But only for a spell, for soon enough the earth will turn, and then the relentless heat will shrivel these green thirsty things, and the ground will grow hard, and withdraw again.

Click here: to listen (2:40 minutes).

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In some ways, the Scottish historian Niall Ferguson is the Russell Crowe of the academic world: charismatic, unconventional, and definitely controversial. He’s also a big fan of the British Empire — and wants the United States to follow in its footsteps. That means it’s our job to form colonies in hot climates, for years on end.
But are we up for this? While Niall would like that to be the case, he doesn’t really think so, because, he says, we’re an empire “in denial” …
Click here: to listen to a 4 minute excerpt.
Click here: to listen to the entire interview (15:30 minutes).

And to listen to this interview with Niall Ferguson on the WGBH Forum Network, click here!

The post Our American “Empire” with Niall Ferguson appeared first on https://thoughtcast.org.

The post Blacksmith House Poetry Series: Fanny Howe and Haleh Liza Gafori appeared first on https://thoughtcast.org.

At the Modern Art Foundry in Astoria Queens, workers restore the Neptune Fountain, which was missing its hands, an arm and a foot. The statue, which spouted water in Snug Harbor on Staten Island, has been returned to its former home. Watch how these expert craftsmen brought it back to life!
Note: This program was broadcast in the mid 1990s on the PBS station, WNYC.
Click here to listen!

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Tom Perrotta, author of the novels Mrs. Fletcher, Little Children, Election, The Abstinence Teacher and The Leftovers, speaks with ThoughtCast about a writer who fascinates, irritates and inspires him: Flannery O’Connor.

His relationship with her borders on kinship, and he admires and admonishes her as he would a family member, with whom he shares a bond both genetic and cultural.
When asked to choose a specific piece of writing that’s had a significant impact on him, Tom chose O’Connor’s short story Good Country People, but then he threw in two others — Everything that Rises Must Converge and Revelation. As Tom explains, these three stories chart O’Connor’s careful trajectory, her unique vision, and her genius.
Click here (30 minutes) to listen!

This interview is the second in a new ThoughtCast series which examines a specific piece of writing — be it a poem, play, novel, short story, work of non-fiction or scrap of papyrus — that’s had a significant influence on the interviewee, that’s shaped and moved them.
Up next: Harvard Classicist Gregory Nagy on Homer’s Iliad, and the final, fatal battle between Hector and Achilles.

The post Tom Perrotta on Flannery O’Connor — a literary affinity appeared first on https://thoughtcast.org.

The Blacksmith House Poetry Series at the Cambridge Center for Adult Education has been bringing established and emerging poets to Harvard Square since its founding by Gail Mazur in 1973. The series is named after the Blacksmith House at 56 Brattle Street, site of the village smithy and the spreading chestnut tree of Longfellow’s 1839 poem “The Village Blacksmith.”

Earlier this week, series director Andrea Cohen introduced the poets — Carl Phillips and Penelope Pelizzon — who read from their new collections. Carl read from Scattered Snows, to the North, and Penelope read from A Gaze Hound That Hunteth By the Eye.

Next week, on December 9, 2024, two more writers will be featured. David Semanki will read from his debut collection of poems, Ghost Camera, and Jason Schneiderman will read from his latest collection: Self Portrait of Icarus as a Country on Fire.

Click here: to listen.

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This program was broadcast on WCAI, an affiliate of WGBH, Boston.

In this interview from 2004, New York University Philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah discusses cosmopolitanism on ThoughtCast!
Born in England and raised in Ghana, Appiah is half English and half African. And perhaps because of this, he’s fascinated with the concept of identity, and the power it wields over people. But rather than wage identity politics, Appiah encourages us instead to be good global citizens, interested in and accepting of each other. In short, cosmopolitan. But also, at least a little bit “contaminated”… Appiah’s written a book on the subject: it’s called Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers.

Click here: to listen. (42 minutes)

The post Kwame Anthony Appiah: the Cosmopolitan Philosopher appeared first on https://thoughtcast.org.

Note: This interview was broadcast on the WGBH sister stations WCAI/WNAN, Prairie Public Radio, WABE in Atlanta and on KUT in Austin, Texas.

When Helen Vendler was only 13, the future poetry critic and Harvard professor memorized several of Emily Dickinson’s more famous poems. They’ve stayed with her over the years, and today, she talks with ThoughtCast’s Jenny Attiyeh about one poem in particular that’s haunted her all this time. It’s called I cannot live with You-
According to Vendler, who has written the authoritative Dickinson: Selected Poems and Commentaries, it’s a heartbreaking poem of an unresolvable dilemma and ensuing despair.
Click here (18 minutes) to listen!

This interview is the first in a new ThoughtCast series which examines a specific piece of writing — be it a poem, play, novel, short story, work of non-fiction or scrap of papyrus — that’s had a significant influence on the interviewee, that’s shaped and moved them.
Up next – esteemed novelist and short story writer Tom Perrotta discusses Good Country People,  a short story by Flannery O’Connor that’s particularly meaningful to him.

The post Harvard Critic Helen Vendler on Emily Dickinson appeared first on https://thoughtcast.org.

Click here: to listen to this ThoughtCast interview (18 minutes).

The post Tales from Donegal, told in Kenny’s Bookshop appeared first on https://thoughtcast.org.

Watch the shooting of the Law and Order episode “Blood Libel” from its 6th season.

The famous show featured Sam Waterston as Executive Assistant District Attorney Jack McCoy, Jerry Orbach as Senior Detective Lennie Briscoe, Jill Hennessy as Assistant District Attorney Claire Kincaid, Benjamin Bratt as Junior Detective Rey Curtis, S. Epatha Merkerson as Lieutenant Anita Van Buren and Steven Hill as District Attorney Adam Schiff.
This story was originally broadcast on WNYC TV.
Click here to listen!

The post Behind the Scenes at Law and Order appeared first on https://thoughtcast.org.

Just hours before an author event was to take place in his small, singular independent bookstore Books Upstairs, ThoughtCast spoke with Earls about “A Portrait” at length. The conversation brought me back to my own strong feelings about this book, which had a tremendous impact on me as well, many years ago.

Click here (24 minutes) to listen!

The post Rediscovering James Joyce in Dublin with editor Maurice Earls appeared first on https://thoughtcast.org.

Note: This interview was broadcast on KUT-FM, an NPR station based in Austin, Texas.
Kate Rosenberger is one of those rare people who collects independent book stores in San Francisco the way the rest of us collect antique door stops, or unusual African masks. Her most recent acquisition is Alley Cat Books, but she also owns Phoenix and Red Hill Books, and we met at Dog Eared Books, her fourth store, in the Mission district.

When asked to discuss a piece of writing that’s had a profound impact on her, Kate chose Charles Simic’s poem Gray-Headed Schoolchildren. Born in Serbia, Simic came to the US as a teenager, but went on to write his poems in English, win the Pulitzer prize, and become the U.S. Poet Laureate. His poetry is often stark, perhaps reflecting his formative years, spent surviving World War II.

