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).

This Faculty Insight interview, produced in partnership with ThoughtCast and Harvard Extension School, is with Henry Leitner, the associate dean for Information Technology and Chief Technology Officer at Harvard’s Division of Continuing Education, and a senior lecturer on computer science at Harvard. Leitner also oversees the Distance Education initiative at the Extension School, and we spoke in a control room there, where many of these online courses are recorded.
What’s more, Leitner’s played a role in launching edX, a Harvard-MIT venture in online learning that’s gathering steam. It represents the MOOC  or massive open online course model, which can reach even greater numbers across the globe. These free online classes have the potential to penetrate closed societies and break down barriers, be they physical, psychological, cultural or – yes, educational.

To listen to the renowned Harvard Professor Ali Asani tell it, Islam is a religion of multiple dimensions, interpretations, and perspectives. It’s almost like an all-encompassing religion, whose core beliefs can serve to unite widely diverse cultural groups, which eventually combine to form a dazzling coat of many colors.
But with such a cornucopia of rules and rituals, might the basic tenets of Islam get lost? Could they become confused with ancient tribal codes, which existed prior to Islam, and are difficult to puzzle out, to separate from the Muslim doctrines of today?
This Faculty Insight interview, produced in partnership with ThoughtCast and Harvard Extension School, asks — but perhaps does not always answer — many of these questions. So take a look, see for yourself, and join Ali Asani, Harvard’s Professor of Indo-Muslim and Islamic Religion and Cultures,  in the debate!

Kate Rosenberger, owner

Dog Eared Books

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.

Kate Rosenberger & customers

Click here to listen (11 minutes.)

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.

Jim Holt (photo: Michael Todd)

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 just-published 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.)

Howitt teaches Crisis Management and Emergency Preparedness and Disaster Relief and Recovery at the Extension School, and is also an author and editor of several books, including Managing Crises: Responses to Large-Scale Emergencies. He speaks with Jenny Attiyeh of ThoughtCast about what we’ve learned from large-scale disasters like Hurricane Katrina, and how we can do  better next time!

James Joyce, 1915

Books Upstairs, Dublin

Click here (24 minutes) to listen!

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.

Click here: to listen, and judge for yourself!

In this sixth installment of Faculty Insight, produced in partnership with Harvard University Extension School, ThoughtCast speaks with Allan Ryan, the director of intellectual property at Harvard Business School Publishing, a member of the American Bar Association’s Committee on the First Amendment and Media Litigation, and an instructor at Harvard Extension School.

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!

Sean Dorrance Kelly

(photo by Jenny Attiyeh)

Sean Dorrance Kelly, a voluble, high-octane philosopher and Harvard professor, spoke at the Harvard Book Store recently about his latest creation: All Things Shining: Reading the Western Classics to Find Meaning in a Secular Age,  which he co-wrote with Hubert Dreyfus, another professor of philosophy, this time at Berkeley.

ThoughtCast was there, and made this recording. (28 minutes.)
So take a listen, and let us know what you think!

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)

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

Flannery O'Connor in her driveway in 1962 (photo credit: Joe McTyre)

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.

Breaching North Atlantic Right Whale

Photo: courtesy US Marine Mammal Commission

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.

Fargo Meets Right Whale Calf

Courtesy Rosalind Rolland/New England Aquarium

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.

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.

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)

Emily Dickinson

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.

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)

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.

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.

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!

Simon Johnson, the Professor of Entrepreneurship at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, and former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund, is an outspoken critic of the US government response to the financial crisis. Now he takes on the “too big to fail” banks which continue to threaten our economy.  In his latest book, called 13 Bankers: The Wall Street Takeover and the Next Financial Meltdown, which he co-wrote with James Kwak, Simon argues that if the biggest banks aren’t cut down to size, it’s only a matter of time before we face another financial crisis. And once again, the government – aka the taxpayers – will be obliged to step in and bail out these behemoths…
In Simon’s words, if they’re too big to fail — they’re too big to exist!
Simon Johnson is also a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.  And he’s the co-author, again with James Kwak, of the influential economics blog The Baseline Scenario. Simon spoke with ThoughtCast at the Harvard Book Store in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

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.

