and smelly, approaches her, goes like... She's very happy with the box. So maybe it's for the better, for some... Yeah, some things will permanently change, because some other people will think, well, as soon as we can, we all start doing what we did before corona. Well, there will be examples. So the moment Mark Rutte says, we should not shake hands, and he does it. It's an example that we continue to do that. So if Mark Rutte or other leading examples on TV will all do the same gesture in the Netherlands by no time, I think that will then be the dominant gesture. Well, that's a good way about Mark Rutte, because your research is on making coalitions. And as we all know, of course, here in the Netherlands, we are forming a new Dutch government, but it's taking months already. We had elections in March, and now we still don't have a new government. Most people will say that this process has at least taken far too much time. Some other people even say, should we organize new elections? What do you see from your scientific point of view as a researcher to this? Well, for me, a coalition formation is just any situation where an individual wants to accomplish something that they cannot accomplish by themselves, and they need someone else. And in that sense, the Netherlands is an interesting country. We had elections, no single party had enough votes to run the country by themselves, so they all need each other some way or the other. What I found the most surprising right now, what is happening, or maybe not surprising, there's a divisibility problem in a way. And there are four parties that want to join somehow, and there are two parties that are saying, well, those two should not, that's too much. And now those two parties say, well, but we're not two parties, the two left-wing parties. We're one party. In a way, they have solved the problem of there are too many parties. They just say we're one. But to their own parties, they say, no, we're still two. It's kind of like an interesting solution to make something that is indivisible divisible again. And that, to me, has to do with how people constantly maybe are waiting two things. On the one hand, they wanna serve their own self-interest, but to be able to serve your own self-interest, they also need some form of fairness to sell it. So if you and I are going to form a coalition, it would be difficult for me to say, let's form a coalition, I get everything, you get nothing, and that's fair, because you will say, well, that's not fair at all. So I need to form some sentence that you believe that what you're doing is fair. But to be able to sell it to the people that support me, I need to say, that was self-interest. And that's something that I find very intriguing also about Dutch politics. So for maybe who knows, those parties that are now interacting with each other, the leaders of those parties already have established their coalition like two months before. But they know it's very difficult to sell it to their constituencies, so they need to wait and wait and wait. It might be a strategy to do it like this. Not even to each other, but maybe to those that they represent. And if we use this as a metaphor, because here in the top week, of course, everyone is also making new coalitions. You're making new friends, and do you see the same kind of strategies when people are making friends, or is it completely different? I think it's exactly the same. The moment in the top week, you enter one of those social events, it's also about meeting each other. And I think that everybody implicitly should be aware of the fact that if you approach someone of the opposite gender, and you think, well, that's my future coalition partner, that you may not be the only possible coalition partner, and that you could be excluded from that coalition. So you have to play your cards well. And again, it's about self-interest and fairness. And can we say from research that you know that people actually have strategies on this, or is it most that people just do what they think is right? Because with these political parties, I think a lot of it, they think about a strategy, they talk about a strategy to do, for example, students or other people who are trying to make friends also have these kind of very active, conscious strategies. Maybe, but I do think there are strategies that I find interesting. And that's for example, the like flaunted, like if you show what you got, because in a way what you're showing then is like how attractive you can be as a coalition partner. So don't hide the goods in one way or the other and in multiple ways. So if you have interesting hobbies or stories to tell or things that you can do, I think that's what people do when they interact, they share who they are and they inform the other individual about. Yeah, of course, also from Nienke, when you did your top week in two years ago in 2018, did you have a strategy to make new friends, to meet new people, or just to just go along with the flow and see what happens? Yeah, maybe not a strategy, but I know myself, I know I'm pretty outgoing. So what you're saying like, you want to show yourself, you want to show your best side because you're new here in a new city, new study, new people, new schools. So you don't want to be there on the first day and end alone to say it like that. So yes, I was like, here I am, this is me. I think this and this and this is important to know. And then hopefully they like me and I will have some new friends and a fun top week group. So I definitely recognize it, yes. Well, one other thing that I might want to add, I think people really like consistency and people themselves like consistency, but consistency can also be a prison because if you are in your high school, you were in a particular role and you needed to be consistent in that particular role. Well, I hope that everybody realizes you're now in a new situation. You can start whatever you want to be. You can start a new role. You can start a new role. And I think many people do. And I think that's also one of the things that people celebrate when they have these life-changing events, when they go from one school to the other or from one work to the other work, they can try out something new. But another