Forum Network Soapbox
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Anna Lappe and Frances Moore Lappe: Diet for a Hot Planet
Anna Lappe and Frances Moore Lappe, a mother and daughter pair who have revolutionized the way we think about food, hunger, and climate change discuss Anne Lappe's new book, Diet for a Hot Planet: The Climate Crisis at the End of Your Fork and What You Can Do About It.In 1971, Frances Moore Lappe's Diet for a Small Planet sparked a revolution in how we think about hunger, alerting millions to the hidden environmental and social impacts of our food choices. Now, nearly four decades later, her...
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Renaissance Roots of Modern Science
Toby Lester, author of widely acclaimed books on two of the great achievements during the Renaissance, visits with Science for the Public to discuss important discoveries, and rediscoveries, that brought about the first map to show America (The Fourth Part of the World (2009), and Da Vinci's iconic Vitruvian Man (Da Vinci's Ghost) (2012). Both of these accomplishments reflected an intellectual shift over centuries that led to modern science.
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Anna Lappe and Frances Moore Lappe: Diet for a Hot Planet
Anna Lappe and Frances Moore Lappe, a mother and daughter pair who have revolutionized the way we think about food, hunger, and climate change discuss Anne Lappe's new book, Diet for a Hot Planet: The Climate Crisis at the End of Your Fork and What You Can Do About It.In 1971, Frances Moore Lappe's Diet for a Small Planet sparked a revolution in how we think about hunger, alerting millions to the hidden environmental and social impacts of our food choices. Now, nearly four decades later, her...
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String Theory and the Universe's Hidden Dimensions
Shing-Tung Yau, chair of Harvard's mathematics department, and science journalist Steve Nadis discuss their new explication of string theory, The Shape of Inner Space: String Theory and the Geometry of the Universes Hidden Dimensions. String theory says we live in a 10-dimensional universe, but that only four are accessible to our everyday senses. According to theorists, the missing six are curled up in bizarre structures known as Calabi-Yau manifolds. In The Shape of Inner Space, Shing-Tung...
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The Life of Super-Earths: How the Hunt for Alien Worlds...
Astronomer Dimitar Sasselov discusses his book The Life of Super-Earths: How the Hunt for Alien Worlds and Artificial Cells Will Revolutionize Life on Our Planet. Sasselov discusses current efforts to search for other planets that may hold the key to this answer. Sasselov, the founding director of Harvard University’s Origins of Life Initiative, shows how the search for “super-Earths”—rocky planets like our own that orbit other stars—may provide the key to answering essential questions about...
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Alzheimer's Prevention Program
Alzheimer’s disease currently afflicts 5 million Americans; one American is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s every 70 seconds, and right now the only cure is prevention. Can Alzheimer’s really be prevented? What are the new research techniques being used to study Alzheimer’s disease? And what do they show us about the possibilities for preventing or delaying its degenerative effects?In his new book, The Alzheimer’s Prevention Program, Dr. Gary Small looks at what Alzheimer's disease actually is...
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Connectome: How the Brain's Wiring Makes Us Who We Are
MIT neuroscientist Sebsatian Seung discusses his book Connectome: How the Brain's Wiring Makes Us Who We Are.Seung is at the forefront of a revolution in neuroscience. He believes that our identity lies not in our genes, but in the connections between our brain cells—our own particular wiring. Seung and a dedicated group of researchers are leading the effort to map these connections, neuron by neuron, synapse by synapse — a development previously unobtainable due to the incredible computing...
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David Weinberger: Too Big to Know
David Weinberger, senior researcher at the Berkman Center discusses his latest book, Too Big to Know: Rethinking Knowledge Now That the Facts Aren't the Facts, Experts are Everywhere, and the Smartest Person in the Room is the Room. Knowledge used to be a more straightforward matter than it is now; answers came from books or experts. But in the Internet age, knowledge has moved onto networks. There is more knowledge than ever, but it is different: topics have no boundaries, and disagreement...
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Oceanographer Sylvia Earle Discusses The World is Blue
Marine biologist Sylvia Earle, discusses her latest book, The World Is Blue, which reveals a global ecosystem on the brink of irreversible environmental crisis unless we act immediately.Sylvia Earle, the first woman to walk freely on the ocean floor (at a depth of 1,250 feet), has been called “Her Deepness” by The New Yorker and The New York Times. An Explorer-in-Residence at the National Geographic Society since 1998 and named Time magazine’s first “hero for the planet,” Earle has been at...
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The Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws...
Current research rooted in quantum mechanics, cosmology, and string theory concurs that our universe is actually only one of many “bubbles” in a rapidly growing bath of universes. Interviewed by author Amir Aczel, hear what physicist Brian Greene has to say about the strange worlds of the “multiverse” in his new book The Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos. Greene is recognized for groundbreaking discoveries in superstring theory and was called the “single best...
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Michael Nielsen: Reinventing Discovery
Michael Nielsen, a pioneer of quantum computing, discusses the concept of "open science" and the need to change the way scientific research is conducted and the way data is handled in the modern scientific era. How is technology revolutionizing the way scientific problems are solved? How can a system traditionally based on individual discovery adapt to support collaboration and teamwork?
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Conservation Lessons from Ice Age Extinctions
Sharon Levy, author of Once and Future Giants: What Ice-Age Extinctions Tell Us about the Fate of Earth’s Largest Animals, discusses what we can learn from extinctions in the remote past. Today, great beasts like elephants, lions and grizzly bears are threatened worldwide. New research on the demise of Ice Age giants like the mastodon and saber toothed cat now offers vital insights for modern conservation. Scientists have long debated whether prehistoric people drove large Ice Age animals to...
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What's Your DNA Profile Doing in a Federal Database?
In 1998 the FBI officially launched its Combined DNA Index System (CODIS) that linked the DNA collections of 50 states. Forensic DNA has revolutionized criminal investigation. However, there are many things the public does not know about the way DNA profiles are collected and used, and there is also a mystique about the infallibility of DNA matches in criminal investigations. Sheldon Krimsky, professor of urban and environmental policy and planning at Tufts University, explores these issues...
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Unraveling the Secrets of Viruses
John Connor of the Boston University School of Medicine explains how viruses are minimal structures, but many types, such as HIV and Ebola, can be lethal. Although genetically much simpler than the organisms they infect, viruses are able to pirate the machinery of cells to replicate themselves. Because of their ability to mutate rapidly, viruses often outpace the defenses of the organisms they attack. The Connor Lab studies the mechanisms that make viruses so successful, and they are...
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The Human Genome Project: Gateway to Understanding...