Note: This interview is the sixth in a ThoughtCast series which examines a specific piece of writing — be it a poem, play, novel, short story, work of non-fiction or scrap of papyrus — that’s had a significant influence on the interviewee, that’s shaped and moved them. Prior interviewees include author Tom Perrotta, poetry critic Helen Vendler, and other independent bookstore owners – from Ireland!

Click here to listen (11 minutes.)

The post Charles Simic’s the choice at San Francisco’s Dog Eared Books! appeared first on https://thoughtcast.org.

The forests of New England are, remarkably, a success story. They’ve recovered from attack after attack. The early settlers hacked them down, by hand, for houses, fences and firewood. Later on, the insatiable sawmills of a more industrial age ate up the lumber needed for our expansion.
Today, the forests contend with acid rain, invasive plants and exotic beetle infestations — evidence of our ever more global economy. And the future of these forests? Going forward, that’s a story that’s largely ours to shape, and narrate.

If only these trees could talk … Well, we have the next best thing – Donald Pfister, the Dean of Harvard Summer School, curator of the Farlow Library and Herbarium, a fungologist (the more erudite word is mycologist), and the Asa Gray Professor of Systematic Botany at Harvard University.
In this Faculty Insight interview, produced in partnership with ThoughtCast and Harvard Extension School, he tells the tale of the New England forest from as far back as the glacial Pleistocene era.
To help illustrate this tale, we’ve made grateful use of high resolution images of some dramatic landscape dioramas, which are on display at Harvard’s Fisher Museum, in Petersham, Massachusetts.
And finally, for an audio version of this story, click here: to listen (9:47 mins).

The post The history and future of the New England Forest appeared first on https://thoughtcast.org.

Want to know how the world is going to end? Just ask Russian cosmologist Alex Vilenkin. If it’s our own universe you’re talking about, well, it’s called the big crunch, and it’s going to be hot hot hot! But if it’s the multiverse, that infinitely expanding, infinitely varied and infinitely populated sea of universes, well, guess what — there is no end. Isn’t that reassuring??
Vilenkin is Professor of Physics and Director of the Institute of Cosmology at Tufts University, and also the author of a new book, called Many Worlds in One: The Search for Other Universes. He’s also a former zookeeper. And – lest I forget – he was blacklisted by the KGB…
Click here: to listen. (29:45 minutes)

The post The End of Our Universe among other timely topics… appeared first on https://thoughtcast.org.

Click here: to listen (3 minutes).

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How does history get rewritten? How do victimizers become victims, and the valiant turn into villains? As Harvard history professor Caroline Elkins has learned, this process can be a hazardous one. The Pulitzer prize-winning author of Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain’s Gulag in Kenya devoted many years to the study of the Mau Mau uprising in the early 1950s, and the British response,  a model of counter-insurgency technique — or so she thought.

The Mau Mau were a group of native Kenyans who turned to violence and terror to drive out their colonial British masters, but as Elkins discovered, they weren’t the only ones to use such tactics.  Now a court case will decide where the truth actually lies, as you will hear in this Faculty Insight interview, produced in partnership with ThoughtCast and  Harvard Extension School.

For an audio version of this story, click here: to listen. (6:50 mins).

The post The Mau Mau rebellion — a revisionist history appeared first on https://thoughtcast.org.

Natalie Goldberg, the well-known painter, writer and writing teacher, who wrote the best-seller on how to write called Writing Down the Bones, is also a Zen practitioner, who applies the lessons of Zen Buddhism to her writing, and her life.

This is a complex brew, but in this ThoughtCast interview, which took place in her home in Santa Fe, New Mexico, Natalie speaks frankly about her often painful but also at times transcendent experiences, and how she has turned these experiences into positive, life-affirming acts of self-expression — and of art.

Natalie seeks the truth, about herself, her father (the charismatic Ben Goldberg), her Zen teacher Katagiri Roshi, and the swirling world around her.

Natalie’s quest has been a fruitful one. She’s the author of many books, including the novel, Banana Rose, and the memoirs Long Quiet Highway and The Great Failure, among many others.

Click here: to listen to our interview. (30 minutes)

Click here: to listen to Natalie Goldberg read an excerpt (about her parents’ visit to Santa Fe) from “The Great Failure”. (4 1/2 minutes)

The post Zen and the Art of Writing – with Natalie Goldberg appeared first on https://thoughtcast.org.

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The endangered North Atlantic Right Whale is probably our closest cetacean neighbor. There are only about 350 of them in total, and they live precariously near to shore, along the Eastern seaboard, in a horrendously busy commercial shipping corridor that stretches from Nova Scotia to Florida.  Scott Kraus, the vice president for research at Boston’s New England Aquarium, and the head of its right whale research project, has studied these whales for decades, and the aquarium’s efforts on their behalf have led to dramatic improvements in right whale habitat.

But they remain nonetheless threatened — primarily by us humans.  ThoughtCast’s Jenny Attiyeh met with Kraus at the New England Aquarium recently, to discuss his latest book, which he co-edited with his colleague Rosalind Rolland, called The Urban Whale.

Click here (20 minutes) to listen!

And click here (4 minutes) to hear Scott Kraus read a poignant passage he wrote (about a baby whale) from The Urban Whale.

The post The North Atlantic Right Whale: Our Urban Leviathan appeared first on https://thoughtcast.org.

The post Women’s Work at the Bronx Museum of the Arts appeared first on https://thoughtcast.org.

Rebecca Goldstein’s latest work, called 36 Arguments for the Existence of God: A Work of Fiction, is perhaps best described as a hybrid. It is indeed a novel, with its share of psychology, mathematics and academic politics, but it concludes with an appendix outlining these 36 arguments, as well as their rebuttals, in the language not of fiction, but of philosophy. So, as in many of Goldstein’s earlier novels, this one manages to fold ideas into art.
ThoughtCast spoke with Rebecca in her home in the Leather District, in downtown Boston.

Click here (28 minutes) to listen.
Click here (90 minutes) to listen to a discussion with Rebecca Goldstein and Steven Pinker, sponsored by PEN New England.  It’s titled Mind-Body Problems: A Conversation About Science, Fiction and God, and focuses mainly on Rebecca’s latest novel.
Rebecca Goldstein received her doctorate in philosophy from Princeton, and went on to teach philosophy before trying her pen at fiction. Her first novel, The Mind-Body Problem, was a critical success, and she went on to write 5 other novels, including Properties of Light, Mazel, and The Dark Sister. She has also written non-fiction studies of the mathematician Kurt Gödel, and the philosopher Baruch Spinoza.

In addition to being Rebecca’s husband, Steven Pinker is a Harvard College Professor and Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology at Harvard University, and one of the world’s leading authorities on language and the mind. He’s written seven books (so far) including The Blank Slate, How the Mind Works and The Stuff of Thought.

And finally, to listen to this ThoughtCast interview on the WGBH Forum Network, click here!

The post Rebecca Goldstein: the atheist with a soul appeared first on https://thoughtcast.org.