part they really wanted to be, they can now just do it. So I would also think just do it. And if you fail, it's top week. You can always say like I was drunk or I was whatever. You always have an excuse. Now finally, there are also some psychiatrists I read in the media who warned us a little bit. They said, well, it's great that we can party a little bit more now that there are a little bit less restrictions. But they warned us, watch out, you might get sort of overstimulated if you do too much parties now because of all the zooming. And do you agree with that? Or is that just bullocks? Well, I think, and I'll quote my own daughter. I think there is a reality that our government lives in that how we should live. But my 16-year-old has another reality in which he does live. And there are parties constantly happening and sleepovers constantly. As you mean Galafing, you recognize this? No, so I'm saying like, okay, so maybe clubbing as in going to clubs was less. But I think that people are very creative and they've found many other ways to quench their social thirst, if you will. We don't have to be fearful about the fact if we can party. On the other hand, I do believe as you also indicated that people are lonely. And there are people also from, and I speak to those that are coming from other cities by themselves who are alone or from another country. But know that you are not alone in that situation and that you are now surrounded by people in that same situation and that you just reach out and you will probably find a new friend for life. Thanks, that's a very good advice. Ninka, you recognize all this? Yes, definitely. At one point, of course, you get lonely, but yeah, we found each other, we made it work. Like we had Netflix and Chill, but then online with a Zoom. So we made it work and we had parties. Yes, that's true. We tried to follow the rules as much as we can, but at one point you need that. Yeah, you need to have social context. You really crave it at one point. So at one point, parties came back and you try to be responsible, but sometimes you just want to be young and have fun. And that's your last for life. Final question for you, Ilya. What is your last for life? Well, my last for life, and maybe that sounds too much as a parent, curiosity. For me, it is be curious. And that's also why I started to study because I was just curious. And that's also the basis, basic of science. Yeah, but it's also my last for life is just curiosity. Just find out something new, be surprised. To me, I think the worst possible day is a day of just being bored. But that also means that I'm maybe an individual that needs some external stimuli that other people surprise me. And I know there are also people out there that can surprise themselves constantly. And I'm very bad at that, but for those that can do that, power to them. Stay curious. Thank you very much. Ilya van Beest, and ladies and gentlemen, we go on, yes, give a round of applause. And we change sometimes in the setting to be surprised. So, Nienke, if you can also sit here, because our next guest we're going to talk about is assistant professor Tess van der Zande from the Tilburg School of Humanities and Digital Science, specializing in online dating and communication. Yeah, that's a full introduction. And also maybe for the people at home watching, in two weeks, you will be standing here. Well, two months. Oh, two months, sorry, sorry, I misunderstood that. In two months. Feels like two weeks, so yeah. Because I introduce you as assistant professor, but what will happen in two months? Yeah, so the last four and a half years, I did research to online dating, so it was my PhD research. And, well, I finished that, but I still need to defend it. So some good scientists will ask difficult questions and I need to answer them and they will be about my research. But for now I have a new position as a assistant professor. So that means some time for research and sometimes for teaching. Yeah, and from both perspectives, from teaching and doing research, how big a difference was that to do that in corona times? Because you experienced both. Yeah, well, my first teaching experience was like during corona. So I only have experience now with online teaching. So within the new students are coming, will also be my first experience with teaching offline. So I'm very curious how that will be. How it will be in real life. I'm really looking forward to it. Yeah, and you were once a student yourself as well. Did you study here or at another university? No, I did my studies at Leiden University. I still live there. So that was one of the benefits of corona that I didn't have to do all the traveling back and forth every day. So I did my bachelor's and master's in Leiden linguistics and now I moved a bit to more the communication side but still with this linguistic perspective. And your research is also on online dating and from that perspective, it must have been very interesting in these corona times because we couldn't meet anyone at a bar. So we all had to go. If you want to find a partner, we had to go online. Was it like a golden time for you as a researcher? Well, my research did not specifically focus on like it was more on the dating profile text and more on the language perspective. So I was focusing more on the profile text that people write and I did not really research the online dating during corona but I think for me as a researcher did not really matter that much. I was happy that I could still do my research because there was also a lot of colleagues who had difficulties with doing research during corona. For example, colleagues who are doing research in a hospital, for example, communication in hospitals, yeah, that was of course difficult. So for me as a researcher, I was not that much affected. But is it safe to say that probably because of all the look-downs, people use more those dating apps? Yeah, definitely. That's probably safe to say. Yeah, so I think when you say golden times, yeah, probably for them or definitely for the dating platforms themselves, it was golden times specifically when you think about like the money they earned from it. I think for the users, yeah, less so. Why is it less so? Or at least, yeah, well, when