Professor John Quackenbush of the Harvard School of Public Health discusses how DNA-sequencing technology is changing how we think of ourselves as a species by providing new insights about our earliest ancestors and reconfirming our inextricable link to all life on earth. He also explores the legal and ethical questions surrounding such controversial topics as stem cell research, prenatal testing, forensics, and cloning.
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Eye-to-Eye with Climate Change in the Ocean
Dr. Les Kaufman of Boston University describes the sweeping transformation in the world ocean, brought about by climate change and also by pollution and over-fishing. His examples are global: from the most remote coral atolls of the Pacific nation of Kiribati, to the threatened waterfronts and fisheries of Massachusetts.
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Yahoo! and YouTube: Balancing Human Rights and Business
How do companies such as Yahoo! and YouTube decide on whether disturbing material should be banned from their sites? What are the free speech and human rights issues involved? What guidelines do they use? This informative workshop hosted by Rachel Davis, research fellow at the Harvard Kenedy School explores these questions and more. From the Carnegie Council for the Ethics in International Affairs.
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Public Parts: How Sharing in the Digital Age Improves...
Well-known blogger Jeff Jarvis celebrates what he calls the "emerging age of publicness," arguing that anything we have to fear in this new networked world is overwhelmingly outweighed by all the good that will come from it. From the Carnegie Council for Ethics in international Affairs.
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The Politics of Food's Environmental Footprint
The business of growing, processing, transporting and storing food has a substantial impact on the environment. How is that impact calculated, and who calculates it? Susanne Freidberg, professor of grograhy at Dartmouth College, discusses these issues and others with Science for the Public.
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Noam Chomsky: Language and Other Cognitive Processes
The nature of human language is still not completely understood. How do infants learn language? How does it fit in with other cognitive processes? Noam Chomsky, noted linguist, philosopher, and social critic explores the complexities of language and its study in this lecture given at Boston College.
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Joel Brenner: America the Vulnerable
The level of Internet crime is staggering, according to Joel Brenner in this lecture given at the Cambridge Forum. He is not just thinking of personal identity theft or Wikileaks breaches. Instead, Brenner reports that United States businesses and government agencies are under relentless cyber-assaults 24 hours a day and they are bleeding military secrets, commercial secrets, and technology. Brenner admits that he can’t tell us everything he learned about cyber-insecurity during his years in...
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Harnessing the Bioelectric Potential of Cells for...
Professor Michael Levin and his colleagues at the Tufts Center for Regeneration and Developmental Biology, have demonstrated that manipulation of voltage gradients in embryonic cells can alter physical structure. For example, such manipulation can produce functional eyes in odd places like the tadpole gut and regenerate tissue where that capacity is thought to be lost. The Levin Lab investigates how cells store and process the information and patterns that produce a complex 3-dimensional...
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Renaissance Roots of Modern Science
Toby Lester, author of widely acclaimed books on two of the great achievements during the Renaissance, visits with Science for the Public to discuss important discoveries, and rediscoveries, that brought about the first map to show America (The Fourth Part of the World (2009), and Da Vinci's iconic Vitruvian Man (Da Vinci's Ghost) (2012). Both of these accomplishments reflected an intellectual shift over centuries that led to modern science.
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Anna Lappe and Frances Moore Lappe: Diet for a Hot Planet
Anna Lappe and Frances Moore Lappe, a mother and daughter pair who have revolutionized the way we think about food, hunger, and climate change discuss Anne Lappe's new book, Diet for a Hot Planet: The Climate Crisis at the End of Your Fork and What You Can Do About It.In 1971, Frances Moore Lappe's Diet for a Small Planet sparked a revolution in how we think about hunger, alerting millions to the hidden environmental and social impacts of our food choices. Now, nearly four decades later, her...
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String Theory and the Universe's Hidden Dimensions
Shing-Tung Yau, chair of Harvard's mathematics department, and science journalist Steve Nadis discuss their new explication of string theory, The Shape of Inner Space: String Theory and the Geometry of the Universes Hidden Dimensions. String theory says we live in a 10-dimensional universe, but that only four are accessible to our everyday senses. According to theorists, the missing six are curled up in bizarre structures known as Calabi-Yau manifolds. In The Shape of Inner Space, Shing-Tung...
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Sustaining Life: The Importance of Biodiversity for...
The current loss of biological diversity is on par with the last great extinction event of 65 million years ago when roughly half of all species were lost. This rapid loss directly affects human health and well-being on a global scale. Aaron Bernstein explains the relationship between emerging disease patterns and declining biodiversity
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The Life of Super-Earths: How the Hunt for Alien Worlds...
Astronomer Dimitar Sasselov discusses his book The Life of Super-Earths: How the Hunt for Alien Worlds and Artificial Cells Will Revolutionize Life on Our Planet. Sasselov discusses current efforts to search for other planets that may hold the key to this answer. Sasselov, the founding director of Harvard University’s Origins of Life Initiative, shows how the search for “super-Earths”—rocky planets like our own that orbit other stars—may provide the key to answering essential questions about...
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Alzheimer's Prevention Program
Alzheimer’s disease currently afflicts 5 million Americans; one American is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s every 70 seconds, and right now the only cure is prevention. Can Alzheimer’s really be prevented? What are the new research techniques being used to study Alzheimer’s disease? And what do they show us about the possibilities for preventing or delaying its degenerative effects?In his new book, The Alzheimer’s Prevention Program, Dr. Gary Small looks at what Alzheimer's disease actually is...
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Alzheimer's Prevention Program
Alzheimer’s disease currently afflicts 5 million Americans; one American is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s every 70 seconds, and right now the only cure is prevention. Can Alzheimer’s really be prevented? What are the new research techniques being used to study Alzheimer’s disease? And what do they show us about the possibilities for preventing or delaying its degenerative effects?In his new book, The Alzheimer’s Prevention Program, Dr. Gary Small looks at what Alzheimer's disease actually is...
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Connectome: How the Brain's Wiring Makes Us Who We Are
MIT neuroscientist Sebsatian Seung discusses his book Connectome: How the Brain's Wiring Makes Us Who We Are.Seung is at the forefront of a revolution in neuroscience. He believes that our identity lies not in our genes, but in the connections between our brain cells—our own particular wiring. Seung and a dedicated group of researchers are leading the effort to map these connections, neuron by neuron, synapse by synapse — a development previously unobtainable due to the incredible computing...