Back when I worked for WNYC TV, I went to Bridgehampton, Long Island to cover an art opening at the Dan Flavin Art Institute, overseen by Dia Center for the Arts. It’s a haunting place, filled with the florescent tubes that made Flavin famous.
I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

The post The Dan Flavin Art Institute appeared first on https://thoughtcast.org.

Author Megan Marshall has written well-received biographies of Elizabeth Bishop and Margaret Fuller. But before these books, she wrote about the three Peabody sisters – Elizabeth, Mary and Sophia – who were key players in the founding of the Transcendentalist movement in the early to mid 19th century.

Elizabeth, the oldest, was intellectually precocious, learning Hebrew as a child so she could read the Old Testament. Mary was the middle sister, somewhat subdued by the dominant – and bossy – qualities of Elizabeth, and by the attention paid to the youngest, Sophia, who was practically an invalid. Nonetheless, Mary managed to become a teacher, writer and reformer. Sophia, beset by devastating migraines, spent most of her early years in bed. But when she had the strength, she painted. In an interview with ThoughtCast, Megan Marshall continues the tale…

Click here: to listen (28:30 mins).

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Former poet laureate Robert Pinsky tackles King David of the Bible – the shepherd, poet, warrior and adulterer – in his “Life of David.”
Is David a legend? A real, flesh and blood warrior who killed Goliath, and united the 12 Jewish tribes into one nation? Robert Pinsky delves into these questions, and into David’s story, with relish.

David’s story has been told many times, and the tale has changed with each telling. There’s the David of the Hebrew Bible, and another version of his life in the Talmud. We know he slept with Bathsheba, but was this a sin? An act of love? Of violence? It depends on whom you ask.

David, who lived about 3000 years ago, was beloved of God, and as a result, he got away with more than his share. He was a seductive, wily politician, a doting father, a bitter old man. These contradictions in David’s character spur Pinsky on, and he adds his own twist to the tale, as you will hear, on ThoughtCast!
Click here: to listen (28:30 mins).

The post Poet Robert Pinsky takes on King David appeared first on https://thoughtcast.org.

Tune in for a quick romp through the origins of the word — with Berklee College of Music professor Ken Zambello.

Click here: to listen (3:30 minutes).
(And thanks to Pam Scrutton and Planning For Elders for the “Let’s Rock and Roll” illustration!)

The post Words @ Work: The Origins of “Rock” appeared first on https://thoughtcast.org.

On a beautiful spring day in the mid 1990s, I meandered the streets of Red Hook, when it was still a rundown Brooklyn neighborhood. I met its first art gallery owner, and the two longshoremen who ventured inside. This is one of my favorite stories for WNYC TV, the PBS station I worked for in Manhattan. (This station too is now history.)

Let me know what you think!
Click here (2:30 minutes) to listen!

The post Red Hook, Brooklyn, before the Gentrification appeared first on https://thoughtcast.org.

The controversial Harvard Law professor, author and celebrity lawyer Alan Dershowitz talks with ThoughtCast about his book “Preemption: A Knife That Cuts Both Ways”, as well as his views on the Israeli-Palestinian-Hezbollah conflict, torture, human rights and our ‘war on terror.’ His premise: the world has changed, and international law must change with it. We need more tools, he argues, in the fight against terror networks whose recruits hold no fear of death or retribution.

Note: Although the subjects we discuss are controversial, my goal is not to argue with Alan, but to find out what he’s thinking. My hope is that our conversation will provoke further discussion on these hot-button issues.

Click here: (30 minutes) to listen to the interview.

Click here: to listen to the hour-long version.

The post Alan Dershowitz on Preemption and the Hezbollah appeared first on https://thoughtcast.org.

In this ThoughtCast interview, science writer Jim Holt takes us on a jaunty tour of being and nothingness, existence and emptiness, quantum tunneling and the uncertainty principle. The author of Stop Me If You’ve Heard This: A History and Philosophy of Jokes, Holt lends his wit to a dissection of the puzzle of existence, which happens to be the topic of his book Why Does the World Exist? An Existential Detective Story!  A frequent contributor to The New York Times and other publications, Holt approaches his subject with a personal, philosophical and scientific point of view. But does he solve the puzzle?… You tell me!

Click here to listen (28 minutes.)

The post “Why Does the World Exist?” with Jim Holt appeared first on https://thoughtcast.org.

This interview is the second of three that took place at the Fourth Annual Los Angeles Times Festival of Books in 1999. The third interview, coming soon, is with Arianna Huffington. The first interview, featured in the previous post, is with the comedian and writer  Sandra Tsing Loh.
For an audio version of this interview with Michael Silverblatt, click here: to listen.

The post KCRW’s Michael Silverblatt at the LA Times Book Festival appeared first on https://thoughtcast.org.

Chanticleer, for those who’ve been lucky enough to attend its concerts already know, is a delightful all-male classical vocal ensemble. It’s sold over a million albums is an audience favorite. Highly versatile, the group performs a diverse repertoire, ranging from Renaissance music to gospel to new music to jazz. It’s all fabulous, as you will hear. I put it together for WNYC, when the public TV station still existed in NYC in the late 90s. Enjoy!

The post Chanticleer Backstage on ThoughtCast! appeared first on https://thoughtcast.org.

In this excerpt from the hour-long debate, moderated by NBC’s Tim Russert, McCain, the campaign finance reform candidate and rider of the Straight Talk Express, responds to breaking news regarding his lobbying the FCC on behalf of Paxson Communications, a campaign contributor. Let’s not forget that McCain’s reformist tendencies developed after he was criticized for exercising “poor judgment” by the Senate Ethics Committee for his role as one of the Keating Five Senators accused of corruption in 1989.
Although my follow-up question was admittedly intended to bridle him, McCain (in my view) comes across as brittle. Where is his famous sense of humor? Where the politician’s gift of deflection? McCain’s “brittle temper” was hardly a secret, but compared to other candidates on that stage, his smile is steely, his manner tense.
A self-described maverick and patriot, might McCain have been a touch too proud? Did his confidence in his own integrity, as the New York Times phrased it, “blind him to potentially embarrassing conflicts of interest”?  McCain of course went on to lose the primary to George W. Bush, and perhaps self-love, rather than love of country, got in the way.
The intention here is not to dump on McCain – what would be the point? But — if he had been just a bit less attentive to his own honor, might we have avoided 8 years of George W. Bush? Think about that for a minute. That would indeed have been a legacy.

Click here: to listen (6:14 mins).

The post ThoughtCast Reflects on the Legacy of John McCain appeared first on https://thoughtcast.org.

Who is McCain really — is he the independent spirit who rode the Straight Talk Express campaign bus during the 1999/2000 Presidential Primary?

Or is he the far more conventional conservative who surrendered to the right wing and selected Sarah Palin the second time he ran for the presidency? Clearly, he’s all of the above, which makes it difficult to anticipate his actions.

Jenny Attiyeh interviewed McCain during the New Hampshire Presidential Primary in 1999, when he was still the front runner. Back then he was the darling of the media, and was portrayed as a forthright, reformist candidate. He went on to defeat George W. Bush in the New Hampshire primary, only to fall victim to a smear campaign in South Carolina  — he’d fathered a black child, was a traitor to his country — from which he never recovered.

