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What have we learned from the first covid wave?

As the latest Covid variants continue to reveal themselves, COVID-19 has proved to be the biggest global public health and economic challenge in history. Although it has posed the same threat across the globe, countries have responded very differently and some are faring better than others. 

What Have We Learned from the First Covid Wave?

Watch the GBH Forum Network video What Have We Learned From The First Covid Wave?

Peter Baldwin, Professor of Comparative History at UCLA, has written books on a variety of topics including 19th century European public health policies and the global response to AIDS.  

In his latest book is “FIGHTING THE FIRST WAVE:  How the Coronavirus was tackled differently across the globe”,  Baldwin shows that how nations responded depended above all on the political tools available – how firmly could the authorities order citizens’ lives and how willingly would they be obeyed? 

Professor Bill Hanage, an epidemiologist at Harvard’s Chan School of Public Health where he is a faculty member at the Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics joins conversation.

In Asia, nations quarantined the infected and their contacts. In the Americas and Europe they shut down their economies, hoping to squelch the virus’s spread. In some countries, like England, there were fines for disobeying lockdown limits. Others, above all Sweden, responded with a light touch, putting their faith in social consensus over coercion. Some countries have now changed strategy due to recent surges in the Delta variant in Australia, Canada, Europe and elsewhere.

This forum is part of our TRANSFORMATIONS series, which has been examining the various ways in which the pandemic has acted as an agent of change.  We are grateful for the generous support of the City of Cambridge


Cambridge Forum provides free and open discussions about the pertinent issues and ideas confronting us, in the world today.


Has The Pandemic Made The World Better?

Despite the damage and carnage, the pandemic accelerated our ingenuity and innovation and good things happened. Multi-disciplinary collaborations took place across continents, Zoom partnerships developed and vaccine production took off at record speed. Peloton sales exploded, home offices and gyms sprung up in garages, people gardened and baked bread. And according to psychologists, 10% of us will undergo PTG (post traumatic growth).

What good things will you keep from 2020?

Recorded 6/29/2021

CF: Has The Pandemic Made The World Better?

Watch the GBH Forum Network video recording of Has The Pandemic Made The World Better?

Sharon Peacock is a clinician scientist who’s worked in microbiology in the UK and SE Asia for the past 25 years. She is also founding director of COVID-19 Genomics UK Consortium. Peacock is busy staying on top of the latest Covid hybrids and mapping genomes, she has generated half a million to date!

Amy Canevello is an Associate Professor in Health Psychology at UNC, Charlotte.

Canevello’s research integrates social psychology, close relationships and trauma to understand how people attain optimal functioning even under adversecircumstances

Douglas Alexander is former UK Shadow Foreign Secretary, Chair of UNICEF (UK) and Senior Fellow at Harvard Kennedy School’s “Future of Diplomacy” Project.


Alexander knows all about long international negotiations on and off Zoom!

This forum is part of our TRANSFORMATIONS series, which has been examining the various ways in which the pandemic has acted as an agent of change.  We are grateful for the generous support of the City of Cambridge


Cambridge Forum provides free and open discussions about the pertinent issues and ideas confronting us, in the world today.


Relationship Rollercoaster

The pandemic was a lethal litmus test for relationships of all kinds. A motley assortment of people found themselves locked down together. Some saw the deaths of family or friends. Others were deprived of seeing neighbors, co-workers, school friends or they lost the support of community groups like choirs. As we emerge from the Covid cocoon, a significant number of relationships have cemented or ended but several million Americans have also acquired pets.

Recorded 6/8/2020

What relationships did you acquire or lose in the past year? Has your emotional life shifted irrevocably? Will things return to pre-pandemic conditions or are these new work/life changes here to stay?  Join our discussion and tell us about your experiences over the past year – for better or worse?

Rich Slatcher is Professor of Psychology at the University of Georgia.  His research and teaching focusses on understanding the effects of people’s close relationships on their health and well-being. He currently oversees the Love in the Time of COVID project to examine the global effects of the pandemic on people’s social relationships.

Andrés Holder is Executive Director of the Boston Children’s Chorus. He has over ten years of experience in performing arts management through his work with Gala Hispanic Theatre, Arena Stage, and The Washington Ballet. 

Mark Cushing is a lawyer and author of Pet Nation, an inside look at how over the past 20 years, pets have become treasured members of the American family.

Has America’s love affair with pets resulted in a cultural transformation?