your goal is finding a partner that was more difficult because of the look-down, social distancing. You could chat until the end of the time but you never met each other. Yeah, so I think most dating apps really saw an increase in the members, the conversations people had, the matches people had but it was also more, yeah, longer conversations, more talking but also people with different goals. So also more to, yeah, as you said, also maybe socialize, get in touch with others, yeah, specifically when you maybe live alone as a student, you, yeah, people reached out to Tinder or some other app to talk and socialize. And then your research, can you tell us a little bit more about that because your research is on the text, the profile text that people use in those apps? Yeah, so not so much on apps like Tinder which are mostly picture-based but they also have some textual components. So I focus more on this dating sites that also have this more, yeah, bigger textual component, the profile text. And I, for example, looked at the effect of language errors when people have them in their profiles, what kind of associations people make about it, how do they, yeah, how are they affected? And what kind of findings did you see there when you did your research? Yeah, so, well, language errors don't make them, it can be, yeah, down, can have a negative effect, for example, because you think people think that you're less intelligent or you're less attentive. So it's better to avoid them and that's because we have so little information about this person, we only have a picture, we have some text, we, yeah, we don't have that much information. So the slightest mistake? Yeah, so everything gets like a very, yeah, can already be positive or negative, so, yeah. So one spelling error can mean you will miss the woman or the man of your life? Yeah. Yeah, that's one of the things you find and how did you research that? Did you just read all the text or did you also interview people on how they use it? Yeah, so we mostly used experimental studies and what was nice that we had, we also had some collaborations with dating sites, so for example, Parship, which is one of the biggest dating sites in the Netherlands, but it's also a site that is more focused on the textual part and less so on the picture. So it was nice that we had these collaborations and then people were presented with profiles and they had to, yeah, evaluate the profile owners on different, yeah, impression formation statements. So about your personality, about your attractiveness. Yeah, and I also, when you talk with people about online dating, a lot of people always have the feeling that meeting people in real life is always more romantic than meeting someone by a dating app. Did you also find that when you? I did not really research that myself, but there are studies on that. I think there are positive and negative sites to both offline and online dating. Online dating definitely has also some positive effects. Of course, you have more potential matches, but also what you see in research is that people, they start having more conversations and they self-disclose more information, so self-disclosure often also helps to get more intimate with the person and not necessarily like sexually intimate, but get to know person better on a deeper social emotional level. So that can also be the positive side of online dating. Yeah, does the top week do anything on part of dating? Is that also a theme or do you stay away from that? No, we try to make fun groups. We try to make fun groups, but we're not matchmakers. So if you find the one and only during top week, we would like to think we participated in that. Because I heard that everyone, and if you participate in the top week, has to do everything with the app. You have to register, you have to reserve stuff, so I also think you could add a little button saying I'm single and looking for this and this, or am I now too much thinking out of the box? Yes, well, actually last year we had something that was kind of like meet other fun students so we could match profiles. Like if you say, I like the cultural things more than the partying, stuff like that. So we had some kind of Tinder, but not for love, but just for making friends. And whatever, maybe something nice will come up from that. Who knows, maybe we can add that option. And for example, also in Tilburg, I read in the media that there is an initiative with offline dating with pins, which is also a bit, I think, about the same background that these people think that dating by, for example, Tinder is not so romantic and it's nicer to meet someone in real life, but you want to know if someone is single or not. Have you heard about that initiative and what do you think about that? Yeah, I heard of it indeed. Well, I think most people just do offline online dating and maybe just try and I think in an ideal world, you maybe would just find your partner somewhere or your future partner in the supermarket, but that just almost never happens. So, and what is also a benefit? If you maybe see someone at a party once we're allowed to go partying again, you can always go, afterwards you can go check on Tinder and maybe this person is also, then you can also see what it is.  Yes, I think so. You can look them up, but I think like the idea with the pins, you also see it sometimes at like student parties. We have a green cup, a red cup and a pink cup. Green is I'm single, red is I'm taking and pink might be it's complicated, so we sometimes use it just for fun that you know what's everybody's relationship status, but it's quite fun. I think we also had this in Leiden at the beginning of Corona. There's one super over time supermarket where everyone is going and then they had this, also this with the baskets that you had, you could take one with different colors. Yeah, with different colors and then when you were doing your groceries, you could show whether you were single or not. So I think people always find ways to... That's the same with Ilya saying we will always be creative and find new ways. Now finally, I ask everyone, what is lustful life for you? For me, it's doing what I like, my passion just follow it. Like when I started my studies, it was not