Tag Archives: health

Events, Podcasts

Single-Minded: Can You Live A Happy Satisfied Life, Alone?

Consider the state of singlehood:  Lots of health research indicates that people who live alone have higher health risks and are generally unhappier. Not so, according to Bella DePaulo, author of a new book, Single At Heart.  DePaulo is a 70-year old psychologist, who in addition to being single all her life, has also studied the state of being single from a professional standpoint and she is adamant that there are multiple myths about her chosen way of living.

“I could be living at a time or in a place where the prospects for staying single for life would have been much more daunting. Maybe it would have been nearly impossible for me to support myself financially without a spouse. Maybe attitudes toward single people would have been even more disparaging than they are now.  That would have been a profound loss. For people like me who are single at heart, the risk is not what we’ll miss if we do not organize our lives around a romantic partner, but what we’ll miss if we do. We would miss the opportunity to live our most meaningful, fulfilling and psychologically rich lives by living someone else’s version of a good life instead of our own. We would not get to be who we really are.” 

Bella DePaulo

Joining the conversation will be Fenton Johnson, who has written extensively about the state of marriage and the state of solitude. He’s author of three novels and four works of creative nonfiction, most recently At the Center of All Beauty:  Solitude and the Creative Life, a New York Times Editors’ Pick. 

CF Single Minded 1
CF Single Minded 2
Search For Meaning

Can Having Good Friends Prolong Your Life?

Research is providing us with more and more proof that having friends is beneficial, if not essential, to good health.  Many people are aware of the detrimental effects that social isolation and loneliness can have on physical and mental wellbeing, but fewer appreciate the advantages of keeping our important relationships close and personal.  University of Oxford data shows that best friends’ physiology comes into synchrony – the rhythm of their hearts, body temperatures and hormonal responses match. Human touch also slows the heartbeat, lowers blood pressure and the stress hormone cortisol. So our interaction with good friends actually keeps us alive and helps us live longer!

Robert Waldinger M.D., Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, directs one of the longest-running studies of adult life and says “deep, meaningful relationships are linked with emotional well-being and physical health.” His new book The Good Life which comes out next year, provides “lessons from the world’s longest scientific study of happiness” and he maintains that friendship is key.  But friendships are both a science and an art.  Joining him in the discussion about how to cultivate, nurture and keep friendships will be Jan Yager, Ph.D sociologist and author of several books on the topic including Friendgevity making and keeping friends who enhance and extend your life”.  

Recorded April 19, 2022.

Friendship 1
Friendship 2

Archive, Events, Podcasts, Radio

The End of Meat?

Can Americans survive without their hamburgers? This juicy question raises many fundamental issues – nutritional, moral and environmental.

Recorded 9/25/2019

Watch the video here.

Cows are big methane machines and not very efficient ones, and everyone agrees that we need to reduce our carbon footprint. As people are becoming better informed about choices and what they’re putting into their bodies, they are looking at the “costs” from a health perspective, for animals and for the environment. Changes are afoot.

Who knew that Burger King would be offering the Impossible Whopper made from plant-based protein instead of meat? And veganism, which used to be a fringe-movement, has now morphed into a hip lifestyle. Scientists are already working on cell-based meat products which will be on sale to the public next year.

To help us understand the issues, we have scientists, philosophers and businessmen. Dr. Walter Willett, Professor of Epidemiology and Nutrition at Harvard will be joined by Nina Gheihman, a sociologist at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs and two entrepreneurs, Truman French and Tucker Pforzheimer, who are running a business, growing shiitake mushrooms on Martha’s Vineyard.

Can a burger help combat climate change?

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Events, Radio

Let Them Eat Dirt!

dirtLET THEM EAT DIRT!
Are we living in an over-sanitized world?

Brett Finlay PhD., a microbiologist at the University of British Columbia and world leader on understanding how bacterial infections work, talks about his new book “Let Them Eat Dirt”, in which he questions whether our hyper-vigilant hygiene practices are helping or hurting our health. In the 200 years since we first discovered that microbes cause infectious diseases, we have battled to keep them at bay. But a recent explosion of scientific knowledge has led to undeniable evidence that early exposure to these organisms is beneficial to or health.  Finlay argues that our super-clean approach to living is damaging our health and the health of our children.  Indeed, the imbalance of these important microbes can lead to the development of obesity, diabetes and asthma.

Recorded February 1, 2017

Listen to Let Them Eat Dirt, part 1 & part 2

[audio:https://www.cambridgeforum.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/CF-MICROBES-1.mp3|titles=Cambridge Forum LET THEM EAT DIRT – Part 1]

[audio:https://www.cambridgeforum.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/CF-MICROBES-2.mp3|titles=Cambridge Forum LET THEM EAT DIRT – Part 2]