Relationship Rollercoaster 1
Relationship Rollercoaster 2

This forum is part of our TRANSFORMATIONS series, which has been examining the various ways in which the pandemic has acted as an agent of change.  We are grateful for the generous support of the City of Cambridge


Cambridge Forum provides free and open discussions about the pertinent issues and ideas confronting us, in the world today.


The End Of The Office?

how will the pandemic affect your work, life, home?

Some people can’t wait to get back to the office but 80% don’t want to or would prefer a hybrid schedule, according to a recent Harvard survey.  Many more workers however, have no such attractive options. But all of us must consider the future of our workplaces going forward. 

Will things return to pre-pandemic conditions or are these new work/life changes here to stay?  Some people miss having a separate workspace and live interaction with colleagues.  What do you think? Join our discussion and tell us about your experiences over the past year – for better or worse.

Guest speaker, Nick Bloom, a professor of economics at Stanford University specializing in management practices and uncertainty, will be discussing his research which shows that balance between work, life and home is key.

Our second guest is Dr. Brad Harrington, Executive Director of the Boston College Center for Work & Family (BCCWF) and a research professor in the Carroll School of Management

RECORDED 5/18/2021

TRANSFORMATIONS: End of the Office 1
TRANSFORMATIONS: End of the Office 2

GBH Forum Network recorded this talk and will post an edited version in the next few weeks, here >> https://forum-network.org/lectures/end-office-how-will-pandemic-affect-your-work-life-home/  

Learn more about our guest speakers.

Here is more on the work of Dr. Brad Harrington and Boston College’s Center for Work & Family (BCCWF) >> https://www.bc.edu/content/bc-web/schools/carroll-school/sites/center-for-work-family.html/ 

Check out this curated list from the Working From Home Research Project >> https://wfhresearch.com/media/ 

“How to Navigate the Postpandemic Office” https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/24/business/dealbook/hybrid-workplace-guide.html 

From the BBC, “Are men-dominated offices the future of the workplace?” https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20210503-are-men-dominated-offices-the-future-of-the-workplace   

Will we return full-time? Read more:

“No full-time return to the office for over a million”  https://www.bbc.com/news/business-56972207  

What’s a good balance of work and life? Check out this article from the Atlantic “There’s a Perfect Number of Days to Work From Home, and It’s 2” 

If you are an employer or employee looking for information to navigate the pandemic, look at this COVID-19 page from the BCCWF.

This forum is part of our TRANSFORMATIONS series, which has been examining the various ways in which the pandemic has acted as an agent of change.  We are grateful for the generous support of the City of Cambridge


Cambridge Forum provides free and open discussions about the pertinent issues and ideas confronting us, in the world today.


Join the conversation. Support our ongoing Zoom and in person events and radio series.  Sign up to receive our free newsletter. Contribute $100 or more and receive invitations to special Cambridge Forum events.

Make a contribution now online via Paypal.


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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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.

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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Support our mission to provide free and open discussions about the pertinent issues and ideas confronting us, in the world today.





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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Support our mission to provide free and open discussions about the pertinent issues and ideas confronting us, in the world today.





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.

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.

In Search of Meadowlarks

To mark Earth Day, John Marzluff will outline a personal approach to sustainable agriculture.

Through an ornithologist’s lens, he observes current farming practices to see if we can broker a more harmonious relationship between our birds, farms, food and land.

RECORDED 4/16/2020

Joining the conversation will be  Ronnie Cummings, author of Grassroots Rising and  International Director of OCA, Organic Consumers Association, and Michael Chuisano, owner and farmer of The Naked Farm in New York where he grows a variety of produce, including lettuce, beets, radishes and arugula using a bio-intensive, no-till agricultural method.

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Support our mission to provide free and open discussions about the pertinent issues and ideas confronting us, in the world today.





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.

Do Morals Matter? Presidents and Foreign Policy

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Joseph Nye, a leading scholar of international relations, considers presidents and their foreign policy from FDR to Trump who come up short in the morality polls.

“Foreign Policy” magazine named Nye one of the top 100 Global Thinkers.

Recorded 4/3/2020

In Do Morals Matter?, Joseph Nye provides a concise yet penetrating analysis of the role of ethics in U.S. foreign policy during the post-1945 era. Working through each presidency from Truman to Trump, Nye scores their foreign policy on three ethical dimensions: their intentions, the means they used, and the consequences of their decisions. Alongside this, he evaluates their leadership qualities, elaborating on which approaches work and which ones do not.

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Support our mission to provide free and open discussions about the pertinent issues and ideas confronting us, in the world today.





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.