Wendy Mnookin

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!

Rebecca Goldstein

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.

Steven Pinker

In addition to being Rebecca’s husband, Steven Pinker is 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.

Ernest Fleischmann

Sadly, Ernest Fleischmann died in June, 2010 after a long illness. He will be missed! Here is a tribute to him from Gail Eichenthal at KUSC.

And to listen to a talk by Steven Pinker on the Forum Network, click here!

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.

To watch a shorter version of this interview, go to the NY Review Books Classics blog  A Different Stripe!  And to read a review on Thoreau’s Journal by intellectual historian John Summers, click here!

Milking Time at Lovejoy Brook Farm

Note: this slideshow was commissioned by the BBC Radio program Americana.

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.)

Jonah Lehrer (photo credit: Lori Duff)

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.)

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.

dopamine brain

Click here to listen (3:24 minutes.)

To listen to a talk with Adam Hochschild on the Forum Network, click here!

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).

Robert Campbell

– 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.

Eat Lunch or Be Lunch

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

James Poterba

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).

Sam Huntington

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).

Robert Silvers (credit Melanie Flood)

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!

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.

I discovered that one contributor, Daniel Drezner, is a fellow Williams alum, who blogged about the column here. 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.

And Christopher Hayes, who blogs for The Nation, picked up this thread for his Capitolism column.
Feel free to elaborate in the comments section, below.

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

PRPD

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).

Judith Donath

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)

(2:20 minutes)

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

Josh Marshall (credit: NY Times)

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 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)

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!

• 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?

Borromeo String Quartet (photo: Christian Steiner)

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.)

Why Not?

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!)

Natalie Goldberg (self-portrait)

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 paints her father

Natalie seeks the truth, about herself, her father (the charismatic Ben Goldberg), her Zen teacher Katagiri Roshi, and the swirling world around her. As those who know her will attest, 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)

El Rito, New Mexico

Natalie Goldberg is also featured in the documentary Tangled up in Bob: Searching for Bob Dylan, in which she ventures to his hometown of Hibbing, Minnesota, in search of – once more – the truth. At the moment, Natalie is at work on a new book, called “Old Friend from Far Away: The Practice of Writing Memoir”, which will be published in February of 2008.

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)

Alberto Alesina

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)

Alan Lightman

And to listen Alan Lightman on WGBH’s Forum Network, click here — and here!

Public -- Or Private?

Click here: to listen. (28 minutes)

Kwame Anthony Appiah (Photo: Greg Martin)

Click here: to listen. (42 minutes)

Harvey Cox

Simon Blackburn

Click here: to listen (29 minutes)

And to listen to a WGBH Forum Network lecture moderated by Harvey Cox, on the Boston civil rights movement, click here!

Jay Allison

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 gruelling process of authorship.
Click here: to listen. (55 minutes)
And to hear more from Jay Allison on the Forum Network, click here!

To listen to a discussion with Henry Jenkins on “The Economics of Open Content” on the WGBH Forum Network, click here.

And there’s more….

• WNYC’s Bill Swersey on “open source”
• Beyond Broadcast — the state of mind

Sue Gardner

To listen to a discussion on “Open Content and Public Broadcasting” on the WGBH Forum Network, click here.

P.S… photo credit goes to Chris Pirillo!

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

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).

To listen to a discussion on “Open Content and Public Broadcasting” with Andy Carvin on the WGBH Forum Network, click here.

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?

To listen to a discussion on “Open Content and Public Broadcasting” with Henry Becton on the WGBH Forum Network, click here.