that I decided to go do linguistics because I thought that the money was there, I just did that because I really liked language, I wanted to know more about it and then I just slowly... Yeah, now I'm doing this research into online dating. It was not something that I started with and as a young person, I thought, oh, I wanted to be a researcher, just do what you like and then at some point you are. Stay curious and do what you like. Thank you very much. Tess van de Zander, thank you. And our next guest, ladies and gentlemen, is Professor Peter Achterberg, who works at the Tilburg School of Social and Behavioral Sciences, specializing in cultural sociology. Give it up for Peter Achterberg. Yay. Yeah, Peter, how is it for you to be standing again in an auditorium with people? Is that shocking and new? It feels so nice. I'm really ready for this. It's a shame that there's not too many people, but this will come next week, I hope. Yeah, yeah. And also for you as a researchers and maybe also as a teacher, how have you experienced those corona times? So I'll tell you, before the holiday break, we were allowed to have some lectures and nobody was really organizing it and I got fed up with zooming at home, so I decided to do it. And well, there was like out of 30 students or something, 12 showed up, but we had a blast, right? So it was like really fun doing a lecture and you could feel the energy, even though there were only 12 people in the room, but I liked it so much and I missed it so much and it made me realize how important it is to be together, right? So this is what I like. Yeah, and also you describe yourself as a cultural sociologist? Yes. So from that perspective, how do you see the value of what we're doing also this week, meeting people, but also partying, all those things, how do you see that? Yeah, so I'm a cultural sociologist, but not in the sense that I study culture, but more like cultural events or music or those kinds of things that can be studied, but I study culture in the sense of just talking to people and finding out how they see the world and what are the values that they embrace and why do they do so and what kind of consequences do these values have, right? So that can be about partying, but most of the times it's just in the realm of religion or in the realm of politics or science, right? And if you look to the corona times that we had and the sort of transition we're making now to maybe a sort of a back to normal life, what kind of trends do you see then? Yeah, so I can see a lot of stability strangely enough. Stability? Yeah, so there's been a couple of studies, also done by a couple of colleagues in the department who basically show that there's a lot of stability in how people think about institutions, whether or not they trust the government, how people think, I also did a study, how people think about corona conspiracy theories. And you can see a lot of stability in how people think and also how they can be explained, right? So corona didn't massively change everything there is to know about culture, for instance, right? And with these conspiracy theories, because what I see when I just read the newspaper, I think that there's more conspiracy theory, more people believing that, is that true or is that also? It's hard to say, right? So and this is mainly to do with the fact that, well, since let's say a couple of years, this has really been a popular subject to study, but while there's not much data on that, so we can say, some scholars say that we are now living in some sort of conspiracy culture and it has really become prevalent. And for instance, there's media scholars who are constantly showing that this has really become a very important theme in movies, for instance, or in Hollywood series or those kinds of things. But to show it empirically using survey research or to show it in other ways, that's a little bit hard because the data simply are lacking, right? If you would ask me, my guess would be yes. It would be a yes. A little bit. And I also found a very interesting publication on change and the desire for nostalgia. Yeah. And as I'm correct, but correct me if I'm wrong, we are at risk that we have two nostalgic feelings now about the pre-corona times, that we might be romanticizing or over-romanticizing that time. Yeah, it might be. So there's a lot of people's suffering almost from these feelings of nostalgia and well, these aren't like strange feelings. Everybody sometimes has that, right? But then there's like, before corona times, there were also a lot of people who were basically longing for a time long past, but we can really ask the question whether or not those times really existed or not, right? But that doesn't really matter. And now in corona times, you can also see those nostalgic figures showing up, pointing to how beautiful life was before corona. And you also saw a connection between these feelings that people have and we already spoke a bit about it, those conspiracy theories. You think there's a connection between them? Yeah, I think so. So, and that has mainly to do with the fact that while there's a similar type of explanation possible for both. Well, if you take a look at, for instance, the paper, that Bram paper and I, Bram will be up next. Some somewhere. It will be one of the last guests today. So we wrote a paper on explaining why people feel so nostalgic. And one of the explanations was, well, just general discontents with modern solutions offered in society nowadays, right? So they kind of despise modernity and they feel alienated. They don't think that they can do anything they would like to do. They feel pressured by all kinds of institutions. And on the other hand, there's another form of, well, discontents, cultural discontents, which sociologists call Anomia, which basically says, well, okay, they feel some sort of lack of moral guidance in these modern societies. And both of these types of discontents might contribute to, not might, but contribute to feelings of nostalgia. And also, they also contribute to feelings of support for conspiracy theories. But a conspiracy theory coming from the idea that it used to be better. The past was better than it is now. That is still quite a leap, I think, from people thinking