Recently, of course, McCain’s been subjected to the taunts of President Trump. He’s endured far worse — try five years as a prisoner of war, tortured by the North Vietnamese. But now that the end is very nearly here, will he figure out what it is he really stands for?

In his latest book, The Restless Wave: Good Times, Just Causes, Great Fights, and Other Appreciations, McCain expresses regret over his VP pick in 2008. Perhaps as the clock ticks out his final hours, he’ll reach beyond words, to something more like action. Or, as this book review states, will he continue to try to have it both ways?

The post John McCain’s Last Stand – on ThoughtCast! appeared first on https://thoughtcast.org.

Over the course of three months, Jenny Attiyeh saw this work of art, based on the novel by French Surrealist Jean Cocteau, take shape. The story of Les Enfants Terribles, which is also the final part of a Philip Glass trilogy inspired by the work of Cocteau, tells the tale of Paul and Lise, two adolescent siblings who are bound to each other in an unholy mix of love and jealousy. When they come into volatile contact with two other adolescents, the result is indeed terrible.

Click here: to listen (14 mins).

The post Philip Glass creates an opera – on ThoughtCast! appeared first on https://thoughtcast.org.

Note: this audio program was broadcast on WAMC and WGBH radio in Boston, and the audio program and slideshow were featured on NHPR.org.

About 40 years ago, farms were thick on the ground in Andover, a rural town in southern Vermont. Today, 75-year-old Lydia Ratcliff’s Lovejoy Brook Farm is the last working farm still in operation. But can it survive much longer? ThoughtCast’s Jenny Attiyeh grew up visiting Lydia each summer, listening to her tales, eating fresh corn and carrots from her garden, and watching the animals give birth, and grow old. On a recent visit to see Lydia, Jenny brought along her microphone …

Lydia Ratcliff is a survivor. She’s farmed her 90 acre plot of land in Andover Vermont for 43 years, and though she’s now come down with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or COPD, she still climbs on top of that tractor in hay season.
Does she offer a lesson for the rest of us? Does she represent the future of farming in Vermont, or is she one of the last of a dying breed?

Click here to listen (9 minutes.)

The post Lydia Ratcliff: Vermont Farmer, Stubborn Survivor appeared first on https://thoughtcast.org.

Note: This interview was broadcast twice on WGBH in Boston.
The eminent and provocative political scientist and prolific author, talks with ThoughtCast about what he sees as the threat to America’s national identity (and its founding ‘Anglo-Protestant’ culture) posed by large numbers of unassimilated Hispanics, legal or otherwise, living in the United States. His most recent book: “Who Are We? The Challenges to America’s National Identity” has caused quite a stir. Huntington is also famous for an earlier work called “The Clash of Civilizations.” In this book, he argues that civilizations, not nations or ideologies, form the basic building blocks of future cooperation — and conflict.
Huntington, a longtime professor of political science at Harvard, is also a member of the editorial board of a new magazine chaired by Huntington’s former student, Francis Fukuyama, called “The American Interest.”
We discuss these topics in a half-hour interview while seated in the back yard of his home on Martha’s Vineyard — hence all those birds chirping away cheerily…

Click here: to listen (30 mins).

The post Samuel Huntington — on Immigration and the American Identity appeared first on https://thoughtcast.org.

When you watch this ThoughtCast interview, you’ll form your own impression of a candidate who didn’t make it — and you might also come away with some interesting hypotheses on how US Presidential politics has evolved (some would say devolved) since the turn of the century.

Click here: to listen (4:43 minutes).
 

The post Lessons from a Former Failed Bid for the Presidency? appeared first on https://thoughtcast.org.

I had the chance to interview the Vice President for NHPTV in the autumn of 1999, prior to the New Hampshire Presidential Primary. Little did I know of what was to come, or I might have asked somewhat different questions.
I remember it was colder out than it looked, and Gore nursed a cup of coffee throughout the interview, while attempting to come off as well … approachable, like his two chief Republican opponents: the easygoing George W. Bush and the jubilant John McCain, who at the time was touring the state in his Straight Talk Express. More on that in the next post.
But in the meantime, let me know what you think of Gore, back in the Twentieth Century, before our continuum got torqued!

The post Al Gore, Reconsidered appeared first on https://thoughtcast.org.

So let’s say you have leukemia. You have relapsed. What can art therapy do for you? Here at Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan, young cancer patients struggle with their treatment. But they also have an outlet, a safe place to express themselves.

This “WNYC Cultural Minute” was broadcast on the public TV station WNYC in the late 1990s, before it went off the air. I’m including it here, on ThoughtCast.

The post Art Therapy: A Place for Self-Expression while in Pain appeared first on https://thoughtcast.org.

The post The Hunt for Art Fakes with Tom Hoving appeared first on https://thoughtcast.org.

The venerable New York Review of Books was launched amidst a newspaper strike in the winter of 1963, and has continued unabated ever since. Devoted to intensive and nuanced coverage of politics, the arts, literature, science (and now movies and the Internet!), the paper, as it’s called, is considered to be the premiere journal of the American intellectual elite.
Robert Silvers, its longtime editor, who shared the post with Barbara Epstein until her death in 2006, spoke with ThoughtCast in the WNYC studios in New York.

Click here: to listen (40 minutes).

Note: Scott McLemee, who writes the Intellectual Affairs column each week at Inside Higher Ed, contributed an excellent question to the interview – thanks!

The post Revered New York Review editor Robert Silvers, R.I.P. appeared first on https://thoughtcast.org.

Perhaps this is why Paul doesn’t stick with his “work-in-progress” for very long. The hands-on phase of this WNYC TV story is relatively brief, followed by a show-and-tell of various examples of his work. Paul has always been a flexible artist, never adhering to just one style. He is, I think, a happy painter, not one gripped by terrors in the small hours, or as they used to say, existential dread.
And who can blame him? He lives in apparent freedom in Taos, New Mexico. As you will see, it’s a spectacular spot, one many famous painters have discovered in the past – Agnes Martin, Arthur Dove, Georgia O’Keefe, Marsden Hartley, Rebecca James, Andrew Dasburg. The list continues. Perhaps it has something to do with the huge spaces and the limitless light.

For an audio version of this story, click here: to listen. (4:42 mins).

The post Paul Pascarella – An Artist of the Mesa and the Mountain appeared first on https://thoughtcast.org.

Today Serrano continues to exhibit his work in group shows, but he seems to have calmed down a bit. Some subtler photographs taken in Cuba may seem to be a good deal humbler, but I personally find them to be quietly beautiful. In recent years, Serrano has also taken affecting portraits of New York’s homeless, in order to increase awareness of their circumstances.

For an audio version of this story, click here: to listen. (3:50 mins).

The post Andres Serrano @ The New Museum of Contemporary Art appeared first on https://thoughtcast.org.

The post A Prior Republican Presidential Debate appeared first on https://thoughtcast.org.

So — in taking a look 16 years after the fact, how does it seem to you now? Quaint and out of date? Does it hold hints of what was to come? What should we have done differently that might have made the future a better place?

