Health

May 2026 • Health

THE END OF LONELINESS? AI AND THE FUTURE OF CONNECTION

Can an AI companion provide the connection people crave?

November 2025 • Work

BUILDING HOPE IN CYNICAL TIMES

Cambridge Forum speaks with three individuals – a pastor, an author and a professor of mass-media, who have all forged strategies to navigate the stresses of everyday existence. Their experiences offer pragmatic suggestions, and optimistic ideas about how meaning can be reclaimed in a cynical age.

May 2025 • Health

CLAMOR: How Noise Took Over

Do you long for a quieter world? Science and education journalist Chris Berdik’s latest book is CLAMOR: How Noise Took Over and How We Can Take It Back.

January 2025 • Health

ARE WE READY FOR THE NEXT PANDEMIC?

Dr. Krutika Kuppalli, infectious disease specialist and global health physician and Crawford Kilian, science and health reporter, address the looming public health crisis and discuss the best ways forward.

November 2024 • Health

THE ANXIOUS i-GENERATION

“We are over-protecting children in the real world while under-protecting them online” says Jonathan Haidt, author of The Anxious Generation, who maintains that the environment in which kids grow up today is hostile to human development. Haidt traces the current mental health crisis to the mid-2010s when smartphones and social […]

June 2024 • Health

Playtime vs Screentime

Dr Michael Rich, director of the Clinic for Interactive Media and Internet Disorders at Boston Children’s Hospital, and UMASS Professor David Toomey bat around the most recent research, including the upside of boredom for kids.

June 2024 • Health

Live Longer, Better

Join us for a discussion about ageism—it is as much about how the elderly see themselves as it is about how society views them, according to Professor Andrew Scott, author of The Longevity Imperative.

March 2024 • Health

What Is Healthcare: Is It a Public or Personal Responsibility?

Cambridge Forum takes a look at our current health care to see how it is changing.

January 2024 • Health

Is Our Junk Food Addiction Killing Us?

An astounding 60% of a typical American diet is made up of ultra-processed foods. We know that food can be either medicine or toxin; so how do we recognize “junk” food and make better eating choices? 

December 2023 • Health

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

Consider the state of singlehood: research indicates that people who live alone are generally unhappier. Not so, according to Bella DePaulo.

November 2023 • Health

Out of Sight

This forum accompanies two men, Mark Erelli, a musician and Andrew Leland, a writer, on their separate journeys from the world of sightedness to one of blindness.

June 2023 • Classics

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?

February 2023 • Health

Forgetting & Remembering: What Can We Do About It?

Why do we remember certain things and forget others? Research shows us that committing things to memory is far more complex than we imagine but so too is retrieving that information.

December 2022 • Health

Living a Good Enough Life

This forum challenges the notion that happiness should be life’s primary pursuit, arguing we might be better served by living well within our means and concentrating on leading a meaningful life instead.

November 2022 • Health

All About Medicare: Info Session and Q&A

Despite the information available to the public, many people still find themselves confused and in need of personal advice about Medicare benefits.

October 2022 • Health

Healing Trauma With EMDR

Eye Movement Desensitization & Reprocessing is a novel method of treatment for helping people by aligning their “thinking brains” with their “emotional brains”, to help process traumatic events.

September 2022 • Health

Heart to Heart: The Exquisite Machine

Cardiologist Sian Harding explores the latest scientific developments and mysteries of the heart including the latest cardiac health discoveries as well as the relationship between the emotions and heart function.

June 2022 • Health

Much Ado About Mushrooms

Psilocybin mushrooms may be making a comeback within the medical community who  have conducted clinical trials showing remarkable success in treating patients with severe depression, anxiety and PTSD. 

May 2022 • Climate

Harnessing the Power of Seaweed

An increasing number of marine scientists, ecologists, entrepreneurs and foodies are beginning to appreciate seaweed’s remarkable properties. 

April 2022 • Health

Can Having Good Friends Prolong Your Life?

Research is providing us with proof that having friends is beneficial, if not essential, to good health. But friendships are both a science and an art.

February 2022 • Health

Tick, Tick, and More Ticks

Brian Owens, an award-winning science journalist for Nature and the New Scientist, has investigated the causes, treatments, and controversy surrounding Lyme disease, an insidious but often overlooked disease.

September 2021 • Health

How God Works: The Science Behind the Benefits of Religion

Psychologist David DeSteno discusses some fascinating findings from his latest book How God Works.

February 2009 • Classics

The Third Chapter

Renowned sociologist Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot details a process of creative reinvention which redefines our views about the casualties and opportunities of aging.

July 2021 • Health

What Have We Learned From the First Covid Wave?

COVID-19 has proved to be the biggest global public health in history. Although it has posed the same threat across the globe, countries have responded very differently and some are faring better than others.

June 2021 • Health

Has the Pandemic Made the World Better?

Despite the damage and carnage, the pandemic accelerated our ingenuity and innovation and good things happened. What good things will you keep from 2020?

June 2021 • Health

Relationship Rollercoaster

What relationships did you acquire or lose in the past year? Has your emotional life shifted irrevocably? Join our discussion and tell us about your experiences over the past year—for better or worse.

December 2020 • Health

Exercised

Professor Daniel Lieberman, Human Evolutionary Biologist at Harvard University discusses his new book, Exercised: Why Something We Never Evolved to Do Is Healthy and Rewarding.

September 2020 • Health

Does COVID-19 Signal the End of the American Era?

Wade Davis attracted global attention with his opinion piece in Rolling Stone raising this question: Does Covid-19 signal the end of the American era? Why did he ask this question and why has it struck a chord around the world?

June 2020 • Climate

Farming for the Future

This forum features three uniquely different farmers who are all equally passionate about smart and sustainable ways of growing our food.

June 2020 • Health

The Rise of Environmental Illness

Freelance journalist Oliver Broudy explores environmental toxicity and the community of “sensitives”—people with powerful, puzzling symptoms resulting from exposure to chemicals, fragrances, and cell phone signals.

May 2020 • Health

Locked-Down Americans: Isolation and Loneliness

J. W. Freiberg’s latest book Surrounded by Others and Yet So Alone looks at the problem of chronic loneliness. So 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?

September 2019 • Climate

The End of Meat?

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

March 2019 • Health

How to Be Happy

Happiness is a choice you make. So writes John Leland who reflects on the timeless subject in his new book Happiness Is a Choice You  Make: Lessons From a Year Among the Oldest Old. 

February 2017 • Health

Let Them Eat Dirt!

Brett Finlay PhD., a microbiologist at the University of British Columbia, 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.

December 2016 • Health

Loneliness in the Digital Age

In this two-part forum, we attempt to unravel some of the causes of this pernicious condition and consider the ways to ward off, or at least alleviate, the curse of loneliness.

October 2012 • Health

May Doctors Help You Die?

Dr. Marcia Angell, senior lecturer in the Division of Medical Ethics at Harvard Medical School, discusses the Massachusetts ballot initiative in support of physician-assisted suicide.

February 2012 • Health

The Alzheimer’s Prevention Program

UCLA neuroscientist Gary Small looks at what Alzheimer’s disease actually is and reviews the research on preventing its onset. Small challenges the notion that Alzheimer’s is not preventable and discusses a variety of ways to keep the brain healthy.

April 2011 • Climate

Empires of Food

Author Andrew Rimas discusses his latest book Empires of Food: Feast, Famine, and the Rise and Fall of Civilizations.

November 2010 • Politics

Renewing Democracy: Deadly Spin

In 2009, Wendell Potter testified before Congress, giving powerful specifics of industry practices to “dump the sick” to increase shareholder value.