that I'm vaccinated with a chip from Bill Gates, for example. And because I'm vaccinated now that Bill Gates is now controlling me and telling us what to say. So I'm not saying that they're completely the same, right? So I say they have the same type of source, but the expressions are radically different, right? So in the first time, they basically, in the case of nostalgia, they reject modernity and long for a time, a long past. And in the other ones, they more or less focus on the technology, for instance, inserting you and claiming, this isn't to be trusted, right? So you can clearly understand how they both, both come from, let's say, the same feeling, but they have very different expressions. And how is that for you? Also when you're talking to students, because you want your students to be curious, as Eli van Bezer said, you want them to be critical. You want them to be real scientists. But it can also turn the other way around they're becoming like too critical and they might get into those conspiracy theories. Well, I'm, yeah. So is there a great area? I don't know. So do you have students, for example, who believe in those kind of theories and who confront you with it? Or they say, I don't believe infection, Mr. Arthur. I haven't met that. So I do a lot of public lectures. And then sometimes when I do a public lecture on conspiracy theories, I can see or there are some sort of persons who can be classified as a conspiracy theorist. But in class, I don't think, so what I can see is, let's say the opposite, the modernist or a positivist view of people getting really angry with people believing in conspiracy theories because it's not true or something, right? So, and that's also kind of strange because well, there's a lot of beliefs that people embrace that aren't true or are hard to be proven true, right? So why be angry with people embracing a conspiracy theory? And that's a discussion I might have. But yeah. Have you seen that in the student house where you're living that you have these kinds of discussions and sometimes you hear arguments, a thing that you think, oh, what's this? Not really. I think I do watch a lot of conspiracy theory videos, but I think because of YouTube and everything, it's become like a form of entertainment for us. So we think it's funny to watch how people think, but I think it's funny to hear it. I also don't believe it personally. And I don't know any people who do believe it, but I can understand why some people believe in conspiracy theories, but I just enjoy the YouTube videos. You see it as entertainment, as watching something. And on this part of YouTube videos, you also said that it might also be that one of the biggest challenges of our time is not too little, but too much information. People have so much information to choose that it makes it hard. And of course, Nienke knows what's right and what's sort of fake news, but for some people that might be very hard. Yeah, so yeah, that's one of the things that, so for instance in social psychology, they also have this theory on, let's say how individual frames kind of make the interpretation possible of certain types of information. And what you get in times of information overload is the idea that there's so much information and well, that you simply cannot know for sure what is true and what is not and who should be trusted and those kinds of things. And then, well, my idea is at least that these individual frameworks, these ideological perspectives become way more important because then you can choose, pick and choose whichever information suits your preexisting ideas quite nicely and which don't and you reject those of course, right? Because they'll just push it according to you. And well, this leads to some sort of fragmentation of scientific knowledge, fragment societal polarization over science, for instance. And that's exactly what you see. So for instance, if you take the COVID crisis in the beginning, when it just started, was this governmental idea of, well, let's have a smart lockdown. Oh, everybody said, okay, let's do that.  So, and then now there's like a multitude of interpretations and anytime the government or Jaap van Dissel by the RIVM says something, there's like a huge cacophony of all kinds of, well, interpretations of whether or not it's true and the longer it takes, the more of these opinions. So the more it takes, the longer it takes, the more information there is, the less obvious it is to know what is true or what is not. Which kind of contributes also to, well, embracing all kinds of conspiracy theories, right? Because then you can catch Jews. Peter, also thank you for your contribution. Final question, what's lost for life for you? I was fearing this question already. So I was thinking, okay, what should I say? Okay, so I just saw a movie. I like this movie a lot. I don't know whether you like it. It's a show of my distaste or bad taste. Yes, man, I just say yes. Just say yes to anything, right? So just do it, go for it. And I think that's a nice way of moving into your college years. And a very good advice for the top week. Just say yes. Thank you very much. Listen to Jim Carrey, always listen to Jim Carrey. Peter Achtenberg, thank you. And our next guest, we will sit down here on these beautiful new boxes is Mark van Berge Lecturer at Fontes Academy for Creative Industry Specializing in the Dance Industry. Give it up for Mark van Berge. Mark, welcome. Hi.  