Amartya Sen

This new book examines the unfortunate connection between violence and our tendency to identify with one key trait — our ethnicity, or religion, for example — to the exclusion of all others. Sen argues that we can combat this tendency by rejecting this narrowly defined, limited sense of identity, and embracing a broader, richer and more complex understanding of ourselves.
Amartya Sen was born in West Bengal, India (now Bangladesh) and teaches economics at Harvard University. He is known in the wider world for his work on the causes of famines.
Note: Susan Wennemyr served as associate producer on this program.
Click here: to listen (28:30 minutes).
To listen to a panel on “Combating Global Poverty” that includes Sen, click here to access WGBH’s Forum Network.

Maria Thomas is the VP and general manager of NPR digital media. As such, she oversees the development and distribution of NPR content to the Internet, mobile phones and the like. Need I say more?
Click here: (3 minutes) to listen to the interview.

Lucio Mesquita is the head of the Americas and Europe for the BBC World Service. He is thoughtful, almost philosophical, and in this interview he takes me to task for my quest for ‘purity’ in public broadcasting. He also discusses opera, soap opera, Shakespeare, silent movies, and of course, the BBC! I had to save the last word of my ‘Future of Public Radio’ series for Lucio.
Click here: (11:30 minutes) to listen to the interview.

Click here for part 1 featuring the BBC’s Phil Harding, WHYY’s Elisabeth Perez-Luna and Jay Kernis, a senior veep at NPR.
Click here for part 2 with Michael Arnold of PRI, MPBN’s Nikki Shields and WUNC’s George Boosey.
Click here for part 3 with the BBC’s Liliane Landor, On Point’s Karen Shiffman and Eric Nuzum of NPR.
Click here for part 4 with Iowa Pubic Radio’s Todd Mundt, Jackie Sauter with NCPR and Andrew Haeg of MPR.

Program director Jackie Sauter admits she’s no pro when it comes to newfangled Internet contraptions. But that hasn’t kept her from moving North Country Public Radio online.
Click here: (5 1/2 minutes) to listen to the interview, and click here to read a PRX review of my interview with Jackie Sauter.

Andrew Haeg is the senior producer of Public Insight Journalism at Minnesota Public Radio, which is a fresh new way to interact with — and learn from — your audience.
Click here: (4 minutes) to listen to the interview.

Click here for part 1 featuring the BBC’s Phil Harding, WHYY’s Elisabeth Perez-Luna and Jay Kernis, a senior veep at NPR.
Click here for part 2 with Michael Arnold of PRI, MPBN’s Nikki Shields and WUNC’s George Boosey.
Click here for part 3 with the BBC’s Liliane Landor, On Point’s Karen Shiffman and Eric Nuzum of NPR.
Click here for part 5 with Maria Thomas of NPR and Lucio Mesquita of the BBC.

Liliane Landor is the commanding editor of news and current affairs at the BBC World Service. And as a member of the BBC’s Creative Future for journalism team, she’s already devoted a good deal of time to the questions bedevilling public broadcasting. Perhaps this is one of the reasons why she has some tough comments to make about public broadcasting here in America…
Click here: (6 1/2 minutes) to listen to the interview.

Eric Nuzum is NPR’s refreshing, colorful director of programming and acquisitions. We spoke in an exceedingly noisy room, so this interview is short and loud. If it leaves you hungry for more, try this.
Click here: (2 1/2 minutes) to listen to the interview.

Karen Shiffman is senior associate producer for On Point, the smart, approachable NPR program hosted by Tom Ashbrook and produced at WBUR in Boston. She gives us a glimpse of its inner workings.
Click here: (5 minutes) to listen to the interview.

Click here for part 1 featuring the BBC’s Phil Harding, WHYY’s Elisabeth Perez-Luna and Jay Kernis, a senior veep at NPR.
Click here for part 2 with Michael Arnold of PRI, MPBN’s Nikki Shields and WUNC’s George Boosey.
Click here for part 4 with Iowa Pubic Radio’s Todd Mundt, Jackie Sauter with NCPR and Andrew Haeg of MPR.
Click here for part 5 with Maria Thomas of NPR and Lucio Mesquita of the BBC.

