MinnPost Picks: Stephen Hawking, Jordan Peterson, and the undocumented immigrant who became an unofficial U.S. diplomat

“The quest to save Stephen Hawking’s voice,” San Francisco Chronicle

It might come as a surprise that Stephen Hawking, on the cutting age of physics, was still using technology from the 1980s to speak as recently as early this year. As the decades-old technology threatened to fail, Hawking worried he would lose the clear, robotic voice he had come to be associated with after he lost his own ability to speak to a motor neuron disease. This is the story of how the team who created Hawking’s voice saved it, delivering it to him, in updated form, shortly before his death. — Greta Kaul, data reporter

“How an undocumented Irish immigrant became an unofficial U.S. diplomat,” The Washington Post

Kevin Sullivan and Mary Jordan tell the story of an Irish-born journalist who overstayed his student visa before starting a series of publications aimed at Irish Americans. After an introduction to a campaigning Bill Clinton, Niall O’Dowd volunteed to be a secret envoy to the IRA — and ended up helping broker the peace deal for Northern Ireland. — Peter Callaghan, local government reporter

“The Intellectual We Deserve,” Current Affairs

Nathan Robinson reads through much of Jordan Peterson’s work, and writes about why he’s become so popular and respected. He looks at some of the criticisms Peterson gives to the left; why the left bears some blame for the criticisms; and what it means if Peterson is, as David Brooks says, “the most influential public intellectual in the Western world right now.” — Jonathan Stegall, user experience engineer

“Former Tronc Chairman and Investor Michael Ferro Accused of Inappropriate Advances by Two Women,” Fortune

Michael Ferro isn’t a name most people in America know or care about. But to one small subset of the population — journalists — he has become somewhat famous, or infamous, thanks to his takeover several years ago of the company that owned the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times and The New York Daily News, among others. He renamed it Tronc, which was greeted with the appropriate levels of mockery, and he talked a big game, even if it was never entirely clear that he any clue what he was doing. That’s all over now. Ferro recently and abruptly “retired” from Tronc after Fortune reporters Kristen Bellstrom and Beth Kowitt broke this story, which outlines damning and highly detailed allegations that Ferro sexually harassed several women. Lest anyone worry about Ferro’s ability to put food on the table during his retirement, though, it’s been reported that he will still be paid $5 million per year by Tronc through 2020. — Andy Putz, editor