How have the arts been impacted by the pandemic? What have been the challenges and the triumphs?
Michael J. Bobbitt, Executive Director of the Mass. Cultural Council is joined by Catherine Carr Kelly, Executive Director of Central Square Theater and collaborator on the Starlight Square project. Why are the arts a key asset to the economy? How much do they contribute to its economy?
Recorded 12/21/2021
The Arts As A Prescription For Culture 1The Arts As A Prescription For Culture 2
Cambridge Forum’s purpose is to inform, explore, entertain and challenge preconceptions on a wide range of current and timeless subjects. Forums are recorded live with audience participation, and freely distributed to the world through NPR, GBH Forum Network, and CF podcasts.
Benjamin Zander, renowned conductor of the Boston Philharmonic orchestra and Boston Youth Philharmonic orchestra, and co-author of The Art of Possibility. Zander considers the everyday miracles that can happen despite catastrophe.
Recorded 12.14.2021
Benjamin ZanderThe Art Of Possibility
Cambridge Forum’s purpose is to inform, explore, entertain and challenge preconceptions on a wide range of current and timeless subjects. Forums are recorded live with audience participation, and freely distributed to the world through NPR, GBH Forum Network, and CF podcasts.
Chris Hedges, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist has been teaching classes in drama, literature, philosophy and history in the college-degree program offered by Rutgers University to inmates in the New Jersey prison system. His latest book, OUR CLASS: Trauma and Transformation in an American Prison, is a haunting and powerful account of the voices trapped within a cruel penal system that too often defines their lives.
Recorded 11.16.2021
What I Learned In Prison 1
After studying some of August Wilson’s plays, Hedges class at East Jersey State Prison decided to write their own play Caged which played to sold out audiences at The Passage Theatre in Trenton, NJ and went on to be published. In Our Class, Hedges chronicles the class’s grief and suffering, as well as their personal transformation in crafted detail, giving voice to those who our society often demonizes and abandons.
Stephan Whitley is a former student and a successful graduate of Rutgers who was locked up in multiple New Jersey prisons and is now engaged in criminal justice reform work.
The stink, the mice, the yelling. My time in solitary was the most savage moment of my life.
Cambridge Forum’s purpose is to inform, explore, entertain and challenge preconceptions on a wide range of current and timeless subjects. Forums are recorded live with audience participation, and freely distributed to the world through NPR, GBH Forum Network, and CF podcasts.
Does the future plight of the planet keep you up at night? Are you filled with a sense of doom regarding your future or the uncertain future of your children? You’re not alone. Young people are particularly susceptible to this mental anguish and Greta Thunberg, was one of the first of her generation to speak publicly of her eco-depression.
Arno Kopecky
Theresa Marteau
Canadian journalist Arno Kopecky and Professor Theresa Marteau, Director of the Behavior and Health Research Unit at the University of Cambridge, discuss some of the options we have available to us in responding to this huge global challenge, and they address the pessimism and hope attached to the outcome of the COP26 Climate Conference in Glasgow.
Kopecky, author of the THE ENVIRONMENTALIST’S DILEMMA: Promise and Peril in an Age of Climate Crisis, asks if hope is naïve or indispensable.
Marteau examines what is necessary in terms of our individual and collective behavior that will make change possible. Her recent paper in the British Medical Journal suggests ways we might reach net zero by 2050.
Cambridge Forum’s purpose is to inform, explore, entertain and challenge preconceptions on a wide range of current and timeless subjects. Forums are recorded live with audience participation, and freely distributed to the world through NPR, GBH Forum Network, and CF podcasts.
What are we willing to give up in order to save the planet? And what would happen to our economies and our lives if we seriously committed to consuming fewer of the Earth’s resources?
Recorded 10/20/2021
The Day The World Stops Shopping 1The Day The World Stops Shopping 2
Canadian author of The Day the World Stops Shopping James MacKinnon is on a mission to get us to buy a lot less stuff but insists that even reducing our consumption by just 5% would make a big difference and we would barely notice the shift.
J. B. MacKinnon teaches journalism at the University of British Columbia and makes documentaries. He enjoys exploring the intersection between the wired and wild worlds, and lives in Vancouver, Canada.
Vincent Stanley from Patagonia, co-author of the The Responsible Company will join the conversation. Stanley affirms that businesses should make useful, long-lasting products in a socially and environmentally responsible way. What do you think?
Cambridge Forum provides free and open discussions about the pertinent issues and ideas confronting us, in the world today.
James Carroll‘s deeply personal exploration of what has broken the modern Catholic Church is chronicled in The Truth At The Heart Of The Lie, the most recent in his canon of books critiquing the blessings and limitations of Catholic Christianity.
A former priest himself, Carroll peers into the shadows of deceit and corruption that have shaken his belief system, unearthing the awful truth hidden in the human failings, sins and betrayals of the Church’s hierarchy of bishops and priests. Carroll contends that the Catholic Church and its clergy are at a critical tipping point. Can it and they yet be saved?
Recorded 10/5/2021
James Carroll – Has The Catholic Church Lost Its Soul? 1James Carroll: Has The Catholic Church Lost Its Soul? 2
What are your personal views on the present Catholic Church; has it failed its followers and if so, how?
Can the Catholic Church ever command respect and authority after the slew of international scandals – is it too late to redeem itself?
James Carroll is author of 21 books, both fiction and non-fiction. His essays and articles have appeared in The New Yorker, Daedalus, The Daily Beast and other publications. He wrote a Boston Globe op-ed column for 23 years.
Cambridge Forum provides free and open discussions about the pertinent issues and ideas confronting us, in the world today.
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 1Jesus 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?
Did you know that people who engage in spiritual practices tend to live longer, happier lives? What’s more you don’t have to be “religious” to avail yourself of the multiple benefits – many of these rituals work on the mind regardless of belief.
Psychologist David DeSteno discusses some fascinating findings from his latest book How God Works.
Science shows that by taking part in certain religious practices and rituals, regardless of faith – or lack thereof – we improve our emotional and physical wellbeing.
Consider that:
Prayers of gratitude make people more honest and generous, creating a cycle of paying it forward.
Buddhist meditation reduces hostility and increases compassion
The Jewish practice of sitting shiva reduces the pain of grief
The Christian ritual of saying grace before meals increases empathy
Shinto rituals around childbirth enhance bonding for mothers and reduce the incidence of postpartum depression
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.
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.
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).
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.