So we do some beatboxing. Oh yeah, we can try that. But is this also for you a proper introduction on what you do? What would you like introduction again? Lecturer at Fontes Academy for Creative Industry Specializing in the Dance Industry. Yeah, that's it. I write about it as well for my own platform. This is our house. Yeah, this is our house. And can we then also sort of see you, the same as Tess, as sort of a researcher, maybe working towards a professor sometimes? Who knows? Yeah, I'm teaching about it. So maybe one day as a professor, I don't know. And again, I'll show to all the people you can ask questions. And the best question, will we reward with your book? Can you explain us a little bit about this book? What's in it? What can we read here? Well, this is the story, the global overview story about the culture we built and was a good in here in the Netherlands. So we started out in 2013. I started writing the book some four years in advance and I thought, well, we have such a big culture here, such a big industry, all these top DJs touring around the world, but we still don't have a overview book. And I've been writing about it for some 20 years now. So by the time it was about 10, 15 years, and I thought, well, at 25 years, we do must have a book about it. So I started it. And then five years later, the international edition came out and updated, celebrating 30 years of dance and yeah, some other titles in the meantime and a lot of articles. And now, yeah, teaching students how to make a career in the business. Yeah. And can you explain, we talked about impact and what music can do? How would you explain the importance of the dance industry to people who are, for example, into Mozart and will simply calls house, takke herrie? What do you say to them? Maybe basically it's the same. Maybe you enjoy Mozart sitting in a sofa and with your eyes closed and like floating away myself and some 100,000s of people in this tree alone. We like to enjoy it between a lot of people at a festival or in a club with electronic music. Like the name says it all, it's functional. It's music made to dance. So it's a culture. And what kind of value do you see them for society? Well, it's a very important value because it's, I'm glad you asked because at the moment we're talking about festivals if it's a super spreader of a virus. But I think it's a spreader of oil in an economy where we work or study hard. We must really steam and we have to party sometimes and what we do with Mozart or a movie or go to a festival. I think that basically the same. And last Saturday we had this huge protest called Unmutus. And I don't think it's a rhetorical question. Were you there? Yeah, and I spoke there as well. I spoke to the Maas in Eindhoven was an honor and it was a historic moment. It's maybe if I once release another version of the book this is a key moment because never have we seen such a huge gathering in our industry before. Yeah, because as you said, the Netherlands is sort of the champions league of the dance industry. But now it seems when we look at other countries the Netherlands is sort of the slowest kid in the class. Everyone else seems to be opening up and... Yeah, I wouldn't say that because like the pioneering we did here with the Field Lab events, it was Dutch, it came out of the pioneering. But like we gave it away. Some we opened up too early, I guess. And now other countries are kind of taking benefit of our experiments and our knowledge. Like we still have a lot of knowledge here but we have to watch out that not a big brain drain is happening. So a lot of people are looking and finding new work because this industry has been shut down so long now. And we'll lose those people, you mean? Yeah, absolutely. That's a massive brain drain that's happening right now. And you also wrote an article in the Dutch national newspaper Trouw, more or less saying the same thing which is that your main message now that we should try to open up within limits, of course? Yeah, that was it. We had the knowledge. We made some capital mistakes primarily made by the government, I believe, but also by some visitors and some organisers. But if we go back and we take the latest lessons and see that the society has been vaccinated, I'm not pledging for a test in the long run but if we take the right steps, we can get back. And let's make use of all the knowledge that we learned from the field labs. Yeah. And in the context of the rich industry, we've built that message in Trouw that we're playing Champions League in the dance industry, such a small country operating really on big stages worldwide. And if we're playing Champions League, who is Messi then? Dance industry? Yeah, if you look in terms of reach, you should say Martin Garrix as a DJ, but as an event promoter, it should be ID&TE or Tomorrowland. Are you into dance music, Annike? Sometimes. Sometimes occasionally. Yeah, mostly like in the club, sometimes at the festival. But like the names you just said, I also recognize them. And can your experience also with you and your friends when you go to clubs and you go dancing, what is that? What does it add to your life when it comes to lust for life? What does it do? Yeah, it adds to the social aspect of everything. So you can go out, it's always fun to dance together, meet new people in the club and I think the music really adds to that since you said it. It's dance music. So you're supposed to dance to it. Yeah. Is that also what lust for life is for you? To dance? Not just, I'm not like a dancer in the art of dancing, but it's a thing that happens with this music. So much energy and yeah, it's still, yeah, I started going out when I was 15. It was exactly the moment that house music came up here in the Netherlands around 1990. And it caught me and it still catches me. Definitely one of the lusts in life. Yeah, and you have founded this platform. This is our house. Can you tell us a little bit about that and why people should visit this platform? Yeah, I believe, yeah, there are so many verses of electronic music and like I said, it's a book. I thought there needed to be a book and I thought it needed to be a platform where people can read or watch or listen about electronic music. So I started it and yeah, it's now, yeah, it's six years ago. I do it together with a team of youngsters, a lot of students of myself who contribute who write videos and we, it's a talent platform and we do like in-depth interviews with key players, small players, big players. And yeah, it's fun. It's more like a passion project. I don't earn a lot of money with it. So I consider myself as a journalist still in first place. So I really like to practice as journalist. But so far, no questions on my cell phone, but of course we have an audience so I can try it, a real-life audience. I'll try to do a one and a half social distancing. Do you have a question for Mark? Not really. Do you like his story and his passion about music? Do you share that passion? Yes, of course, indeed I'm, well, I play also, well, I like a lot of music and I love that he also is passionate about music but I have no question. That's okay. And what kind of music are you in? I'm in. What kind of music do you like? At the time I listened to a lot of rock. I love it. And sometimes Mark, you also hear this, that some people, for example, say rock is better, dance music is better, Mozart is better. What do you think about those discussions about musical taste?  