The post A Prior Democratic Presidential Debate appeared first on https://thoughtcast.org.

Beacon Hill Seminars is described as “a membership organization of people who have a vigorous interest in continuing their intellectual growth.” I like the use of the word vigorous.

The post Beacon Hill Seminars Writing Workshop appeared first on https://thoughtcast.org.

Today she is a media mogul, one of Forbes’ 100 most influential people. But back in 1999, when I had the chance to interview her, Huffington was merely a media star. Her book Greetings from the Lincoln Bedroom had recently been released, and not to universal acclaim. It’s a frolic of a book, a fanciful tale of the Clinton (Bill) White House. But I was more interested at the time in her powerful and still shocking biography of Picasso: Creator and Destroyer.  Huffington, of course, could answer all my questions with ease.
This is the final interview that took place at the Fourth Annual Los Angeles Times Festival of Books in 1999. The second interview was with KCRW’s Michael Silverblatt, and the first was with the comedian and writer Sandra Tsing Loh.
For an audio version of this interview with Arianna Huffington, click here: to listen.

The post Arianna Huffington on Picasso and the Clinton White House appeared first on https://thoughtcast.org.

This interview is the first of three that took place at the Fourth Annual Los Angeles Times Festival of Books in 1999. The other interviews, to follow, are with KCRW’s Michael Silverblatt, the host of Bookworm, and with Arianna Huffington.
For an audio version of this interview with Sandra Tsing Loh, click here: to listen.

The post Sandra Tsing Loh at the LA Times Book Festival appeared first on https://thoughtcast.org.

The post My Ghost Town: A Vanishing Personal History appeared first on https://thoughtcast.org.

That was back when we too were innocent of what was to come… before this nation changed irrevocably. I asked Bush about our national interests, and when – if ever – the U.S. should intervene in foreign conflicts.
Let us know what you think of his perspective, and whether it evolved…

For an audio version of this interview, click here: to listen.

The post George W. Bush, Beforehand appeared first on https://thoughtcast.org.

The post On the record: Taos Artist Agnes Martin appeared first on https://thoughtcast.org.

So far, most members are from the neighborhood.
“I’ve lived on Beacon Hill for the past 14 years,” said Jenny Attiyeh, one of the group’s founding members. “I’m a journalist, and I’m happy as a journalist, but I’ve always wanted to be a writer with a capital W. So I thought, why not start a writers’ group? That way, I won’t be all on my own. I’ll have some support and encouragement as I try to do something that’s new and challenging.”
The camaraderie is key. Meetings are planned for Wednesday evenings at members’ homes, and will rotate among those who can accommodate the group.
“There are so many opportunities for writers today with digital media alongside traditional magazines, newspapers and hard copy books,” said Gigi Cockerill, a founding member.
Writing of any kind is an art form that requires practice and skill. Having relationships with other aspiring writers will be a real source of inspiration for me.”

— The Beacon Hill Times, February 18, 2014

The post New Writing Group Launched on Beacon Hill appeared first on https://thoughtcast.org.

Click here: to listen to the talk.

The post Larry DiCara on Boston’s Busing Era @ Boston Public Library appeared first on https://thoughtcast.org.

This video of Squirty and Ben in the clearing is a rather noisy appetizer.

Click here: (17 minutes) for the story.

Ben Kilham is one of the foremost black bear researchers and rehabilitators in the country, and here he is, with one of his star bears, Squirty, now 17 years old. He took care of her and her siblings after they were separated from their mother during a logging operation that had disturbed her den. She, along with many other orphaned or abandoned cubs, has taught Ben the characteristics of black bear behavior, which share some surprising similarities to our own species. For one thing, once thought to be solitary, Ben has discovered that they are often quite social! Ben’s featured in several nature documentaries, and he is also the author of two books — Among the Bears: Raising Orphaned Cubs in the Wild, and Out on a Limb: What Black Bears Have Taught Me About Intelligence and Intuition, with a foreward by Temple Grandin, which was just released this fall. ThoughtCast has also interviewed Ben’s sister and colleague, Phoebe, and the interview, accompanied by a slide show of their bear cubs, was posted on New Hampshire Public Radio’s website this spring, and can be seen here.

The post Black Bear Orphans and the Man who Reads Their Minds appeared first on https://thoughtcast.org.

You’ve heard the news. Online education is the next big, disruptive thing. It’s taking on the establishment, and the hidebound, bricks and mortar institutions of higher learning must change – or shrink.

EdX, Coursera, Udacity and the like are the future – promising us a better educated and better employed nation of newly empowered citizens.

Or —  they’re the tool that leads to the firing of second rate, redundant professors across the land, to the retreat of non-virtual classrooms, those sacrosanct spaces where real students interact with real professors.

Or perhaps they’re both? These cultural and marketplace issues will work themselves out over time. But if we look farther ahead, what will be the political impact of “free education for all,” across the globe? (Albeit for those with a high speed internet connection!)

ThoughtCast spoke with Anant Agarwal, formerly the Director of MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, and currently the very first President of edX, in their spanking new offices in Cambridge, Massachusetts. An entrepreneur and an intellectual, Anant is perhaps also a visionary.

Will his visions for edX come true? Take a listen, and judge for yourself!

Click here:   (12 minutes).

Also, for extra credit —
What does the “X” in edX stand for?

Click here: (1 minute).

The post EdX President Anant Agarwal’s Plan to Change the World appeared first on https://thoughtcast.org.

Phoebe Kilham is the soft-spoken younger sister of Ben Kilham, the renowned black bear behavioralist and bear cub rehabilitator, based in Lyme New Hampshire. But he couldn’t do this work without her, or the support of his wife, Debbie.
Phoebe’s dogged determination, every day, to care for and feed these motherless cubs is the essential act that creates for these sad orphans a safe new world they can explore, and come to trust.

Last spring, the Kilhams were inundated by 20 bear cubs, far more than the usual handful, and it became their job to nurse them back to health, while still keeping them wild enough to be released once they reach the age of 18 months. (This number was then increased to 27 during the harsh winter that followed.)
Well, that’s a lot of mouths to feed, as Phoebe found out.  She spoke with ThoughtCast on Ben and Debbie’s deck, within shouting distance of the bear cub enclosure.

Note: all of the photos in this slideshow were taken by Ben or Phoebe Kilham.

To hear a longer audio version of this ThoughtCast interview with Phoebe Kilham, click here:

to listen! (13 minutes).

The post 20 Rescued Bear Cubs Nursed Back to Health appeared first on https://thoughtcast.org.

Click here: to listen, and judge for yourself!

The post Louis Menand, John Summers and Dan Aaron take on Dwight MacDonald appeared first on https://thoughtcast.org.

The subject is a sensitive one for journalists: Is Julian Assange one of us? Does WikiLeaks serve a legitimate news-gathering purpose, or is it a dangerous, possibly illegal website that spreads official secrets without due diligence or consideration of the consequences?
Let us know what you think!

The post Is WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange a hero, or a villain? appeared first on https://thoughtcast.org.

