Category Archives: Radio

How Not To Kill Yourself

Suicide rates are rising at an alarming rate in America and the populations most at risk are no longer white middle-aged men, they are increasingly young people and minorities.  What societal ills might be fueling this tragic trend?

Clancy Martin is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Missouri in Kansas City.  He is also a happily married father of five children.  His latest book, How Not to Kill Yourself is a portrait of the suicidal mind – his own – and in it he provides both a personal account of the multiple attempts he had made to end his life but also the positive strategies he has devised to safeguard his future and that of others.

CLANCY MARTIN is the acclaimed author of numerous books on philosophy. A Guggenheim Fellow, his writing has appeared in The New YorkerThe AtlanticHarper’sEsquireThe New Republic,  and The Paris Review. He is a professor of philosophy at the University of Missouri in Kansas City and Ashoka University in New Delhi.

RORY O’CONNOR is Professor of Health Psychology at the University of Glasgow, Scotland and President of the International Association for Suicide Prevention

O’Connor leads the Suicidal Behaviour Research Laboratory, one of the leading suicide and self-harm research groups and can be found on twitter (@suicideresearch).

He’s the author of When It Is Darkest: Why People Die by Suicide and What We Can Do To Prevent It.

Recorded 6/14/2023

CF: How NOT To Kill Yourself 1
CF: How NOT To Kill Yourself 2

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BLACK HISTORY: ON REWIND 

To celebrate our newly digitized collection of eminent historical black orators, Cambridge Forum has teamed up with the Lincoln Institute to present a panel discussion featuring distinguished CF speakers Professors Randall Kennedy, Danielle Allen and Cheryl Townsend-Gilkes and Cambridge City Councilor Denise Simmons.

L to R:  Professor Danielle Allen, Mary Stack CF, Professor Cheryl Townsend Gilkes, Professor Randall Kennedy, moderator Roberto Mighty

What progress has been made in social justice and equality in America? Who writes American history? What outstanding issues urgently remain to be addressed by Americans?

Black History On Rewind

Recorded 3.21.2022

Black History Rewind 1
Black History Rewind 2

This forum was made possible through partnerships with the Lincoln Institute and the Harvard Square Business Association. 

Cambridge Forum: Black History Retrospective

The digitization project was funded in part through grants from the City of Cambridge and Cambridge Community Foundation.

Cambridge Forum co-sponsors



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Tick, Tick, And More Ticks

Many people know at least one person suffering from Lyme’s disease, a quietly expanding tick-borne epidemic that has now spread throughout the United States into Canada.  It is more than 40 years since the disease was first identified yet there is still no human vaccine available, despite the multiple vaccine options that you can purchase for your dog.  So what happened to the LymeRix vaccine that was developed in 1990s, and why was it so abruptly withdrawn from the market?

 Kris Newby, is a Stanford-educated science writer and senior producer of the Lyme disease documentary Under the Skin, whose book Bitten has won three international book awards. 

Brian Owens, an award-winning science journalist for Nature, New Scientist and The Lancet, was commissioned to investigate the causes, treatments, and controversy surrounding this insidious but often overlooked disease and recently published his book, Lyme Disease in Canada.  In it, Owens cites hope in a new French vaccine that is being developed in partnership with Pfizer for use in 2024.

Find out what you should know about Lyme’s disease before being bitten!

Recorded 2/22/22

Tick,Tick, And More Ticks

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JESUS AND JOHN WAYNE: How white evangelicals corrupted a faith and fractured a nation

In her unexpected NYT bestseller, Jesus and John Wayne, historian Kristin Du Mez traces how a militant ideal of white Christian manhood has come to pervade evangelical popular culture in America and as a result how the evangelical church is failing many mainstream Christian Americans. 

Joining the conversation are historians Jemar Tisby and Jon Butler. Jemar Tisby is author of The Color of Compromise and How to Fight Racism, published in 2021. He is the founder of The Witness and co-hosts the Pass The Mic podcast. Keep up with his latest musings via his newsletter, Footnotes.

Jon Butler is Professor Emeritus of American Studies, History, and Religious Studies at Yale University. His books include Becoming America and the prize-winning Awash in a Sea of Faith and Huguenots in America.  His new book is God in Gotham:  The Miracle of Religion in Modern Manhattan. 