No, I like all kinds of music. I started with rock for myself and I still listen to classical music sometimes, well, when I studied I listen to a lot of classic music. So, yeah, no, let's not discuss about taste. Let's not do that. But let's do lust for life, finally. What's your lust for life advice to all the students? My advice, oh man. Yeah, and enjoy, embrace life. And yeah, for me, this scene is still, I'm still not ready for it. So the electronic music scene is my lust for life but also love for my work, for my family, for my girlfriend, yeah, like explore it, do it, like Peter said, well, go out, explore things, yeah, fall sometimes, you know, get on your mouth and then stand up and explore. And yeah, that's the best way to learn, I guess. Thank you very much, Mark van Bergen, thank you. And his name was already mentioned by Peter Achterberg because there are also colleagues. Our final guest is Mr. Bram Peeper and he is a lecturer at the Tilburg School of Social and Behavioral Sciences, specializing in work, life balance and in music. And yeah, give him a round of applause, Bram Peeper. And you describe yourself as a musical nerd. More or less, yes, I mean, since I'm 20, it's also science but before that it's mainly music and still is. Yeah, let's start with music and then we go to science. Okay. What do you do with music? I'm a passive music lover so I'm listening to music and since my, I think my 10th, 11th year I'm also DJing at parties and also radio shows. And also for you then, the inevitable question, how was corona then? Well, for playing out as a DJ, very quiet. Yeah. The radio is going on with corona or not so that that went well and there's still a lot of music published. Although a lot of artists waited a little bit during corona to bring out their new music because nowadays you have to earn your money by giving concerts and tours, which was not possible but still there was a lot of good new music out in the last one and a half year. Yeah. And Mark already said that we should not have conversations about musical tastes, do you agree on that? Or is it one of the best things to do? It's always a very nice discussion but you know you never can win. But it's very nice to talk about musical tastes but I mean, there's not a final solution on what's the best music. No, because I understood there is some research that might show or indicate that our musical tastes mostly has been formed in our younger years so let's say between our 15 and 25 and also by your mother. And by your mother? Yeah.  Than father's, yep. And still what I also see that it's all sometimes seems that the older generation usually looks down on the musical taste of the younger generation. For example, the parents of my parents they really hated the Beatles. That was wrong, that was, you know. And probably your parents hated Disco because it was always the same kind of annoying beat. Exactly. Trying to listen to 50s music or to reggae you can make the same comment for almost every genre. Yeah. Which is basically, I mean, therefore it's a genre. It's the same kind of elements there you can recognize. Yeah. Yeah. So, and then for you, do you think that you still learn from young people or do you also sometimes find yourself sort of looking down on new music thinking, oh, that's not real good music? No, I think there is good music and bad music and it also, of course, depends on your own taste and what you like. I like, at least, that there's a groove in music, although I also like to listen to ambient music or classical music like Mark said, depends on the situation. But it's basically good and bad music. Although there are some sorts of music I'm not very fond of, contrary to Peter who likes the Dutch slagers. I'm not very fond of the Dutch slagers but I know there's a lot of audience for it. And if, when I'm a DJ, I'm just a prostitute. I will just play what everybody wants to hear. To play what your audience wants to hear. Yep. I think that's an old-fashioned idea of the DJ and probably Mark can tell you more about that. The DJ is a producer and some kind of artist. I started DJing as someone who was just playing the music that people like to hear. The guy at the wedding and then people come up and ask for a song. That's very different from what Marvin Garrix is doing. From your research perspective, how do you see the value of music in a society? Well, I think I have the same ideas as Mark. It's something to let of steam, to sometimes channel your emotions. It's a very, especially when you talk about dance music, if it's soul or funk or disco or house and also especially rock music, it's a way to have a kind of bodily connection and with yourself and with your audience. And interesting enough is when you look at, for instance, the history of disco, that was the first kind of music where people were also starting to dance totally on themselves. Before that, you always have to dance as a cobble or line dance or whatever. But since disco and later house music, which is a kind of continuation of disco, you see that also enjoying music by yourself is totally accepted. Yeah. And that is a big difference. Yes, it's a big difference. It was also one of the big reasons why disco music and later house music was looked down upon by say the progressive rock music critics because it was hedonistic. There was not a message. There were no political or intelligent lyrics. It was just focused on dancing. And bodily movements. And as you know, in Western culture, we have a very different or difficult relationship with sexuality and bodily movements. So it was immediately seen. Dance music is something strange. Had a look, for instance, at the jazz in the 1920s was seen as vulgar as obscene. Yeah, obscene. Now you also, now we go also more to your science work. You are specializing in work life balance. And I think it's