Nikki Shields is the program manager for Maine Public Broadcasting Network. Hers is a loyal audience — for the time being. And Nikki plans to keep it that way.
Click here: (4 1/2 minutes) to listen to the interview.

Michael Arnold is the director of programming for Public Radio International, which distributes Christopher Lydon’s Open Source, the BBC World Service, This American Life and more. PRI’s the newer kid on the block, and as such, may well be scrappier — and quicker at adapting to the new world of the Web 2.0.
Click here: (5 minutes) to listen to the interview.

Click here for part 1 featuring the BBC’s Phil Harding, Elisabeth Perez-Luna, and Jay Kernis, a senior veep at NPR.
Click here for part 3 with the BBC’s Liliane Landor, On Point’s Karen Shiffman, and Eric Nuzum of NPR.
Click here for part 4 with Iowa Public Radio’s Todd Mundt, Jackie Sauter with NCPR and Andrew Haeg of MPR.
Click here for part 5 with Maria Thomas of NPR and Lucio Mesquita of the BBC.

For starters, here’s Jay Kernis, the senior VP of programming at National Public Radio:
Click here: (9 1/2 minutes) to listen to the interview.

Also in attendance was a contingent of BBC World Service cognoscenti, who brought their own brand of blunt charm to the affair. Key among the charmers was Phil Harding, director of English Network and News.
Click here: (7 minutes) to listen to the interview.

But with Elisabeth Perez-Luna in attendance, the Americans were able to hold their own. Currently, she’s the news director and the executive producer of national radio programming at WHYY:
Click here: (12 minutes) to listen to the interview.

And there’s more!

• WUNC’s George Boosey, Nikki Shields of Maine Public Radio & Michael Arnold of PRI
• the BBC’s Liliane Landor, On Point’s Karen Shiffman & Eric Nuzum of NPR
• Iowa Public Radio’s Todd Mundt, Jackie Sauter with NCPR & MPR’s Andrew Haeg
• Maria Thomas of NPR & Lucio Mesquita of the BBC.

Note: to read a PRX review of my interview with Jackie Sauter (part 4) click here:

Alan Dershowitz

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.

And click here to listen to Dershowitz debate Harvey Silverglate on ‘civil liberties’ on the WGBH Forum Network.

Please join the conversation by leaving a comment!

Here’s my interview with Jamie Biggar, the young but wise senior developer at WGBH Interactive:
(4:30 minutes)

Dan Fellini, managing producer, Public Interactive Now here’s a man with a mind of his own!
(5:30 minutes)

Donna Liu, Founder and Executive Director of The University Channel. This distribution network provides academic lectures and conferences, over the Internet, in video format. It’s unadulterated, and it’s free!
(4:30 minutes)

Second Life guru John Lester of Linden Lab. Rather light-hearted talk about sexually ambiguous avatars and virtual 19th century islands with ‘steam robots.’ That was John’s avatar…
(7 minutes)

and Mark Anderson, the author of “Shakespeare By Another Name“, who covered the conference for Wired News. Here’s his article, and here’s our interview:
(2:40 minutes)

To hear MORE podcast interviews from Beyond Broadcast, check out Audio Berkman‘s line-up!

And click here to listen to the Beyond Broadcast conference hightlights on the WGBH Forum Network.

• And there’s more… click here for the following:

Terry Heaton, president of Donata Communications
Jamie Biggar, with WGBH Interactive
Dan Fellini, managing producer, Public Interactive
Donna Liu, Founder of The University Channel
John Lester, the Second Life guru of Linden Lab
Mark Anderson, who covered the conference for Wired.com

This recording is provided courtesy of the Berkman Center. (Three cheers for Colin Rhinesmith! He runs AudioBerkman.)

