Podcasts
September 2023
Living on Borrowed Time
Jeff Goodell’s latest book, The Heat Will Kill You First looks at the impact that rising temperatures will have on our lives and on our planet.
June 2023
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?
May 2023
Plastic: Our Toxic Addiction
What can be done to break our toxic addiction to plastic, and to terminate its lethal global legacy?
May 2023
Challenging History: On the Streets of Newtowne
A new book aims to paint a more multi-dimensional view of the area charting its cultural influences and history starting ten thousand years ago, when indigenous people built communities there.
January 2023
Why Do We Need the Humanities?
At a time when interest and investment in the humanities is plummeting, and enrolment in STEM subjects is flourishing, we consider the human consequences of such a shift in direction.
January 2023
The Resurgence of the Independent Bookstore
More than 300 new independent bookstores have sprouted up across the country and another interesting development has accompanied this trend: the bookselling business has become much more diverse.
December 2022
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.
October 2022
The Art of Resistance: Visions and Voices of Change
Art provides a powerful expression for resistance both in word and image, and Peter Sacks uses both to great effect in his latest works.
September 2022
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.
September 2022
Tyrants on Twitter
Author David Sloss shares his analysis of how Chinese and Russian agents weaponize social media platforms for the sole purpose of subverting the liberal international order.
June 2022
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.
March 2022
Black History: On Rewind
To celebrate our newly digitized collection of eminent historical black orators, Cambridge Forum has teamed up with the Lincoln Institute to present a panel discussion.
February 2022
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.
January 2022
Smell: An Olfactory Orgy
Research into olfaction, the science of what happens between the nose and the brain, has intensified due to the huge number of people who lost their sense of smell due to COVID.
December 2021
The Art of Possibility
Benjamin Zander, renowned conductor of the Boston Philharmonic orchestra and Boston Youth Philharmonic orchestra, will discuss the everyday miracles that can happen despite catastrophe.
November 2021
What I Learned in Prison
Journalist Chris Hedges has been teaching classes in drama, literature, philosophy and history in a program offered by Rutgers University to inmates in the New Jersey prison system.
September 2021
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 1999
I’ll Make Me a World
Filmmaker and co-executive producer of the PBS television series, I’ll Make Me A World: A Century of African-American Arts, Sam Pollard talks about his dedication to chronicling the Black experience in America.
July 2021
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.
February 1998
Beloved Community: Cosmopolitanism
Afro-American scholar and philosopher K. Anthony Appiah considers the idea of a community founded on the principles of inclusion, hope, and mutual respect, a community that transcends the polarizing rhetoric of racism.
June 2021
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.
April 2021
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 […]
April 2021
Coming to Our Senses: Empathy
MIT Professor Sherry Turkle helps us understand how we might rejuvenate our senses and flex our empathy muscles once again.
February 2021
Women and Leadership
Hear a powerful call to action for achieving equality in leadership from Julie Gillard, former Prime Minister of Australia, as she reflects on her new book Women and Leadership.
January 2021
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 in his new book The Good Ancestor.
December 2020
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
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?
September 2020
Magdalena: River of Dreams
Anthropologist Wade Davis’s latest book, Magdalena: River of Dreams brings to life the story of the great Río Magdalena, illuminating Colombia’s complex past, present, and future.
July 2020
Civil Rights: Yesterday and Today
In honor of the late US Congressman from Georgia John Lewis, here’s a special Cambridge Forum we recorded in 2001 at the National History Museum in Lexington, Massachusetts.
July 2020
Parenting While Black
Writer, poet, and teacher Clint Smith in conversation with Jude Nixon, Professor of English at Salem State University. Their discussion explores what it means to raise children during this challenging period of Black Lives Matter.
June 2020
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.
May 2020
The Alchemy of Us
Anissa 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.
April 2020
In Search of Meadowlarks
John Marzluff outlines 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.
April 2020
Do Morals Matter? Presidents and Foreign Policy
Joseph Nye, leading scholar of international relations considers presidents and their foreign policy from FDR to Trump who come up short in the morality polls.
March 2020
Nature Underfoot: Learning to live with tiny life
John Hainze, an entomologist, ethicist, and former pesticide-developer calls for greater respect and moral consideration for humans and their natural world.
February 2020
Migrating to Prison
César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández takes a hard look at the immigration prison system’s origins, how it currently operates, and why.