an understatement to say that has pretty much changed for everyone during these lockdowns. Yeah, but the funny thing about work life balance, I'm mainly doing research in the last 20 years on how people combine work and life, is that from research we know for decades that, for instance, working from home, it used to be called tailor work, it's almost for everybody beneficial. But until corona, most of the management of organizations always had the idea, well, working at home, that's for the management, but not for the other people in the company. As little as possible. Yes, and now everybody knows and also experienced that most people are doing more when they work at home. Despite the fact that you need also the social setting of the work floor. But working a couple of days at home is very beneficial for productivity. And because I think for all the students and all the teachers, I think they really are so relieved that we can be in classrooms again. Yeah, also there is, of course, a difference. I mean, I've been teaching for the last one and a half years behind my screen, but living in a house with a garden, a wife, kids, having an own study, it's something totally different than sitting up in your three by four room at the attic and have no place to go. Like the situation for Nienke. Yeah, so I had a lot of fun doing my job during corona, but I'm very well aware that it's not the same as feeling the energy like Peter said of having a live lecture, but also it's not the same if you're in a totally different social situation. Now Ilya already also said that we might adapt, we might change, we do the box with this uncle you don't wanna give a hug, et cetera. But on the other hand, I also hear from some people who did a lot of zooming that now meetings are sort of the new big thing and people want to do in real life meetings because that's sort of a higher status. They say, well, we can do this by teams, but we can also do this in real life and meet up each other because that gives us more value. Yeah, well, people always try to think about things which distinguish them from other people. It used to be receiving a lot of emails was very important, when you receive more emails you were more important than it was having text messages than it was having. So yeah, people will always try to think about something like that. Although doing meetings in Zoom is very efficient. So if you cut out the social element of meeting each other live, you can have a very efficient way of having a meeting. And it's also very, very good for the environment. Think about the amount of people traveling around to have just a meeting. My brother-in-law used to fly every week to New York to have a meeting. That's ridiculous, of course, we say now. From our Corona perspective now it's a ridiculous choice to do that. Are you relieved that universities are also opening the classroom again? Yeah, I'm quite relieved. I was more productive during Corona, but yeah, in my three by four room, it was not ideal. So sometimes I was laying on my bed working because I didn't have room to sit anywhere. But apart from that, when I was home back at my parents' house, I was more productive, I had the space, I really liked it. But yeah, I miss going to the men's house to grab a bite with my friends or just chill at one of the rooms in like the Esplanada building. So it's like, I was more productive, but I'm also happy I get to see my friends. The social part and meeting each other, et cetera. And that's also what the top week is about. We heard a lot of mottos, we heard a lot of advices, and yours is of course the final one. What is your last for life advice for all the students participating now in the top week? Yeah, my own list for life, except for my partner and my kids, of course, is music, but ask questions. I'm on the idea of curiosity by asking questions. My experience as student, but later as a teacher, is that only 10 to 20% of the students will ask questions during meetings. It's a waste, don't do that. Ask questions, be curious. And because this is a relatively safe space at university to ask questions and to enlighten yourself and get immersed in things you really like. Thank you very much. Bram, paper. You're welcome. Yes. And Ninka, how have you experienced these conversations we had? What have you learned from example, from everything that you have heard? Oh, well, yeah, I heard some new things I never heard of before, but I thought it was very interesting that like all the speakers could also relate to us because sometimes the students think like, oh, we're the only ones who have like a tough time during Corona, but you see that like in different ages, different stages of lives. Everybody was struggling with it, but also my main advice to like the students in top week is be curious, try new things. So I like it that it's still also the advice some of the speakers gave and yeah. Thank you very much for that advice. And thank you also of course for all the hard work you and all your colleagues are doing in this top week. Thank you very much. Ninka Lapin. And ladies and gentlemen, finally of course also on behalf of Studium Generale, we thank you all for watching and participating and we hope to see you at our next event. And that's why you find all these leaflets here on your chair and please feel free to subscribe to the free newsletter and you can even do that with a buddy, with a friend and then you have a chance to win this unique Studium Generale dopper. And that's what I'm going to finalize with for now. Have a great top week and see you again soon with Studium Generale. Thank you very much. Bye bye.


M96's core is also displaced from the galactic center. Its gas and dust are distributed asymmetrically, and its spiral arms are ill-defined. But this portrait, taken with ESO's very large telescope, shows that imperfections can be beautiful. The galaxy's core is compact but glowing, and the dark dust lanes around it move in a delicate swirl towards the nucleus. The spiral arms' patchy rings of young blue stars are like a necklace of blue pearls. Its graceful imperfections likely result from the gravitational pull from nearby galaxies. M96 spans 100,000 light-years in diameter, about the size of our Milky Way.