Tag Archives: 2021

Events, Podcasts, Transformations

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.

Events, Transformations

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.

Events, Podcasts, Transformations

Severe Information Disorder: Can we restore a healthier information economy?

Many of the problems we face in the world today – the global pandemic, the economic crisis, political violence of the kind that rocked the US Capitol in January – are the result of our severe information disorder. How do we create a universe of truthful and verifiable information, available to everyone?

We are swimming in a sea of lies, but what can we do about it? MIT Open Learning’s Peter Kaufman has some suggestions. For starters, it might be time to think anew about our rights to knowledge, our approach to the public sphere, and our concept of information and the public good.

In his book, The New Enlightenment And The Fight To Free Knowledge, Kaufman fills us in on the history of knowledge and the price that was exacted to disseminate it.

What can we do to counter the powerful forces that have purposely crippled our efforts to share knowledge widely and freely?

Recorded April 27, 2021

Information Disorder 1
Information Disorder 2

Peter Kaufman is a writer, teacher, and documentary producer who works at MIT Open Learning.

He’s joined by Casey Davis-Kaufman (no relation), Associate Director of GBH Archives and Project Manager for the American Archive of Public Broadcasting.

Resource links contributed by the speakers:

Listen to Wikipedia by Hatnote

The New Enlightenment and the Fight to Free Knowledge
By Peter B. Kaufman

This book is also available through Open Culture

American Archives of Public Broadcasting—a joint effort by GBH and the Library of Congress

Volunteer for Transcript-a-thons and Wikipedia Edit-a-thons with AAPB

Work by Elizabeth Seger

Truth, Dissent & the Legacy of Daniel Ellsberg

Articles

“The secret lives of Facebook moderators in America“

“Trump, defying custom, hasn’t given the National Archives records of his speeches at political rallies“

The Idealist: Aaron Swartz And The Rise Of Free Culture On The Internet

This program is the third in our TRANSFORMATIONS series, which has been examining the various ways in which the pandemic has acted as an agent of change.  Schools and libraries have been closed for a year, has this made a big difference to your life and the lives of your children; do you feel deprived?

Podcasts, Radio, Transformations

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 again.  In 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​​▪ ​​
Archive, Environment, Radio, Transformations

GREEN GROWTH: a guide to post-pandemic economic sustainability

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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.

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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).

Events

THE POWER OF ETHICS: How to Make Good Choices in a Complicated World

Today’s ethical challenges are increasingly gray, often without a clear right or wrong solution, causing us to teeter on the edge of effective decision-making. With concentrated power structures, rapid advances in technology, and insufficient regulation to protect citizens and consumers, ethics are harder to understand than ever.

How do we find a way forward?

In The Power of Ethics, Susan Liautaud shows how ethics can be used to create a sea change of positive decisions that can ripple outward to our families, communities, workplaces, and the wider world—offering unprecedented opportunity for good.

Recorded 2/24/21

Power Of Ethics 1
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Susan Liautaud is the founder and managing director of Susan Liautaud & Associates Limited, which advises clients from global corporations to NGOs on complex ethics matters. She teaches cutting-edge ethics courses at Stanford University, serves as chair of Council of the London School of Economics and Political Science, and is the founder of the nonprofit platform The Ethics Incubator.

democracy, Events, Podcasts

Women And Leadership

Hear a powerful call to action for achieving equality in leadership from Julie Gillard, former Prime Minister of Australia (2010 – 2013) as she reflects on her new book Women and Leadership.

GBH Forum Network Video: Women and Leadership 

Recorded February 3, 2021

CF Women And Leadership 1
CF Women And Leadership 2

Using current research as a starting point, authors Julia Gillard  and Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala (The World Trade Organization has appointed Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala as its new director-general – making her the first woman and first African to hold the roll) analyzed their experiences, interviewed women world leaders and published their joint findings in a new book WOMEN AND LEADERSHIP.  In it they investigate the questions raised by the lack of women leaders in the national arena.

Women make up fewer than ten per cent of national leaders worldwide, and behind this eye-opening statistic lies a pattern of unequal access to power. Through conversations with some of the world’s most powerful and interesting women–including Jacinda Ardern, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Christine Lagarde, Michelle Bachelet, and Theresa May–Women and Leadership explores gender bias and asks why there aren’t more women in leadership roles.

Events

Markers and Reminders: MLK to BLM

It’s time to reflect on the significance of our local and national history with regard to black icons and community activists.  

Cambridge Forum partners with the Harvard Square Business Association to examine Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy and Black Lives Matter’s impact on the history of Cambridge, Boston and beyond.

Recorded 1/19/2021

CF: Markers and Reminders: MLK to BLM
it’s called “The Embrace.” The statue is an abstract based on a famous picture of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. & Coretta Scott King hugging each other.

Speakers include Denise Jillson, Executive Director of HSBA and Denise Simmons, Cambridge City Councillor. In addition Imari Paris Jeffries, Executive Director of King Boston discusses the planned three-story “Embrace” memorial to honor Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King.

A portrait of American singer and civil rights activist Nina Simone by artist  Lennie Peterson being installed in the Out of Town News Kiosk in Harvard Square as a prelude to Martin Luther King’s Day on Monday, January 18th.

Events, Podcasts

How To Think Long-Term In A Short-Term World

It’s time to trade in shortsightedness for long-term thinking. That’s according to author and philosopher Roman Krznaric, who writes about the power of ideas to change society in his new book The Good Ancestor.

Recorded January 6, 2021

CF Long Term Thinking 1
CF Long Term Thinking 2

Krznaric outlines practical ways we can retrain our brains to think of the long view, including what he calls “Deep-Time Humility” (recognizing our lives as a cosmic eyeblink) and “Cathedral Thinking” (starting projects that will take more than one lifetime to complete). His aim is to widen our focus, to inspire more “time rebels” like Greta Thunberg—to shift our allegiance from this generation to all humanity—in short, to save our planet and our future.

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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.

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