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Cracking the Neural Code for Speech
A Science for the Public visit to the Neural Prosthesis Lab of Frank Guenther at Boston University. Dr. Guenther, Co-Director Jon Brumberg, and other members explain the significance of their research on speech production processes and the great advances underway in making communication possible for people who are unable to speak: victims of stroke, ALS and locked-in syndrome, for example. Dr. Guenther and his colleagues demonstrate the now-famous Brain-Computer-Interface device....
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In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our...
For two years Steven Levy, senior writer at Wired, was given an opportunity to observe Google's operations, development, culture, and advertising model from within the infrastructure, with full managerial cooperation. What did he find? Presented by the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs.
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David Weinberger: Too Big to Know
David Weinberger, senior researcher at the Berkman Center discusses his latest book, Too Big to Know: Rethinking Knowledge Now That the Facts Aren't the Facts, Experts are Everywhere, and the Smartest Person in the Room is the Room. Knowledge used to be a more straightforward matter than it is now; answers came from books or experts. But in the Internet age, knowledge has moved onto networks. There is more knowledge than ever, but it is different: topics have no boundaries, and disagreement...
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Oceanographer Sylvia Earle Discusses The World is Blue
Marine biologist Sylvia Earle, discusses her latest book, The World Is Blue, which reveals a global ecosystem on the brink of irreversible environmental crisis unless we act immediately.Sylvia Earle, the first woman to walk freely on the ocean floor (at a depth of 1,250 feet), has been called “Her Deepness” by The New Yorker and The New York Times. An Explorer-in-Residence at the National Geographic Society since 1998 and named Time magazine’s first “hero for the planet,” Earle has been at...
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The Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws...
Current research rooted in quantum mechanics, cosmology, and string theory concurs that our universe is actually only one of many “bubbles” in a rapidly growing bath of universes. Interviewed by author Amir Aczel, hear what physicist Brian Greene has to say about the strange worlds of the “multiverse” in his new book The Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos. Greene is recognized for groundbreaking discoveries in superstring theory and was called the “single best...
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Michael Nielsen: Reinventing Discovery
Michael Nielsen, a pioneer of quantum computing, discusses the concept of "open science" and the need to change the way scientific research is conducted and the way data is handled in the modern scientific era. How is technology revolutionizing the way scientific problems are solved? How can a system traditionally based on individual discovery adapt to support collaboration and teamwork?
-
Conservation Lessons from Ice Age Extinctions
Sharon Levy, author of Once and Future Giants: What Ice-Age Extinctions Tell Us about the Fate of Earth’s Largest Animals, discusses what we can learn from extinctions in the remote past. Today, great beasts like elephants, lions and grizzly bears are threatened worldwide. New research on the demise of Ice Age giants like the mastodon and saber toothed cat now offers vital insights for modern conservation. Scientists have long debated whether prehistoric people drove large Ice Age animals to...
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What's Your DNA Profile Doing in a Federal Database?
In 1998 the FBI officially launched its Combined DNA Index System (CODIS) that linked the DNA collections of 50 states. Forensic DNA has revolutionized criminal investigation. However, there are many things the public does not know about the way DNA profiles are collected and used, and there is also a mystique about the infallibility of DNA matches in criminal investigations. Sheldon Krimsky, professor of urban and environmental policy and planning at Tufts University, explores these issues...
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Unraveling the Secrets of Viruses
John Connor of the Boston University School of Medicine explains how viruses are minimal structures, but many types, such as HIV and Ebola, can be lethal. Although genetically much simpler than the organisms they infect, viruses are able to pirate the machinery of cells to replicate themselves. Because of their ability to mutate rapidly, viruses often outpace the defenses of the organisms they attack. The Connor Lab studies the mechanisms that make viruses so successful, and they are...
-
The Human Genome Project: Gateway to Understanding...
Professor John Quackenbush of the Harvard School of Public Health discusses how DNA-sequencing technology is changing how we think of ourselves as a species by providing new insights about our earliest ancestors and reconfirming our inextricable link to all life on earth. He also explores the legal and ethical questions surrounding such controversial topics as stem cell research, prenatal testing, forensics, and cloning.
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The Human Genome Project: Gateway to Understanding...
Professor John Quackenbush of the Harvard School of Public Health discusses how DNA-sequencing technology is changing how we think of ourselves as a species by providing new insights about our earliest ancestors and reconfirming our inextricable link to all life on earth. He also explores the legal and ethical questions surrounding such controversial topics as stem cell research, prenatal testing, forensics, and cloning.
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Christian Lander: Stuff White People Like, Coast to Coast
Blogger Christian Lander, founder of the website Stuff White People Like discusses his new book, Whiter Shades of Pale: The Stuff White People Like, Coast to Coast, from Seattles Sweaters to Maines Microbrews. If you thought you had white people pegged as Oscar-party-throwing, Prius-driving, Sunday New York Times--reading, self-satisfied latte lovers--you were right. But if you thought diversity was just for other races, then hang on to your eco-friendly tote bags. Veteran white person...
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Kwame Anthony Appiah: How Moral Revolutions Happen
Philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah discusses honor and its place in social and political movements throughout modern history through his new book is The Honor Code: How Moral Revolutions Happen. Long neglected as an engine of reform, honor emerges at the center of our modern world in Kwame Anthony Appiah's The Honor Code. Over the last few centuries, new democratic movements have led to the emancipation of women, slaves, and the oppressed. But what drove these modern changes, Appiah argues,...
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How Wars End
Pax Americana is a good thing, declares Gideon Rose. The problem is that even when the U.S. wins militarily, it often botches dealing with war's aftermath because it fails to define its political objectives.
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Clinging to Mammy: Our Relationship with Slavery
Micki McElya, professor of American studies at the University of Alabama examines why we cling to the notion of "mammy." She argues that the figure of the loyal slave has played a powerful role in modern American politics and culture. Stories of faithful slaves expose the power and reach of the myth, not only in popular advertising, films, and literature about the South, but also in national monument proposals, child custody cases, New Negro activism, anti-lynching campaigns, and the civil...
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The Tendencies of Technology
The recent changes that technology has made to books, reading, and the way we relate to each other are unprecedented and transformational. Tech guru Kevin Kelly, author of What Technology Wants; digital visionary Nicholas Negroponte; David Kirkpatrick, founder of Techonomy and author of The Facebook Effect; and The New York Time's Nick Bilton, author of I Live in the Future and Here's How It Works, discuss technology and its impact on how we live. Moderated by public radio's John Hockenberry.