Click here: (33 minutes)

And thanks to Andigo New Media, Inc. for the ‘Eat or Be Eaten’ logo!

Lisa Randall

Now while this might sound like so much Greek — just wait. Randall’s latest book, written for the layman, is called “Warped Passages: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Universe’s Hidden Dimensions” — so she’s had plenty of practice explaining these high-flying ideas to English majors.

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

Click here to listen to Lisa Randall’s lecture at IDEAS Boston on the WGBH Forum Network.

Robert Pinsky

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).
And click here to listen to a discussion with Robert Pinsky on Poetry and Democracy on the Forum Network.

It’s all good to Kevin, and who can disagree with him. He spoke with ThoughtCast shortly before he took the mike at the Harvard Book Store.

Click here: (7:18 minutes) to listen to the interview.

And here’s Bookmark Now, the Talk! (34 minutes.)
It features Kevin, naturally, and also Paul Collins, the author of Sixpence House and Not Even Wrong: Adventures in Autism.

Megan Marshall

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).

Click here to listen to a lecture by Megan Marshall on the Peabody sisters on the WGBH Forum Network.

David Weinberger

Chris Nolan

Stowe Boyd

Click here: to listen (29:30 mins).

And there’s more: Corante has recently launched Corante Hubs and the related Corante Network.

coranteSSA

Carol Bundy

Carol’s book tells the story of the short, heroic life of Charles Russell Lowell, Jr., an elite young cavalryman who embodied the promise of his generation. An ardent abolitionist and reformer, Lowell was also a brilliant battlefield strategist, and he turned the tide at the Battle of Cedar Creek in the Shenandoah Valley, a crucial victory for the North just two weeks shy of Lincoln’s re-election. Shot twice during the fighting, Lowell died at dawn the following day.
Click here: to listen (28:30 mins).
Click here to listen to a lecture by Carol Bundy on her biography of Charles Russell Lowell, Jr. on the WGBH Forum Network.

Click here to read a review of the interview on PRX.

David Ferry

Richard Thomas

Click here to listen to a lecture by David Ferry on “The Art and Practice of Literary Translation” on the WGBH Forum Network.

Click here: (30 minutes) to hear Bundy’s talk, at the Harvard Book Store.
And you can also listen to a ThoughtCast interview with Carol Bundy, which was broadcast on public radio.

Click here: (45 minutes) for the talk.

And you can also listen to a ThoughtCast interview with David Ferry and Richard Thomas, the chair of Harvard’s Classics Dept.

Louise Richardson on “What Terrorists Want” !!

Eric Lander of the Whitehead Institute (which he founded) and also of the Broad Institute at MIT, where he serves as founding director. His subject? The Human Genome….

Harvey Mansfield: on “Manliness”! The Harvard guru of libertarian/conservative thought tackles a subject of some delicacy. To what degree is manliness in disrepute today, in the post-feminist West, and … do we like the results? If we seek to feminize men or look down on their more traditional characteristics — aggression, competition, the accumulation of wealth, women, shiny red cars — are we doing ourselves a disservice? After all, Mansfield asks, if there are no warriors, who is going to defend us?

Likoma, web design

Antonio Oliart, editor extraordinaire

Sonata No. 1 in G Minor by J.S. Bach, performed by Nicholas Goluses.
Courtesy Naxos of America

I would also like to thank:

Bob Doyle: entrepreneur/
philanthropist/ Renaissance Man.

Robert Lipsyte:
for telling me to get on with it.

Christopher Lydon:
for setting the pace and … finally having coffee with me. (!)

Charlie Nesson:
for being the first to give me the thumbs up.

Shelley Powers:
for her flair for design and her superior
programming skills, as evidenced on this website.
(Any complaints forward to her, please…)

Lisa Williams:
for introducing me to the world of blogs and pods
- up close and in person.