Meet the patient, stoic Blanding’s Turtle, who arrived with a huge hole in her shell, yet managed to lay her eggs! And the red-tailed hawk who’s given a sonogram of its eyeball! Watch the satisfying release of another hawk, after it’s fully healed. And observe the staff of the Tufts University Wildlife Clinic, in Grafton Massachusetts, as they respectfully care for these wild animals.

In addition to the slideshow above, ThoughtCast speaks with staff veterinarian Maureen Murray, who has a special interest in turtle medicine.
Click here (11:30 minutes) to listen.

The post An Afternoon at the Tufts Wildlife Clinic appeared first on https://thoughtcast.org.

In this fifth installment of Faculty Insight, produced in partnership with Harvard University Extension School, ThoughtCast speaks with the esteemed Harvard classicist Gregory Nagy about one of the earliest and greatest legends of all time: Homer’s epic story of the siege of Troy, called The Iliad. It’s a story of god-like heroes and blood-soaked battles; honor, pride, shame and defeat.
In this interview, we dissect a key scene in The Iliad, where Hector and Achilles are about to meet in battle. Athena is also on hand, and she plays a crucial if underhanded role, with the grudging approval of her father, Zeus.
And Nagy is of course the perfect guide to this classic tale. He’s the director of Harvard’s Center for Hellenic Studies in Washington DC, as well as the Francis Jones Professor of Classical Greek Literature and Professor of Comparative Literature at Harvard.

We spoke in his office at Widener Library.

Click here: to listen to a longer audio version of this interview! (9 minutes)

The post Honor and Fair Play in Homer’s Iliad appeared first on https://thoughtcast.org.

In this ThoughtCast, noted author James Carroll talks about his latest book, “Jerusalem, Jerusalem”, at the Harvard Book Store, in Cambridge Massachusetts. The city of course serves as both holy ground and flash point for Judaism, Christianity and Islam, and at times during their tumultuous histories, these three monotheistic religions have turned their city into not a place of peace and prayer, but a violent battleground.

Carroll is also the author of the highly regarded book “Constantine’s Sword”, which examines the shocking tale of Christian anti-Semitism from the time of Christ through Nazism and the Second Vatican Council. Carroll’s personal fascination with religion has led him to be both a believer and a skeptic, a critical historian and a man of faith, which is an interesting combination in these unsettling times.

The post James Carroll Takes On Jerusalem appeared first on https://thoughtcast.org.

Carson’s scholarship focuses largely on the connection between creativity and mental illness. While it’s common knowledge that artists and writers have a tendency towards depression (and drink!) only recently has the link been so clearly established.
But Carson also argues that creativity is not just the province of an elect few, it’s a trait that, with a bit of effort, we can all claim for ourselves.  Her new book, called Your Creative Brain: Seven Steps to Maximize Imagination, Productivity and Innovation in Your Life, lays out a clear method for awakening and encouraging our own inherent creativity.
Carson’s expertise also extends to the subject of resilience, and if there’s anything this planet needs, it’s the ability to bounce back, and live to fight another day.  Her research has also caught the attention of the Department of Defense, where she consults on web-based PTSD treatments for soldiers recovering from trauma.

This video of our interview is only an introduction, so….
Click here to hear the entire conversation! (13 minutes)

The post Creativity and Madness – with Shelley Carson appeared first on https://thoughtcast.org.

Faculty Insight is produced in partnership with ThoughtCast and Harvard University Extension School. This third interview of the series is with Jocelyne Cesari, a level-headed yet astute specialist in contemporary Islamic society. Muslims who live in the Western world today face multiple challenges — suspicion, isolation, ignorance, fear. And post-9/11, of course, they carry the weight of that violent attack. So how are we to move forward, in an enlightened, inclusive manner? How ought we to apply our secular, humanist and individualistic values at such a time?

For starters, let’s listen to Jocelyne Cesari. She might not have all the answers, but as the director of the inter-faculty Islam in the West Program, she’s clearly the right person to ask. She is also an associate at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies and the Center for European Studies at Harvard, and teaches in Harvard’s Department of Government, its Divinity School and its Extension School. This video of our interview is only an introduction, so….
Click here to hear the entire conversation! (16 minutes)

The post Faculty Insight: Islam in the West – a clash of civilizations? appeared first on https://thoughtcast.org.

The post Boston Book Festival – year two! appeared first on https://thoughtcast.org.

Faculty Insight is produced in partnership with Harvard University Extension School. This second interview of the series is with nuclear strategist Thomas Nichols, who is a professor at the US Naval War College in Rhode Island, a fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and a lecturer at Harvard Extension School. He speaks with ThoughtCast’s Jenny Attiyeh about the conflict with North Korea, the potential for nuclear terrorism, and the reduction of nuclear stockpiles in the post-cold war world.

The post Faculty Insight: Nuclear strategy in the post-cold war world appeared first on https://thoughtcast.org.

Faculty Insight is produced in partnership with ThoughtCast and Harvard University Extension School. This first interview of the series is with Gene Heyman, a faculty member at the Extension School and a lecturer on psychology at Harvard Medical School. Professor Heyman’s controversial new book, called Addiction: A Disorder of Choice, asks if addiction is a disease, and anwers: no!

The post Is Addiction a Choice? Harvard’s Gene Heyman says yes! appeared first on https://thoughtcast.org.

The Cambridge Science Festival returns this week with Inspiring Minds: Meet Women in Science, a program at the Museum of Science that includes a talk by Randi Rotjan, a coral ecologist at the New England Aquarium in Boston. Randi has been stung by jellyfish, coral, you name it. It’s all part of the job, studying coral reefs on location in exotic locales like the Red Sea or the Phoenix Islands, the world’s largest marine protected area. She goes face to face with hermit crabs as they line up, after the usual jostling, to form vacancy chains, waiting to trade in their old shells for newer, larger ones. It’s the classic upgrade, and it follows rules – perhaps ones we humans might care to copy.

Rules abound undersea – as does death. If the water temperature is too warm, corals bleach, starve and die. And if the tube worms that thrive near deep sea hydrothermal vents venture too far from the fissure, they’ll freeze. But most of the time, they’re doing just fine, thank you, feasting on the poisonous spewing gases they’re so fond of.
Watch this brief video on corallivory (the eating of live coral by fish!) to get you started.
And then click here (12 minutes) to listen to the audio interview, for the details.

The post Coral reefs, hermit crabs and tube worms with Randi Rotjan appeared first on https://thoughtcast.org.

A runner-up for the Sheila Motton Prize was Wendy Mnookin for her book of poetry The Moon Makes Its Own Plea. She teaches poetry at Emerson College and at Grub Street, a non-profit Boston writing center. Her previous books of poetry are What He Took, Guenever Speaks and To Get Here.

To listen to Wendy read from “The Moon Makes Its Own Plea” (28 minutes), click here!

The post New England Poetry Club Prizewinner Richard Hoffman appeared first on https://thoughtcast.org.