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Ambassador Swanee Hunt on "Very Young Girls"
Ambassador Swanee Hunt introduces Very Young Girls, an expos? of the commercial sexual exploitation of girls in New York City as they are sold on the streets by pimps, and treated as adult criminals by police. The film follows barely-adolescent girls in real time, using v?rit? and intimate interviews with them, documenting their struggles and triumphs as they seek to exit the commercial sex industry. The film also uses startling footage shot by pimps themselves, giving a rare glimpse into...
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Elaine Scarry: Rule of Law, Misrule of Men
Elaine Scarry, Harvard's Walter M. Cabot Professor of Aesthetics and the General Theory of Value, discusses her newest book, Rule of Law, Misrule of Men. Arguing that post-9/11 legislation and foreign policy severed the executive branch from the will of the people, Elaine Scarry in Rule of Law, Misrule of Men offers a fierce defense of the people's role as guarantor of our democracy. Scarry begins with the groundswell of local resistance to the 2001 Patriot Act, when hundreds of towns,...
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Tim Wu: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires
Tim Wu, policy advocate, expert on copyright and communications, and creator of the phrase "net neutrality", talks about his book, The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires.
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The BP Oil Spill and the U.S. Navy's New Energy...
Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus is working to chart a new course for the Navy and Marine Corps, that by 2020 will dramatically reduce the Navy's consumption of fossil fuels. He also prepared the long-term recovery plan for the Gulf of Mexico in the aftermath of the oil spill.
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Catch Me If You Can: Frank Abagnale's Story
Frank Abagnale, who evolved from being a brilliant young mastermind of international deception and fraud into one of the world's most respected authorities on forgery and embezzlement, tells his life story. His intercontinental saga prompted Steven Spielberg to turn Abagnale's life into the movie Catch Me If You Can starring Leonardo DiCaprio.
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Ilana Halperin: A Field Guide to Body Mineralogy and...
In Physical Geology (New Landmass in Three Forms), Ilana Halperin explores the creative and cultural intersection between "body stones" and geology; she likens the development of these stones (calculi and choleliths) within the body to the generation of new landmasses on the earth. Her performative lecture is accompanied by archival footage of the Eldfell volcanic eruption on the Icelandic island of Heimaey in 1973 as well as images from her book, including ones of geological artifacts,...
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The Gratitude Girls: 30 Days of Gratitude
Carolyn Buttram, Vanessa Lowry, and Robin Kirby, authors of the online book, 30 Days of Gratitude, explain how increasing gratitude can displace unwanted malice and other faults, thereby bringing peace and contentment to life. Their book can be downloaded at www.daysofgratitude.com.
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What Technology Wants
In a brand-new view of technology, co-founder of Wired magazine Kevin Kelly suggests that it is not just a jumble of wires and metal. He argues that technology is actually a living, evolving organism that has its own unconscious needs and tendencies. Kevin Kelly is editor-at-large for Wired magazine which he helped to launch in 1993. During his tenure, Wired won the National Magazine Award for General Excellence.
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Prospects for a Two State Solution in the Middle East
Husam Zomlot, a widely acclaimed expert on peace solutions in culturally divided conflicts explores current prospects for a two state solution in the Middle East. Are there ways to develop greater mutual understanding in the region? What are the prospects that can be pursued successfully?
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David A. Kessler: The End of Overeating
David A, Kessler, former commissioner of the US food & drug administration, discusses ways the food industry manipulates the way we eat through his book, The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite. Most of us know what it feels like to fall under the spell of food-when one slice of pizza turns into half a pie, or a handful of chips leads to an empty bag. Its harder to understand why we cant seem to stop eating, even when we know better. The End of Overeating...
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Cornel West: Remaining Engaged in Haiti
Is Haiti just another fleeting humanitarian campaign? Or is it possible to respond to suffering and injustice in a way that is meaningful and sustainable? Professor, public intellectual and activist Cornel West shares his own experience with fighting injustice and gives insight into how we can engage in activism that is characterized by faith, perseverance, courage and hope. From The Veritas Forum at Columbia University, 2010. In the discussion, moderated by Columbia student Gabrielle...
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Kenji Yoshino: Uncovering the Hidden Assault on Our...
Yale Law School professor Kenji Yoshino explores the pressure in American society to hide our authentic selves. In discussing issues from book Covering: The Hidden Assault on Our Civil Rights, Yoshino will lecture on topics such as what role does the legal system have in ensuring civil rights for those who do not fit in, and how can we create an authentically diverse society? Kenji Yoshino is the Chief Justice Earl Warren Professor of Constitutional Law at New York University School of Law,...
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The Frugal Superpower: U.S. Leadership in a...
Scholar Michael Manelbaum says the era marked by an expansive U.S. foreign policy is coming to an end. He attributes the end to soaring deficits and recommends a new policy, centered on a reduction in the nation's dependence on foreign oil.
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Gwynne Dyer: Climate Wars
Journalist and historian in war studies Gwynne Dyer explores the cultural and political ramifications of climate change and discusses his new book, Climate Wars: The Fight for Survival as the World Overheats. Dwindling resources. Massive population shifts. Natural disasters. Spreading epidemics. Drought. Rising sea levels. Plummeting agricultural yields. Crashing economies. Political extremism. These are just some of the expected consequences of runaway climate change in the decades...
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Renewing Democracy: Soul of A Citizen
Paul Loeb argues that citizenship is more than political engagement in the newly revised edition of his underground best-seller, Soul of a Citizen. How do his narratives of creative, moral, and emotional citizenship play out in our age of cynicism and fear?
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Arianna Huffington: Third World America
Arianna Huffington, cofounder and editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post, discusses the future of American prosperity and her new book, Third World America: How Our Politicians Are Abandoning the Middle Class and Betraying the American Dream. Our industrial base is vanishing, taking with it the kind of jobs that have formed the backbone of our economy for more than a century; our education system is in shambles, making it harder for tomorrow's workforce to acquire the information and...
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Lessons from the Financial Crisis: More Government or...
Yaron Brook, President and Executive Director of the Ayn Rand Institute, and Peter Kadzis, Editor of the Boston Phoenix and former contributor to Money, Forbes, and the Boston Business Journal debate the lessons learned during the financial crisis--from bailouts to reforms to our efforts to prevent another economic disaster.
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Herbert Benson: The Relaxation Revolution
Pioneer of mind body medicine Herbert Benson explores his new book, The Relaxation Revolution: Enhancing Your Personal Health Through the Science and Genetics of Mind Body Healing. In the 1970s, Dr. Herbert Benson of Harvard Medical School ushered in a new era of understanding in the field of mind body medicine. Coining the term "relaxation response," Dr. Benson identified the body's physiologic reaction that is the exact opposite of the stress (fight-or-flight) response. In the four decades...