Recorded 9/20/2021

Jesus And John Wayne 1
Jesus And John Wayne 2

Over several decades, Hollywood’s icons of strong men portrayed by actors like John Wayne and Mel Gibson in Braveheart, transformed core biblical teachings such as loving one’s neighbors and enemies, with a militant battle cry.  Mainstream evangelical leaders preached a mutually reinforcing vision of Christian masculinity – of patriarchy and submission, sex and power. This culminated in the hero worship of Trump who embodied their idea of militant masculinity, as protector and warrior. Even if this meant betraying their own moral values. 

Du Mez, an historian at Calvin University, delves into the hypocrisy and disconnect between purported Christian ethics and the rise of sexual abuse, corruption and scandal within the evangelical church.  She argues that the current brand of Christian nationalism which has come to dominate national politics and family values in recent times, is “more John Wayne than Jesus”.

Have you recently left your religion for reasons of disgust and hypocrisy relating to abuse, corruption or misogyny? Is there still an important place for organized religion in America?

Coming to Our Senses – Empathy

The Covid-19 pandemic and the ensuing lockdown created a slew of emotional challenges for everyone, from toddlers to seniors. Now that our social skills have atrophied, how will be retrain ourselves to interact with each other again?  

MIT Professor Sherry Turkle helps us understand how we might rejuvenate our senses and flex our empathy muscles once againIn her new memoir, The Empathy Diaries Turkle discusses her family, her upbringing and intellectual development to explain how these elements shaped her life’s work. Turkle explores a counterintuitive pattern observed across many decades devoted to keeping people connected: that empathy and connection can arrive when we feel the most alone and unfamiliar.  So, there is hope in sight.

Sherry Turkle ​is the Abby Rockefeller Mauzé Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology at MIT and the founding director of the MIT Initiative on Technology and Self. A licensed clinical psychologist, she is the author of six books and recipient of many awards including Ms. Magazine​ Woman of the Year.

Dr. Todd Essig is a psychoanalyst with a private practice in NYC. Known internationally for workshops on the possibilities and limitations of teletherapies, he is also Co-Chair of the American Psychoanalytic Association’s Covid-19 Response Team.

Recorded April 5, 2021

Coming To Our Senses: Empathy
The Empathy Diaries: A Memoir by Sherry Turkle, March 2021 Penguin Press​​ ▪​ SBN: 978-0-525-56009-8​​▪ ​​

GREEN GROWTH: a guide to post-pandemic economic sustainability

Can we achieve healthy growth, the kind that is more regenerative than wasteful, more equitable than unjust? 

Recorded 3/16/2021
GBH Forum Network VIDEO LINK

PER ESPEN STOKNES and L. HUNTER LOVINS believe they have the answers.  Both are experts in the field, having written books that offer blueprints for an inspiring regenerative economy that avoids collapse and works for people and the planet. 

A new Cambridge Forum series looks at the ramifications of COVID as an agent of change: How has the pandemic affected your life and what are its effects going forward?

In her new book, A Finer Future, author L. Hunter Lovins asks: is the future one of global warming, 65 million migrants fleeing failed states, soaring inequality, and grid-locked politics? Or one of empowered entrepreneurs and innovators working towards social change, leveling the playing field, and building a world that works for everyone?

Her answer is that humanity has a chance – just barely – to thread the needle of sustainability and build a regenerative economy through a powerful combination of enlightened entrepreneurialism, regenerative economy, technology, and innovative policy. 

Norwegian psychologist and economist Per Espen Stoknes, author of Tomorrow’s Economy, joins the conversation with recommendations for creating healthy, sustainable green growth.

Green Growth 1
Green Growth 2

L. Hunter Lovins is President of Natural Capitalism Solutions, which helps companies, communities and countries implement more regenerative practices profitably. 

Hunter has just written A Finer Future: Creating an Economy in Service to Life. which won a Nautilus Award. Time Magazine recognized her as a Millennium Hero for the Planet, and Newsweek called her the Green Business Icon. 

