WGBH Forum Network | Soapbox Podcast
Weekly lecture by pundits, poets, and people with something to say. Go on, live and learn by exploring our entire collection of great lectures. http://forum.wgbh.org
Visit Show Website http://forum.wgbh.org/nodequeue/3Recently Aired
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Anna Lappe and Frances Moore Lappe: Diet for a Hot Planet
Anna Lappe and Frances Moore Lappe, a mother and daughter ...
Anna Lappe and Frances Moore Lappe, a mother and daughter pair who have revolutionized the way we think about food, hunger, and climate change discuss Anne Lappe's new book, Diet for a Hot Planet: The Climate Crisis at the End of Your Fork and What You Can Do About It.In 1971, Frances Moore Lappe's Diet for a Small Planet sparked a revolution in how we think about hunger, alerting millions to the hidden environmental and social impacts of our food choices. Now, nearly four decades later, her daughter, Anna Lappe, picks up the conversation. In her groundbreaking new book, the younger Lappe exposes another hidden cost of our food system: the climate crisis.
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Renaissance Roots of Modern Science
Toby Lester, author of widely acclaimed books on two of ...
Toby Lester, author of widely acclaimed books on two of the great achievements during the Renaissance, visits with Science for the Public to discuss important discoveries, and rediscoveries, that brought about the first map to show America (The Fourth Part of the World (2009), and Da Vinci's iconic Vitruvian Man (Da Vinci's Ghost) (2012). Both of these accomplishments reflected an intellectual shift over centuries that led to modern science.
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Anna Lappe and Frances Moore Lappe: Diet for a Hot Planet
Anna Lappe and Frances Moore Lappe, a mother and daughter ...
Anna Lappe and Frances Moore Lappe, a mother and daughter pair who have revolutionized the way we think about food, hunger, and climate change discuss Anne Lappe's new book, Diet for a Hot Planet: The Climate Crisis at the End of Your Fork and What You Can Do About It.In 1971, Frances Moore Lappe's Diet for a Small Planet sparked a revolution in how we think about hunger, alerting millions to the hidden environmental and social impacts of our food choices. Now, nearly four decades later, her daughter, Anna Lappe, picks up the conversation. In her groundbreaking new book, the younger Lappe exposes another hidden cost of our food system: the climate crisis.
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String Theory and the Universe's Hidden Dimensions
Shing-Tung Yau, chair of Harvard's mathematics department, and science journalist ...
Shing-Tung Yau, chair of Harvard's mathematics department, and science journalist Steve Nadis discuss their new explication of string theory, The Shape of Inner Space: String Theory and the Geometry of the Universes Hidden Dimensions. String theory says we live in a 10-dimensional universe, but that only four are accessible to our everyday senses. According to theorists, the missing six are curled up in bizarre structures known as Calabi-Yau manifolds. In The Shape of Inner Space, Shing-Tung Yau, the man who mathematically proved that these manifolds exist, argues that not only is geometry fundamental to string theory, it is also fundamental to the very nature of our universe. Time and again, where Yau has gone, physics has followed.
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The Life of Super-Earths: How the Hunt for Alien Worlds Will Revolutionize Life on Our Planet
Astronomer Dimitar Sasselov discusses his book The Life of Super-Earths: ...
Astronomer Dimitar Sasselov discusses his book The Life of Super-Earths: How the Hunt for Alien Worlds and Artificial Cells Will Revolutionize Life on Our Planet. Sasselov discusses current efforts to search for other planets that may hold the key to this answer. Sasselov, the founding director of Harvard University’s Origins of Life Initiative, shows how the search for “super-Earths”—rocky planets like our own that orbit other stars—may provide the key to answering essential questions about the origins of life here and elsewhere.
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Alzheimer's Prevention Program
Alzheimer’s disease currently afflicts 5 million Americans; one American is ...
Alzheimer’s disease currently afflicts 5 million Americans; one American is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s every 70 seconds, and right now the only cure is prevention. Can Alzheimer’s really be prevented? What are the new research techniques being used to study Alzheimer’s disease? And what do they show us about the possibilities for preventing or delaying its degenerative effects?In his new book, The Alzheimer’s Prevention Program, Dr. Gary Small looks at what Alzheimer's disease actually is and reviews the research on preventing its onset. Small challenges the widely held notion that Alzheimer's is not preventable and discusses a variety of ways to keep the brain healthy.
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Connectome: How the Brain's Wiring Makes Us Who We Are
MIT neuroscientist Sebsatian Seung discusses his book Connectome: How the ...
MIT neuroscientist Sebsatian Seung discusses his book Connectome: How the Brain's Wiring Makes Us Who We Are.Seung is at the forefront of a revolution in neuroscience. He believes that our identity lies not in our genes, but in the connections between our brain cells—our own particular wiring. Seung and a dedicated group of researchers are leading the effort to map these connections, neuron by neuron, synapse by synapse — a development previously unobtainable due to the incredible computing power needed. The result would be a map of the brain's activity referred to as the "connectome", analogous to the genome.If they succeed, they hope to reveal a more complete understanding of the brain's workings, uncovering the basis of personality, identity, intelligence, memory, and perhaps disorders such as autism and schizophrenia.
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David Weinberger: Too Big to Know
David Weinberger, senior researcher at the Berkman Center discusses his ...
David Weinberger, senior researcher at the Berkman Center discusses his latest book, Too Big to Know: Rethinking Knowledge Now That the Facts Aren't the Facts, Experts are Everywhere, and the Smartest Person in the Room is the Room. Knowledge used to be a more straightforward matter than it is now; answers came from books or experts. But in the Internet age, knowledge has moved onto networks. There is more knowledge than ever, but it is different: topics have no boundaries, and disagreement is much more prevalent.
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Oceanographer Sylvia Earle Discusses The World is Blue
Marine biologist Sylvia Earle, discusses her latest book, The World ...
Marine biologist Sylvia Earle, discusses her latest book, The World Is Blue, which reveals a global ecosystem on the brink of irreversible environmental crisis unless we act immediately.Sylvia Earle, the first woman to walk freely on the ocean floor (at a depth of 1,250 feet), has been called “Her Deepness” by The New Yorker and The New York Times. An Explorer-in-Residence at the National Geographic Society since 1998 and named Time magazine’s first “hero for the planet,” Earle has been at the forefront of deep ocean exploration for four decades. She is a dedicated advocate for the world’s oceans and the creatures that live in them.
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The Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos
Current research rooted in quantum mechanics, cosmology, and string theory ...
Current research rooted in quantum mechanics, cosmology, and string theory concurs that our universe is actually only one of many “bubbles” in a rapidly growing bath of universes. Interviewed by author Amir Aczel, hear what physicist Brian Greene has to say about the strange worlds of the “multiverse” in his new book The Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos. Greene is recognized for groundbreaking discoveries in superstring theory and was called the “single best explainer of abstruse ideas in the world today” by the Washington Post. Journey to parallel universes, an adventure grounded firmly in science and limited only by our minds.