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Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter
Journalist and critic (and avid video gamer) Tom Bissell takes a deeper look into video game culture. His new book, Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter takes a serious look at a much-dismissed topic. Tom Bissell is a prizewinning writer who published three widely acclaimed books before the age of 34. He is also an obsessive gamer who has spent untold hours in front of his various video game consoles, playing titles such as Far Cry 2, Left 4 Dead, BioShock, and Oblivion for, literally, days....
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The Iranian Threat: What the Future Holds for Israel
The American Jewish Committee's (AJC) Director of the Israel/Middle East office Eran Lerman discusses that nation's perceived threats and future political challenges. Lerman is one of his nation's top strategic analysts on Israel, the Palestinians, Islamic fundamentalism, and the wider Middle East region. He is a regular op-ed contributor to Israeli and US newspapers. Judy Marx, executive director of the AJC Atlanta chapter, opens the event.
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Psychotropic Drugs and Children
Robert Whitaker, author of Anatomy of an Epidemic, discusses the disturbing effects of psychotropic drugs prescribed for children. Such medications, used for ADHD, depression, and anxiety, for example, have become commonplace over the past 30 years. This practice profoundly alters the lives of the children, and so now we, as a society, urgently need to address this question: do the medications help the children thrive and grow up into healthy adults? Or does this practice do more harm than...
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A Thousand Splendid Suns
Afghan American novelist Khaled Hosseini discusses A Thousand Splendid Suns, the follow-up to his best-seller, The Kite Runner. The new book is another searing epic of Afghanistan in turmoil.
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Jennifer Weiner: Fly Away Home
Bestselling novelist Jennifer Weiner reads from a discusses her most recent book, Fly Away Home. When Sylvie Serfer met Richard Woodruff in law school, she had wild curls, wide hips, and lots of opinions. Decades later, Sylvie has remade herself as the ideal politician's wife--her hair dyed and straightened, her hippie wardrobe replaced by tailored knit suits. At fifty-seven, she ruefully acknowledges that her job is staying twenty pounds thinner than she was in her twenties and tending to...
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Eating Green in Boston Restaurants
Leah Bloom, sustainability expert, green marketing consultant, and Boston Sustainable Food Examiner, discusses how to "eat green" in Boston restaurants. It's not easy being green, but some of the Boston area's best chefs and restaurants are leading the charge. Whether you like fish and fowl, pastured beef, or vegetarian fare, this presentation teaches you how to order an eco-friendly meal no matter where in the city you go out to eat. Bloom discusses where to find restaurants with...
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Buddhism Basics and Beyond
Geshe Phende shares insights into Tibetan Buddhist philosophy and how ancient teachings are as relevant today as they were 2500 years ago. He discusses how people in the 21st century can benefit from his years of studying the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path.
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Digital Art and Activism of Joseph DeLappe
Digital media artist and activist Joseph DeLappe discusses his work at the Museum of Modern Art. DeLappe has worked in new media since 1983, and in online, computer-game-based interventionist performance art since 2001. His recent projects include dead-in-iraq (2007), wherein he enters the name of each American military casualty from the war in Iraq into the popular U.S. government--funded "America's Army" computer game; and The Salt Satyagraha Online: Gandhi's March to Dandi in Second Life...
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Digital Art and Activism of Joseph DeLappe
Digital media artist and activist Joseph DeLappe discusses his work at the Museum of Modern Art. DeLappe has worked in new media since 1983, and in online, computer-game-based interventionist performance art since 2001. His recent projects include dead-in-iraq (2007), wherein he enters the name of each American military casualty from the war in Iraq into the popular U.S. government--funded "America's Army" computer game; and The Salt Satyagraha Online: Gandhi's March to Dandi in Second Life...
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Psychotropic Drugs and Children
During the past 30 years, the prescribing of psychiatric medications to children--stimulants, antidepressants, antipsychotics and others--has become commonplace. This practice profoundly alters the lives of the children, and so now we, as a society, urgently need to address this question: do the medications help the children thrive and grow up into healthy adults? Or does this practice do more harm than good over the long term. In this talk, Robert Whitaker, author of Anatomy of an Epidemic,...
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Noam Chomsky: Obama Administration and US Foreign Policy
Noam Chomsky, renowned for both his work in the field of linguistics and as a critic of US policies, offers a critical perspective on the foreign policy of the Obama administration. Professor Chomsky is often considered one of the most respected and influential intellectuals alive, and is currently a Professor Emeritus of Linguistics at MIT. Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman introduces Professor Chomsky and shares her experience in Haiti in the wake of the 2010 earthquake there.
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Don Lattin: The Harvard Psychedelic Club
Journalist and religion writer Don Lattin gives an inside look into The Harvard Psychedelic Club: How Timothy Leary, Ram Dass, Huston Smith, and Andrew Weil Killed the Fifties and Ushered in a New Age for America. The Harvard Psychedelic Club is the story of how three brilliant scholars and one ambitious freshman crossed paths in Cambridge in the winter of 1960-61, and how their experiences in a psychedelic drug research project transformed their lives and much of American culture in the...
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Juliet B. Schor: New Economics of True Wealth
Juliet B. Schor, sociologist and economist, discusses her book, Plenitude: The New Economics of True Wealth. Humans are degrading the planet far faster than we are regenerating it. As we travel along this path, food, energy, transport, and consumer goods are becoming increasingly expensive. The economic downturn that has accompanied the ecological crisis has led to another type of scarcity: incomes, jobs, and credit are also in short supply. Our usual way back to growth--a debt-financed...
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Bill McKibben: Eaarth
Bill McKibben, a journalist, writer, and climate change activist, discusses his most recent book, Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet. Twenty years ago, with The End of Nature, Bill McKibben offered one of the earliest warnings about global warming. Those warnings went mostly unheeded; now, he insists, we need to acknowledge that we've waited too long, and that massive change is not only unavoidable but already under way. Our old familiar globe is suddenly melting, drying,...
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Bill McKibben: Eaarth
Bill McKibben, a journalist, writer, and climate change activist, discusses his most recent book, Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet. Twenty years ago, with The End of Nature, Bill McKibben offered one of the earliest warnings about global warming. Those warnings went mostly unheeded; now, he insists, we need to acknowledge that we've waited too long, and that massive change is not only unavoidable but already under way. Our old familiar globe is suddenly melting, drying,...
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The Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in the US
Robert Whitaker, author of Anatomy of an Epidemic looks at the merits of psychiatric medications through the prism of long-term results, and reports on his findings in this talk. Since 1987, when Prozac was introduced, the number of adults in the United States on government disability due to mental illness has risen from 1.25 million people to more than four million today. In his book, Anatomy of an Epidemic, journalist Robert Whitaker explores this epidemic, and in so doing, raises this...