Ernest Fleischmann, the former General Manager of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, can be credited with turning this once provincial institution into a world famous orchestra. He was also instrumental in hiring Esa-Pekka Salonen, the famous Finnish music director and composer, and more recently the flamboyant Venezuelan Gustavo Dudamel, who, baton in hand, has taken the classical music world by storm.
Now in his 80’s, Ernest looks back at his career in a conversation with ThoughtCast, at his home in the Hollywood Hills. This brief interview only skims the surface of his career and accomplishments, but it’s a pleasure to listen to that voice, and to tap into his reservoir of musical knowledge – and instinct.
Click here to listen (8:26 minutes.)

Sadly, Ernest Fleischmann died in June, 2010 after a long illness. He will be missed!

The post A Conversation with Los Angeles Impresario Ernest Fleischmann appeared first on https://thoughtcast.org.

The post The “New Biology” with Steven Pinker, Noga Arikha & Melvin Konner appeared first on https://thoughtcast.org.

Henry David Thoreau is justly famous for his book Walden, which tells the story of the two years he spent living by the pond, in the Concord woods. But he also wrote a journal, which he started at age 20 in 1837, and kept up until 1861, shortly before he died. This diary of Thoreau’s daily thoughts and experiences has just been published by New York Review Books Classics, which is celebrating its tenth anniversary this autumn. Edwin Frank, the editor of the series, speaks with ThoughtCast at the Harvard Book Store in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

And for an audio version of this story, click here: to listen. (8:34 mins).

The post The Journal of Henry David Thoreau appeared first on https://thoughtcast.org.

Click here to listen (28 minutes.)

After his talk, ThoughtCast spoke with Lehrer briefly about the value of emotion in rational decision making, the power of wishful thinking to hijack our reason, and the potential to retrain the brain via the mind. According to Lehrer, we’d generally be better off sticking to our instincts, our initial reaction or impulse, rather than over-think things. Calm, cool deliberation, it turns out, doesn’t always lead to the best results. Jonah Lehrer is a Contributing Editor at Wired Magazine, and has written for The New Yorker, Nature, Seed, The Washington Post and The Boston Globe.

Click here to listen to this rather noisy interview (8:50 minutes.)

The post Jonah Lehrer on Emotional Hijacking and “How We Decide” appeared first on https://thoughtcast.org.

At the first ever Open Video Conference, held at New York University in Manhattan, participants pondered the significance of the open media movement, at a time when its tools are being put to use by protesters in Iran.  The social networking tools Twitter, YouTube and Facebook have revolutionized communication, and impacted events as they unfold.

ThoughtCast spoke with Xeni Jardin of Boing Boing fame, Peter Kaufman, the CEO of Intelligent Television, and Dean Jansen with the Participatory Culture Foundation, among others, about the potential of this movement to effect social change.

The post The Promise of Open Media appeared first on https://thoughtcast.org.

Click here to listen (3:24 minutes.)

The post The Dopamine Economy appeared first on https://thoughtcast.org.

To watch this ThoughtCast program on the Forum Network, click here!

The post Turbulent Times for Truth Tellers? Just ask the Nieman Foundation… appeared first on https://thoughtcast.org.

The Cambridge Center for Adult Education recently hosted a talk with the architect Nader Tehrani (an associate professor of architecture at  MIT, and the co-founder of the influential Boston-based architecture and design firm Office dA) whose work is on view, among other locations, at the Museum of Modern Art —

Click here to listen (36 minutes).

— and Robert Campbell, the architect and Pulitzer Prize-winning architecture critic for the Boston Globe (who also happens to be a poet and photographer). The subject of their talk: progressive architecture.

The post Architects Nader Tehrani and Robert Campbell @ CCAE appeared first on https://thoughtcast.org.

Calling for Acronyms!

So, here’s Dale Hobson’s contribution:
“How about GRR–for Great Republican Rip-off or Global Resources Rape.
I don’t want to spit or hurl; I want to bite.” Ouch!
And here’s William’s:
I always thought “The GBR” captured it well. “The Great Brain Robbery”
Leighton says: WODD — world order down the drain
While Lee Goldberg has come up with:
Global Economic Meltdown Offers Rude Awakening – GEMORA – !!!
And Anthea Raymond gives GEC two thumbs up:
“GEC works for me quite possibly because of the gagging sound evoked.
We’re in for a long slow retch on this one.”

Meanwhile, Valeria Villarroel suggested Governmental Fail (GF?)
and Barton George followed up with Worldwide Total Fail: WTF
while Helen Tan writes: “GEC sounds like the cracking of an egg!”
Hence: Giant Egg Cracking

Have we covered the whole alphabet yet?
Oh, and that GEC-monster gracing this post?
It’s a sculpture by Juan Cabana, called Stranded…
Perhaps he hatched from Helen Tan’s egg!

For more acronyms —

Me Says:

How about Heny Paulson’s “SHIT” – Structured Housing Investment Trust (i.e the bank bailout)

patricia gras Says:

GEM
global economic mess
It’s a gem because it will teach us how to live differently PERHAPS

Jenny Says:

Okay, here’s an acronym from “anonymous” —
“How ’bout the GMVWUC…for the Global Misplaced Values Wake-Up Call. It doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue.”
Well, I like it anyway. Try pronouncing it! Sounds like a mash-up of US car companies — or should I say a pile-up?…

bill Says:

A couple of groaners…
We have A.D.D., American Deficit Disorder
Some of us have O.C.D., Obliterated Countries Disorder

The post Has the Global Economic Crisis – or GEC – got us? appeared first on https://thoughtcast.org.

What is the right expression to describe today’s economic nightmare? I’m sick of “mess” and “crisis” is too bland. What about “cesspool”? Well, I compromised with “pits” — feel free to add your own juicy descriptions in ThoughtCast’s comments section!
Either way, I dived into the “pool” with MIT’s Mitsui Professor of Economics James Poterba, who’s also the head of the National Bureau of Economic Research, the think tank in charge of determining when recessions start … and end. Wouldn’t that be nice? Headlines proclaiming the “end” of this rather inordinate business cycle.
Are these ups and downs indeed just a part of capitalism’s inevitable booms and busts? Ought we to accept them as natural, rather than resist them? Or ought we to scrap the “system” and rebuild? You tell me…
But first, listen to this: (15:30 minutes).

The post The Economic Pits with James Poterba appeared first on https://thoughtcast.org.

They were a strange pair: Gertrude Stein, the avant-garde writer, salonniere and collector of art and artists, and her lover and companion, the querulous Alice B. Toklas, standing beakishly in the background. But together they formed a whole. Two Lives: Gertrude and Alice, a new book by journalist Janet Malcolm, explores this relationship, and the literary output it sustained.

Click here: to listen (30 minutes) to Janet Malcolm speak about her book at the Brattle Theatre in Cambridge, presented by the Harvard Book Store.

The post Getrude Stein, Alice B. Toklas & Janet Malcolm! appeared first on https://thoughtcast.org.

Other contributors were James Marcus, the editor-at-large for the Columbia Journalism Review; Claire Potter, a professor of history and American studies at Wesleyan University; and James Mustich, editor of The Barnes & Noble Review.

Feel free to elaborate in the comments section, below.

The post Reading List for Obama – your thoughts? appeared first on https://thoughtcast.org.