Per Espen Stoknes is a psychologist who now serves as director of the Centre for Sustainability and Energy at the Norwegian Business School in Oslo. In addition he has founded companies such as clean-tech GasPlas, and he is author Money & Soul (2009) and What We Think About When We Try Not To Think About Global Warming (2015).

The Rise of Environmental illness

Freelance journalist Oliver Broudy explores environmental toxicity and the community of The Sensitives — people with powerful, puzzling symptoms resulting from exposure to chemicals, fragrances, and cell phone signals, that have no effect on “normals.”

Recorded June 12, 2020
Press Release

Over fifty million Americans endure environmental illnesses that render them allergic to chemicals. Innocuous staples from deodorant to garbage bags wreak havoc on sensitives. With over 85,000 chemicals in the environment, danger lurks around every corner.



THE SENSITIVES: The Rise of Environmental Illness and the Search for America’s Last Pure Place is available for sale at this bookstore.

Dr. Ann McCampbel, (DrAnnMcC@gmail.com)(website) a Santa Fe, New Mexico based environmental illness medical advocate joins the conversation.

Cambridge Forum: The Rise of Environmental Illness

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Living without working

A World Without Work – Part 1
A World Without Work – Part 2
Living Without Working

 Economist Daniel Susskind is author of A WORLD WITHOUT WORK: Technology, Automation and How We Should Respond

Vikram Mansharamani is author of  THINK FOR YOURSELF: Restoring Common Sense in an Age of Experts and Artificial Intelligence. 

Recorded 5/29/2020

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Join the conversation. Become a member of the Friends of Cambridge Forum to support our ongoing public events and radio series.  Contribute $100 or more and receive our newsletter and invitations to special Cambridge Forum events.

To join,  call the Forum office at 617 495-2727 or make a contribution now online via Paypal.

LOCKED-DOWN AMERICANS: Isolation and Loneliness

Social distancing is hard on us because we humans are social animals, bio-electronically wired for connection.  While the present pandemic didn’t cause the isolation the characterizes our era, it certainly exacerbated it. In 2018, 28% of adult households in the U.S. were single person households, and 63% of the adult population remained unmarried. But we are not happier, on the contrary: over 35% of adult Americans report themselves to be chronically lonely, up from 20% in 1990.

How do we surmount this current crisis and help to create healthy connections going forward, in our own lives and in the lives of our children?

 J. W. Freiberg’s latest book Surrounded by Others and Yet So Alone looks at the problem of chronic loneliness through his unique lens as a social psychologist (PhD, UCLA) turned lawyer (JD, Harvard Law School). His case studies are infused with the latest brain science, which reveals that loneliness is actually a sensation, like hunger or thirst, not an emotion like anger, which we can talk ourselves out of.

Recorded May 15, 2020

Locked-Down Americans – Part 1
Locked-Down Americans – Part 2

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Join the conversation. Become a member of the Friends of Cambridge Forum to support our ongoing public events and radio series.  Contribute $100 or more and receive our newsletter and invitations to special Cambridge Forum events.

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The Alchemy of Us

Cambridge Forum: The Alchemy of Us

Listen!

AINISSA RAMIREZ  is a material scientist who is passionate about getting everyone excited about science, so much so that she calls herself a “science evangelist”. In her latest book, she looks at eight world-changing technologies and examines how we shape inventions out of matter, and then how those inventions, in turn, shape us – from clocks to silicon chips!

Recorded 5/1/2020

In The Alchemy of Us, scientist and science writer Ainissa Ramirez examines eight inventions—clocks, steel rails, copper communication cables, photographic film, light bulbs, hard disks, scientific labware, and silicon chips—and reveals how they shaped the human experience. Ramirez tells the stories of the woman who sold time, the inventor who inspired Edison, and the hotheaded undertaker whose invention pointed the way to the computer. She describes, among other things, how our pursuit of precision in timepieces changed how we sleep; how the railroad helped commercialize Christmas; how the necessary brevity of the telegram influenced Hemingway’s writing style; and how a young chemist exposed the use of Polaroid’s cameras to create passbooks to track black citizens in apartheid South Africa. These fascinating and inspiring stories offer new perspectives on our relationships with technologies.