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Modern Slavery: MIT-BBC Symposium
In an effort to shine light on this issues of forced labor, enforced prostitution and human trafficking, MIT's Program on Human Rights and Justice at the Center for International Studies partners with the BBC World Service Trust, an independent BBC charity that promotes development through the innovative use of the media, to present a day-long public symposium on the problem of forced labor in the global economy and what can be done about it. The event coincides with the May 11, 2005 release...
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Anna Lappe and Frances Moore Lappe: Diet for a Hot Planet
Anna Lappe and Frances Moore Lappe, a mother and daughter pair who have revolutionized the way we think about food, hunger, and climate change discuss Anne Lappe's new book, Diet for a Hot Planet: The Climate Crisis at the End of Your Fork and What You Can Do About It. In 1971, Frances Moore Lappe's Diet for a Small Planet sparked a revolution in how we think about hunger, alerting millions to the hidden environmental and social impacts of our food choices. Now, nearly four decades later,...
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Using the Web to Encourage Local Civic Engagement (Part...
Six Cambridge, MA individuals share how they have used web tools for positive change in their communities and organizations, and how you can, too. Whether you want to raise awareness about an important local issue or gather people for a community event, you can make use of web tools that are inexpensive and often easy to use, to organize those in your community. The panel covers strategic uses of blogging, web video, social networking, web sites, and more.
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Prospects of Economic Recovery
In this lecture at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, two renowned economic experts assess the prospects for the global economy and examine systems and procedures that are prerequisites for greater financial stability. The Obama administration has expressed confidence that the country's economy will be stronger in 2010 due to the economic reforms undertaken and the expanding global economic recovery. Experts agree that the acute phase of the financial crisis has passed, but recovery...
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Elaine Scarry: Rule of Law, Misrule of Men
Elaine Scarry, Harvard's Walter M. Cabot Professor of Aesthetics and the General Theory of Value, discusses her newest book, Rule of Law, Misrule of Men. Arguing that post-9/11 legislation and foreign policy severed the executive branch from the will of the people, Elaine Scarry in Rule of Law, Misrule of Men offers a fierce defense of the people's role as guarantor of our democracy. Scarry begins with the groundswell of local resistance to the 2001 Patriot Act, when hundreds of towns,...
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Noam Chomsky: Hospitality and Hostility in World Politics
Noam Chomsky, professor emeritus of linguistics at MIT, is the featured panelist in this event, moderated by Richard Kearney, professor of philosophy, with responses by Ali Banuazizi, professor of political science, and Stephen Pfohl, professor of sociology.
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Noam Chomsky: Hospitality and Hostility in World Politics
Noam Chomsky, professor emeritus of linguistics at MIT, is the featured panelist in this event, moderated by Richard Kearney, professor of philosophy, with responses by Ali Banuazizi, professor of political science, and Stephen Pfohl, professor of sociology.
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The Buddha: Preview and Screening
David Grubin screens and discusses highlights from his film, The Buddha, which was featured in the 2010 International Buddhist Film Festival at the Smithsonian's Freer Gallery in Washington, D.C. IBFF Executive Director, Gaetano Kazuo Maida, moderates the audience Q&A.
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Seth Grahame-Smith: Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter
Seth Grahame-Smith discusses his book, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. While Abraham Lincoln is widely lauded for reuniting the North with the South and abolishing slavery from our country, no one has ever known about his valiant fight against the forces of the undead. That is, until Seth Grahame-Smith, author of the bestselling novel Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, stumbled upon The Secret Journal of Abraham Lincoln, and became the first living person to lay eyes on it in more than one...
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Travis and Trinity Townsend: When The Cops Come Knockin'
Travis and Trinity Townsend are brothers, attorneys, and authors of When The Cops Come Knockin': An Illustrative Guide to Criminal Law. They speak to a class of high school students about criminal law, offer teenage survival skills and deliver insightful information about commonly committed cybercrimes. They discuss how to assert and protect legal rights when confronted by police officers, prosecutors, and other representatives of the criminal justice system.
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Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph...
In Empire of Illusion, Chris Hedges argues that we now live in two societies: one, the minority, functions in a print-based, literate world, that can cope with complexity and can separate illusion from truth. The other, a growing majority, is retreating from a reality-based world into one of false certainty and magic. In this "other society," serious film and theatre, as well as newspapers and books, are being pushed to the margins. In the tradition of Christopher Lasch's The Culture of...
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How to Stay a Passionate and Creative Educator
Nancy Rappaport, Harvard psychiatrist and author of the memoir In Her Wake: A Child Psychiatrist Explores the Mystery of Her Mother's Suicide, discusses ways that self-reflection can help educators to remain passionate and creative over time when working in schools. Stress and emotional exhaustion, if not addressed, can lead to "burnout". One's personal issues and challenges can also keep one from being truly present with students. Rapport suggests that the examination of our own trauma,...
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Thomas Ricks: General Petraeus and the American Military...
Washington Post correspondent Thomas E. Ricks discusses his newly in paperback exploration of the Iraq war, The Gamble: General Petraeus and the American Military Adventure in Iraq. Now updated to fully document the inside story of the Iraq war since late 2005, The Gamble is the definitive account of the insurgency within the US military that led to a radical shift in America's strategy. Based on unprecedented real-time access to the military's entire chain of command, Ricks examines the...
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Financial Crisis and Consumer Debt
Panelists Jeff Baker, Ransom James, Trey Loughran, and moderator S. Tamer Cavusgil discuss "Managing in Emerging Markets: The Financial Crisis and Consumer Debt," in an effort to better understand several critical global business issues.
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James Bradley: The Imperial Cruise
Writer James Bradley discusses his new book, The Imperial Cruise: A True Story of Empire and War. It's the true story of a 1905 cruise arranged by President Teddy Roosevelt sending Secretary of War William Taft, his gun-toting daughter Alice, and a group of congressmen on a mission to Japan, the Philippines, China, and Korea. There they would quietly forge a series of agreements that divided up Asia.
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Reawakening the American Soul
Called the "cradle of liberty," historic Faneuil Hall was the gathering place in the mid-1700s for the Sons of Liberty as they met to protest the arbitrary taxation policies of Great Britain. From these and subsequent meetings, protests were planned, including the Boston Tea Party, leading the way towards the ultimate liberation from British rule. Now, in our own time of crisis, with destructive forces taxing us once again, the bicentennial celebration of Emerson's birth calls for a new...