Please add your thoughts in the comments section below, or email them to feedback at thoughtcast dot org!

The post How Fiction Works — with James Wood appeared first on https://thoughtcast.org.

Public radio could easily be described as a smashing success story. Take NPR, for example. From its counter-cultural roots in the early 1970s, it has grown to become one of the most trusted sources of journalism in the United States. Although it still is accused of liberal bias, an equal number of liberals and conservatives find themselves drawn to its reassuring sound. So – what’s the problem? Like newspapers and symphony orchestras, public radio has a graying audience and it is having trouble attracting younger people and minorities. So today, in order to stay viable, public radio’s job is to reach out to new listeners. But at what cost, if any?
ThoughtCast attended the Public Radio Program Directors Association conference this September in Hollywood, and spoke with:

Jeff Hansen, program director at KUOW in Seattle
Mike Crane, COO of Wisconsin Public Radio
John Voci, the general manager of WGBH radio in Boston
Jennifer Ferro, assistant general manager of KCRW in Santa Monica
Sam Fleming, managing director of news and programs at WBUR, Boston
Chris Bannon, program director of WNYC in New York City.

Click here: to listen (7 minutes).

The post Public Radio goes Hollywood! appeared first on https://thoughtcast.org.

The post “The Future of the Internet – And How to Stop It”!!! appeared first on https://thoughtcast.org.

The post Griefer, Google Cooking and other Neologisms appeared first on https://thoughtcast.org.

Have you “friended” someone recently? Have you ever? Sooner or later, we’ll all start to friend, or be friended, if we are to inhabit the jolly online world of social networking. MIT Media Lab’s Judith Donath explains….

Click here: (4:17 minutes)

The post To friend or not to friend: Judith Donath on online social status appeared first on https://thoughtcast.org.

(2:20 minutes)

And to listen to a discussion with Ethan Zuckerman on the Forum Network, click here!

The post Ethan Zuckerman’s homage to homophily appeared first on https://thoughtcast.org.

Click here: (2:30 minutes) to listen. And let us know if you agree!

And here on this YouTube video, Josh Marshall tells Jenny Attiyeh how he came up with the name “Talking Points Memo”…



Plus:

• Ethan Zuckerman of Global Voices waxes lyrical on the term homophily.
• MIT Media Lab’s Judith Donath explains the jolly online world of social networking!

The post More Neologisms with TPM’s Josh Marshall appeared first on https://thoughtcast.org.

The term network neutrality was the brainchild of Tim Wu of Columbia Law School. So what does this term mean, and what power does it have?

Click here: (2:23 minutes)

The post Tim Wu’s neologism: Network neutrality! appeared first on https://thoughtcast.org.

Jimmy Wales, the founder of the free online encylopedia Wikipedia, shares his thoughts on the power of one incredibly successful neologism – that amazing name! Wikipedia is a name he’s “stuck with” — in a good way, of course!
Click here: to listen. (2:13 minutes) And hear what else “Jimbo” had to say that day, to the Chronicle of Higher Education!

The post Jimmy Wales on Wikipedia – the word! appeared first on https://thoughtcast.org.

• Jimmy Wales, the founder of the free online encylopedia Wikipedia, shares his thoughts on the power of one incredibly successful neologism – that amazing name!

• The term network neutrality was the brainchild of Tim Wu of Columbia Law School. So what does this term mean, and what power does it have?

The post In Search of Neologisms with Esther Dyson appeared first on https://thoughtcast.org.

Steve Reich is perhaps the preeminent composer living today. And one of his most heart-wrenching and affecting works is called Different Trains for String Quartet and Tape. It tells the story of Steve Reich’s early childhood — his train trips between the East and West coasts to visit his separated parents — and also of the train trips Jews were forced to take during the Holocaust.

The piece, commissioned by the Kronos Quartet in 1988, is notoriously difficult to play. But the Borromeo String Quartet has recently taken up the challenge. ThoughtCast’s Jenny Attiyeh attended a rehearsal at the New England Conservatory, where the Borromeo is currently in residence.

Click here: to listen — (7 minutes) on ThoughtCast!

Click here: for a shorter version (4:30 mins.)

The post The Borromeo String Quartet Meets Steve Reich! appeared first on https://thoughtcast.org.

Harvard economist Alberto Alesina has devoted himself to these questions. In a book he co-authored with Francesco Giavazzi, he asks: The Future of Europe: Reform or Decline??
Click here: to listen. (27 minutes)

The post The Future of Europe – with Alberto Alesina appeared first on https://thoughtcast.org.

The post Art & Science with Alan Lightman appeared first on https://thoughtcast.org.

Click here: to listen. (28 minutes)

The post Jack Beatty, Public Intellectual appeared first on https://thoughtcast.org.

Click here: to listen (29 minutes)

The post Faith and Philosophy with Harvey Cox and Simon Blackburn appeared first on https://thoughtcast.org.

Jay Allison has egalitarian instincts. He’s a maverick, who’s made it his mission to put the “public” back into public media. As an independent producer of stellar public radio – and television – Jay’s been able to work outside the system, and then change the system. Take This I Believe for example. Jay’s the man behind this series of audio essays, written and performed by a wide variety of Americans, ranging from the well-known to the unknown. As Jay says in this ThoughtCast interview, their sincerity and lack of skepticism make them almost the antithesis of “journalism” — and yet there they are, on NPR.

Click here: to listen. (28 minutes)

Jay Allison is also a contributor to Telling True Stories: A Nonfiction Writers’ Guide, a selection of essays from Harvard’s Nieman Conference on Narrative Journalism, and edited by Mark Kramer and Wendy Call. At the Harvard Book Store recently, Allison and Kramer banded together to tell a few stories of their own about authenticity, the narrative voice and the grueling process of authorship.
Click here: to listen. (55 minutes)

The post Public Media Maverick Jay Allison appeared first on https://thoughtcast.org.

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The post The BBC and CBC weigh in… appeared first on https://thoughtcast.org.

P.S… photo credit goes to Chris Pirillo!

The post Doug Kaye at the IMA appeared first on https://thoughtcast.org.

Click here: to listen to the interview (4:40 minutes).

The post WNYC’s Bill Swersey on “Open Source” appeared first on https://thoughtcast.org.

The post Two Questions: Redux appeared first on https://thoughtcast.org.

Click here: for NPR’s Andy Carvin and KQED’s Tim Olson (1:44 minutes).

Click here: for WBUR’s Anna Bensted, Michael Skoler of American Public Media, and The News Hour’s Lee Banville (2:34 minutes).

Click here: for American Public Media’s Mike Bettison, VPR’s Jodi Evans, and Daniel Ash, of Chicago Public Radio (2:05 minutes).

The post Two Questions appeared first on https://thoughtcast.org.

Some mildly subversive questions to think about: Are all the old parameters out? Need only revolutionaries apply? What’s worth saving, indeed savoring, from the MSM? And what does traditional media do that the newcomers can’t? Will anyone miss the good ol’ days once they’re gone?

The post Integrated Media — are we there yet? appeared first on https://thoughtcast.org.