December 2019
How to Start a Revolution
Writers Lauren Duca and Martin Lukacs, author of The Trudeau Formula, discuss collective action and non-violent protest with members of the climate action group, Extinction Rebellion.
November 2019
Appalachia: A Cultural Crossroads
This forum features performances by Revels musicians Jake Blount and Libby Weitnauer exploring the history and roots of traditional music of Appalachia.
September 2019
The End of Meat?
Can Americans survive without their hamburgers? This juicy question raises many fundamental issues: nutritional, moral and environmental.
June 2019
Fake news vs facts: living in a post-truth world
Are we living in a post-truth world where “alternative facts” replace actual facts and feelings have more weight than evidence? How did we get here? Lee McIntrye discusses our modern dilemma.
March 2019
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.
October 2018
Good and Mad: How Women’s Anger is Reshaping America
Rebecca Traister, author and NY magazine journalist, examines the history of feminism and the #Metoo movement in the light of recent political events in Washington and beyond.
May 2018
Is Capitalism Devouring Democracy?
The provocative and controversial ex-Greek finance minister of Greece and Professor of Economics at the University of Athens, Yanis Varoufakis, considers the need for a radically new way of thinking about the economy and capitalism.
September 2017
Cuz
Danielle Allen, Director of the Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard, discusses her new memoir Cuz.
June 2017
Rwandan Women Rising
Swanee Hunt speaks about her experiences in Rwanda from her new book Rwandan Women Rising which follows the story of the women who worked for peace after the genocide in 1994.
April 2016
All About Bees
Bees don’t just make honey, they pollinate a third of our food supply. But bee colonies are disappearing at an alarming rate in the US.
February 2016
Reclaiming Conversation
Most conversations today involve distracted people looking at their phones and not their partners. This, according to Sherry Turkle, is leading to a “crisis of empathy” at work, at home and in our public life.
October 2015
Rise Again! A Sing-Along Concert
Cambridge Forum hosted a sing-along concert featuring Peter and Annie; Charlie King; the Nields; Kallet Epstein & Cicone; and Fred Small.
November 2014
Witness to History: Remembering Freedom Summer
Jack Landron, a young musician well known to Boston-area audiences for his performances as Jackie Washington at Club 47 in Harvard Square, remembers his journey to Mississippi during the Freedom Summer.
April 2001
Folklore of Violence
Afro-American folk singer James Sparky Rucker talks about the glorification of the outlaw in popular and traditional folk music. Using songs and lyrics, he traces the tradition of celebrating outlaws from Jesse James to modern gangsta rappers.
April 2014
Learning to Look
Boston Globe art critic Sebastian Smee and Paul Tucker, curator of the Monet exhibitions at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, discuss the ways that looking at a work of art can open it up to reveal a rich web of information.
December 2013
Bunker Hill and the Crisis of Leadership in Revolutionary America
Nathaniel Philbrick, author of Bunker Hill: A City, A Siege, A Revolution reflects on the bloody battle in Charlestown on June 17, 1775.
September 2013
Presidential Leadership and the Creation of the American Era
Joseph Nye of the Harvard Kennedy School discusses the foreign policies of 20th-century American presidents with David Gergen,
November 2011
Columbus: The Four Voyages
Biographer Laurence Bergreen retraces the voyages of Christopher Columbus, placing the 15th-century explorer into the context of the Age of Discovery.
September 2011
Wildness and Reason
In this Cambridge Forum Classic, David Abram, author of The Spell of the Sensuous, tells a story that reveals the dependence of human cognition on the natural environment.
September 2011
One Great Crisis
James K. Galbraith examines current economic debates about austerity, government spending, tax policy, and job creation.
April 2003
Descent Into Limbo: Maurice Sendak’s Life in Children’s Art
In this Cambridge Forum conversation recorded in 2003, Sendak traces his lifelong journey in children’s literature and art.
November 2007
Musicophilia
The late essayist-physician Oliver Sacks memorably reflected at Cambridge Forum on music and its mysterious relationship to the brain.
August 2002
The Life and Times of Madame C.J. Walker
A’Lelia Bundles, Emmy-winning producer and journalist shares stories from her best-selling book about her great-great-grandmother, Madame C.J. Walker, one of the first black women entrepreneurs of the 20th century.
February 1993
Mississippi: Then and Now
Bob Moses, a veteran of the civil rights struggle, draws an analogy between the early voter registration drives in Mississippi during the 1960s and an innovative school curriculum called The Algebra Project.