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Mao's Use of Propaganda
Georgia Perimeter College honors student Victoria White presents her work on how Chinese propaganda was used by that government to help control the behavior of its citizenry. The event is part of the The 20th Annual Dr. Francine King Social Science Colloquium.
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Rational Theism: From Doubt to Conviction
Developer of the Rational Theism Ken Wear explains the events that forced him to accept that conventional religion beliefs are not adequate. He discusses how he is drawn to Rational Theism, which does embrace deity. He tells members of the Theosophical Society that the central point of his conviction is that the body houses a spirit that has had both prior and the prospect of future existence in a physical body.
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How Religion Poisons Everything
Christopher Hitchens makes a case against religion. With a close reading of major religious texts, he documents the ways in which religion is a man-made wish. In God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, Hitchens frames the argument for a more secular life based on science and reason, in which hell is replaced by the Hubble Telescope's awesome view of the universe, and Moses and the burning bush give way to the beauty and symmetry of the double helix. Christopher Hitchens, a widely...
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Tyranny of E-mail: The 4,000 Year Journey to Your Inbox
Freelance book reviewer John Freeman warns us about The Tyranny of E-mail: The Four-Thousand-Year-Journey to Your Inbox. We are all familiar with the pull of our e-mail: it often sits open on our computers throughout the day, notifying us immediately if we have received a message and dragging us away from whatever work we had been doing. John Freeman's new book takes us back to an earlier time when written communication was slower and more thoughtful, from the painstaking carving of love...
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Jerry Springer on Health Care, Media and Entertainment
Former Cincinnati Mayor and current media giant Jerry Springer speaks openly on the health care debate, the media, and the state of entertainment.
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Kay Redfield Jamison: Nothing Was the Same
Johns Hopkins professor of psychiatry Kay Redfield Jamison discusses her new memoir, Nothing Was the Same. Jamison's first memoir, An Unquiet Mind, touchingly told the story of her struggle with mental illness. This new book brings the same mix of writerly style and psychological insight to the agonizing experience of losing her husband to cancer.
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Media and Women's Health: Sorting Fact from Fiction
Marking the 2005 National Women's Health Week, Judy Norsigian, an expert in women's health issues and founder of the landmark book, Our Bodies, Ourselves, examines the media's increasing impact on women's medical decisions and public perception of illnesses such as breast cancer, depression, and addiction.
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Why We Can't Leave the Planet to the Environmentalists
Environmental provocateur Micheal Shellenberger asks whether American climate change policy is moving in the right direction. The cap-and-trade model for regulatory legislation is based on economic assumptions that have shattered in the current economic crisis. Now Shellenberger questions whether dirty energy can ever be made expensive enough. How, instead, can we make clean energy cheap? In 2004 Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger published the hotly-debated The Death of...
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Standing Up to the Madness: Ordinary Heroes in...
Amy Goodman, host of Democracy Now! and an award winning journalist, discusses her new book, Standing Up to the Madness: Ordinary Heroes in Extraordinary Times. Jordan Weinstein, host of NPR's Morning Edition on WGBH-FM, Boston's oldest public radio station, moderates. When media outlets are owned by an ever tightening media monopoly, what is the importance of independent media like public, non-commercial radio and television? With the declining big city newspapers cutting staff, who will do...
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Women's Journey Toward Equality
Harvard Graduate School of Education Dean Kathleen McCartney presents Rosalind Chait Barnett, director of the Community, Families, and Work Program at Brandeis University with the 2008 Anne Roe Award. The biennial award was established in 1979 to honor Anne Roe, the first woman tenured at Harvard in 1963, and also a leading researcher on career development and women.Barnett receives the award and gives a lecture on how traditional gender roles are relaxing, subsequently freeing women to...
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Bringing Native Voices to Life on the Boston Harbor...
Members of the Massachuset-Ponkapoag tribal council talk with park managers from the Boston Harbor Islands about how they want to rewrite their own history. The council members argue that the prevailing history of the Native Americans was written not by the native people themselves, but by the people who came to America and decided what history would be written. Gill Soloman, chief sachem of the Massachuset-Ponkapoag Tribal Council, explains that this is why the native people must tell their...
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Bringing Native Voices to Life on the Boston Harbor...
Members of the Massachuset-Ponkapoag tribal council talk with park managers from the Boston Harbor Islands about how they want to rewrite their own history. The council members argue that the prevailing history of the Native Americans was written not by the native people themselves, but by the people who came to America and decided what history would be written. Gill Soloman, chief sachem of the Massachuset-Ponkapoag Tribal Council, explains that this is why the native people must tell their...
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Kafka Comes to America - Steven T. Wax
Public defender and author Steven T. Wax talks about his Kafka Comes to America: Fighting for Justice in the War on Terror. He reveals where and how our civil liberties have been eroded and how each of us can make a difference. Wax interweaves the stories of two men that he and his legal team represented: Brandon Mayfield, an American-born, small town lawyer and family man, arrested as a suspected terrorist in the Madrid train station bombings after a fingerprint was incorrectly traced back...
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Selective Attention: Neuroscience and the Art Museum
Barbara Stafford, William B. Ogden Distinguished Service Professor of the University of Chicago's Department of Art History, discusses the relationship between art museums and neuroscience. Barbara Stafford's recent essays focus on how developments in brain science are informing our assumptions about perception, emotion, sensation, and mental imagery. She is currently writing a cognitive history of images. Stafford is the writer of many books, including Body Criticism: Imaging the Unseen in...
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How War in Iraq Strengthened America's Enemies
Peter W. Galbraith describes the storm our next president will inherit in his latest book, Unintended Consequences: How War in Iraq Strengthened America's Enemies. As former US ambassador to Croatia and one of Washington's leading authorities on Iraq, Galbraith's analysis carries much weight in D.C. and in the media. The Iraq war was intended to make the US more secure, bring democracy to the Middle East, intimidate Iran and Syria, help win the war on terror, consolidate American world...
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Consciousness, Creativity, and the Brain
David Lynch, the award-winning writer, director, and producer, answers questions on his films, his 32-year practice of Transcendental Meditation, and the role of consciousness in the creative process. He is joined by physicist John Hagelin, who was featured in the documentary "What The Bleep Do We Know?" and neuroscientist Dr. Fred Travis, Director of the Center for Brain, Consciousness, and Cognition at Maharishi University of Management.
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John Palfrey: Internet Privacy Specialist
John Palfrey, an internet privacy specialist at Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society, discusses intellectual and technology law as it relates to electronic commerce, privacy issues, and governance.
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John Palfrey: Internet Privacy Specialist
John Palfrey, an internet privacy specialist at Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society, discusses intellectual and technology law as it relates to electronic commerce, privacy issues, and governance.
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Iran: Grand Bargain, Grand Ambition
Ted Galen Carpenter of the Cato Institute analyzes the costs and benefits of the five policies available to the United States given Iran's nuclear ambitions. He asserts that a package of concessions, including normalized diplomatic and economic relations, in exchange for unfettered international inspections of its nuclear program, is the most pragmatic course of action. Should Iran turn down the offer of a grand bargain, Carpenter advocates the path of acceptance and deterrence as the...
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Loot: Stolen Treasurers of the Ancient World
Sharon Waxman discusses questions of ownership of cultural objects and reads from new her book, Loot: Stolen Treasures of the Ancient World. Why are the Elgin Marbles in London and not on the Acropolis? If such stunning art objects have admittedly come to Western museums through the heavy hand of 19th century cultural exploitation, do these museums have an ethical responsibility to return them? What if such return harmed these objects because their home country is too poor to maintain, house...
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Sarah Sentilles - A Church of Her Own
Women have been among the most dynamic and successful ministers; but in divinity school, Sarah Sentilles discovered that some of the best and brightest of them were having trouble and even leaving the church altogether. To find out why, she entered the lives of female ministers. Talking with women of various ages and races in a range of churches, she emerged with the first real portrait of what it's like to lead as a woman of faith today. What Sentilles found was that despite many churches'...
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Haifa Zangana - Women, Action, and the Media: Haifa...
AHaifa Zangana gives a keynote address at the 2008 Women, Action, and the Media conference sponsored by the Center for New Words. Haifa Zangana is a novelist and former prisoner of Saddam Hussein's Iraqi regime. She is a weekly columnist for al-Quds newspaper and an occasional commentator for The Guardian, Red Pepper and al-Ahram Weekly. She lectures regularly on Iraqi culture, literature, and women issues. Visit us at www.wgbh.org/forum to explore our entire collection of lectures.
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Bill Lee - Bill 'Spaceman' Lee on the Art and Science of...
Nicknamed the Spaceman for his free-spirited personality, Bill Lee is one of the best left-handed pitchers ever to don a Boston Red Sox uniform, and one of the most unforgettable characters ever to play the game. On November 7, 2008, Lee is inducted into the Red Sox Hall of Fame as the team record holder for the most games pitched by a lefty (321) and as the southpaw with the third-highest win total (94). Hear the exceptionally smart and entertaining Lee talk about pitching mechanics; pitch...
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Gerald Peary - Documentary Filmmaking Today
Lucia Small (director of The Axe in The Attic); Randy Barbeto (director of When I Knew, The Eyes of Tammy Faye, and Inside Deep Throat); and John Walter (director of Theater of War) discuss the processes of documentary filmmaking with critic and filmmaker Gerald Peary. Visit us at www.wgbh.org/forum to explore our entire collection of lectures.
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Nawal Nour - Health and African Women Immigrants
Nawal Nour, founder of the nation's first clinic for female African immigrants who have been genitally circumcised, discusses her efforts to help these women. Visit us at www.wgbh.org/forum to explore our entire collection of lectures.
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Susumu Tonegawa - Genetics and Antibody Diversity
Susumu Tonegawa gives a lunchtime talk and answers questions at the MIT Museum as a part of the 2008 Cambridge Science Festival. Presented by the MIT Museum. Susumu Tonegawa is a Japanese scientist who won the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1987 for "his discovery of the genetic principle for generation of antibody diversity." Although he won the Nobel Prize for his work in immunology, Tonegawa is a molecular biologist by training. In his later years, he has turned his attention to...
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Andy Revkin - Creating Change with Documentaries
Documentary films have the potential to instigate action. Some documentaries bear witness to profound events that have occurred without getting the attention they warrant, and others present information in a way that makes people think about more ordinary experiences in a new or different way. The participants on this panel have all pushed the envelope with their work to advance how we think about issues such as climate change, the global water supply, and the plight of rain forests, three of...
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Catherine Stifter - Saving the Sierra: A Look at Three...
Urban development threatens rural communities across America. People who live and work in these beautiful landscapes face some tough decisions about the future. Catherine Stifter and jesikah maria ross travel California's Sierra Nevada mountain range exploring communities in the midst of struggle against the development pressures closing in on them. In each place, we meet unlikely allies who came together to find grassroots solutions for sustaining both the environment and their ways of life....
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Jeff Sliz - Defending the Indefensible
Georgia Perimeter College presents Jeff Sliz, one of the premier criminal defense lawyers in Gwinnett County, Georgia. Jeff explains how the legal system works from a defense attorney's perspective. Visit us at www.wgbh.org/forum to explore our entire collection of lectures.
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Lee Hamilton - Finding a Balanced View of American Power
ee Hamilton delivers the University of Georgia School of Law's 102nd Sibley Lecture, discussing how the United States can use its power around the world to pragmatically protect the country's interests and advance its values. Lee Hamilton is currently president and director of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and director of the Center on Congress at Indiana University. He represented Indiana's 9th Congressional District for 34 years, beginning in January 1965. While in...
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Carola and Marcelo Suarez-Orozco - Educational Pathways...
Co-founders of the Harvard Immigration Project, Carola and Marcelo Suarez-Orozco have conducted some of the most interesting and important research on immigration and the educational experiences of immigrant children. At this forum they present another round of findings from their long-term program of research. Building on work reported in their book, Children of Immigration, they describe and discuss determinants of success of among children in their longitudinal study of immigrant youth in...
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John Lauritsen - The Man Who Wrote Frankenstein
John Lauritsen's new book, The Man Who Wrote Frankenstein disintegrates the Mary Shelley myth, demonstrating that Frankenstein is not just a scary story, but a work of profound and radical ideas. The conventional belief is that Frankenstein was written by the young Mary Shelley, who took part in a ghost-story contest in Geneva. In his book, John Lauritsen explains that Frankenstein was written by one of the greatest poets in the English language, who deliberately concealed his authorship....
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Cecile Richards - Banned in Boston: The Silent Speech of...
"You all know that I have been gagged. I have been suppressed. I have been arrested numerous times. I have been hauled off to jail. Yet every time, more people have listened to me, more have protested, more have lifted their own voices." Thus read Arthur Schlesinger, Sr. in 1929 as Margaret Sanger sat silent beside him on the stage of Ford Hall, banned under court injunction from speaking herself. Cecile Richards, President of Planned Parenthood, reflects on that event; its meaning, its...
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