 A weekly podcast and public radio interview program on authors, academics and intellectuals.Primary Format :
Language :
Also Listed as:
City : State/Province : Country : Region : User Tags:
User Votes:
RSS Feed Website
People found this Podcast
Searching for:
View this Podcast on a Google Map. 

Text Only listing of ThoughtCast Podcasts
Methings.com listings of ThoughtCast Podcasts
If you like this podcast, you might also like:
|
Faculty Insight: Honor and Fair Play in Homer’s Iliad
In this fifth installment of Faculty Insight, produced in partnership with Harvard University Extension School, ThoughtCast speaks with the esteemed Harvard classicist Gregory Nagy about one of the earliest and greatest legends of all time: Homer’s epic story of the siege of Troy, called The Iliad. It’s a story of god-like heroes and blood-soaked battles; [...]Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Tom Perrotta on Flannery O’Connor — a literary affinityTom Perrotta, the author of Little Children, Election and the upcoming novel The Leftovers, speaks with ThoughtCast about a writer who fascinates, irritates and inspires him: Flannery O’Connor.
Flannery O'Connor in her driveway in 1962 (photo credit: Joe McTyre)
His relationship with her borders on kinship, and he admires and admonishes her as he would a family [...]Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Harvard Critic Helen Vendler on Emily Dickinson
Emily Dickinson
When Helen Vendler was only 13, the future poetry critic and Harvard professor memorized several of Emily Dickinson’s more famous poems. They’ve stayed with her over the years, and today, she talks with ThoughtCast’s Jenny Attiyeh about one poem in particular that’s haunted her all this time. It’s called I cannot live with You-
According [...]Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Harvard Critic Helen Vendler on Emily Dickinson
Emily Dickinson
When Helen Vendler was only 13, the future poetry critic and Harvard professor memorized several of Emily Dickinson’s more famous poems. They’ve stayed with her over the years, and today, she talks with ThoughtCast’s Jenny Attiyeh about one poem in particular that’s haunted her all this time. It’s called I cannot live with You-
According [...]Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Harvard Critic Helen Vendler on Emily Dickinson
Emily Dickinson
When Helen Vendler was only 13, the future poetry critic and Harvard professor memorized several of Emily Dickinson’s more famous poems. They’ve stayed with her over the years, and today, she talks with ThoughtCast’s Jenny Attiyeh about one poem in particular that’s haunted her all this time. It’s called I cannot live with You-
According [...]Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Harvard Critic Helen Vendler on Emily Dickinson
Emily Dickinson
When Helen Vendler was only 13, the future poetry critic and Harvard professor memorized several of Emily Dickinson’s more famous poems. They’ve stayed with her over the years, and today, she talks with ThoughtCast’s Jenny Attiyeh about one poem in particular that’s haunted her all this time. It’s called I cannot live with You-
According [...]Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Creativity and Madness – with Shelley CarsonFaculty Insight is produced in partnership with Harvard University Extension School. This third interview of the series is with Shelley Carson, an associate of Harvard University’s Department of Psychology, a lecturer at Harvard Extension School, and also a blogger for Psychology Today and the Huffington Post!
Carson’s scholarship focuses largely on the connection between creativity and [...]Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Faculty Insight: Islam in the West – a clash of civilizations?Faculty Insight is produced in partnership with Harvard University Extension School. This third interview of the series is with Jocelyne Cesari, a level-headed yet astute specialist in contemporary Islamic society. Muslims who live in the Western world today face multiple challenges — suspicion, isolation, ignorance, fear. And post-9/11, of course, they carry the weight [...]Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The North Atlantic Right Whale: Our Urban LeviathanThe endangered North Atlantic Right Whale is probably our closest cetacean neighbor. There are only about 350 of them in total, and they live precariously near to shore, along the Eastern seaboard, in a horrendously busy commercial shipping corridor that stretches from Nova Scotia to Florida. Scott Kraus, the vice president for research at Boston’s [...]Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website An Afternoon at the Tufts Wildlife Clinic
Meet the patient, stoic Blanding’s Turtle, who arrived with a huge hole in her shell, yet managed to lay her eggs! And the red-tailed hawk who’s given a sonogram of its eyeball! Watch the satisfying release of another hawk, after it’s fully healed. And observe the staff of the Tufts University Wildlife Clinic, in Grafton [...]Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Coral reefs, hermit crabs and tube worms with Randi Rotjan
The Cambridge Science Festival returns this week with Inspiring Minds: Meet Women in Science, a program at the Museum of Science that includes a talk by Randi Rotjan, a coral ecologist at the New England Aquarium in Boston. Randi has been stung by jellyfish, coral, you name it. It’s all part of the job, studying [...]Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website New England Poetry Club Prizewinner Richard Hoffman
Richard Hoffman
The New England Poetry Club is apparently the oldest poetry reading series in the country. It was founded in 1915 by Amy Lowell, Robert Frost and Conrad Aiken.
This spring, it awarded its Sheila Motton Prize to Richard Hoffman for his book of poetry called Gold Star Road. Hoffman is the Chairman of PEN [...]Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Rebecca Goldstein: the atheist with a soul
Rebecca Goldstein
Rebecca Goldstein’s latest work, called 36 Arguments for the Existence of God: A Work of Fiction, is perhaps best described as a hybrid. It is indeed a novel, with its share of psychology, mathematics and academic politics, but it concludes with an appendix outlining these 36 arguments, as well as their rebuttals, in the [...]Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website A Conversation with Los Angeles Impresario Ernest Fleischmann
Ernest Fleischmann
While still a green arts reporter for KCRW, the public radio station in Santa Monica, I had the pleasure of interviewing Ernest about a youth program at the Hollywood Bowl, the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s outdoor summer ampitheatre. I have known Ernest for most of my life, largely from a distance. He seemed a trifle [...]Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website A Conversation with Los Angeles Impresario Ernest Fleischmann
Ernest Fleischmann
While still a green arts reporter for KCRW, the public radio station in Santa Monica, I had the pleasure of interviewing Ernest about a youth program at the Hollywood Bowl, the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s outdoor summer ampitheatre. I have known Ernest for most of my life, largely from a distance. He seemed a trifle [...]Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The “New Biology” with Steven Pinker, Noga Arikha & Melvin Konner
Brave New World?
The Center for the Humanities at Tufts University recently held a panel discussion on “The New Biology and the Self”, an apt topic for the likes of Steven Pinker, the Harvard College Professor and Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology at Harvard University, Noga Arikha, a historian of ideas and the author of Passions [...]Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The “New Biology” with Steven Pinker, Noga Arikha & Melvin Konner
Brave New World?
The Center for the Humanities at Tufts University recently held a panel discussion on “The New Biology and the Self”, an apt topic for the likes of Steven Pinker, the Harvard College Professor and Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology at Harvard University, Noga Arikha, a historian of ideas and the author of Passions [...]Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Lydia Ratcliff: Vermont Farmer, Stoic Survivor
Milking Time at Lovejoy Brook Farm
About 40 years ago, farms were thick on the ground in Andover, a rural town in southern Vermont. Today, 75-year-old Lydia Ratcliff’s Lovejoy Brook Farm is the last working farm still in operation. But can it survive much longer? ThoughtCast’s Jenny Attiyeh grew up visiting Lydia each summer, listening to [...]Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The “Puzzle of Existence” with Jim HoltJim Holt (photo: Michael Todd)In this ThoughtCast interview, science writer Jim Holt takes us on a jaunty tour of being and nothingess, existence and emptiness, quantum tunneling and the uncertainty principle. The author of Stop Me If You’ve Heard This: A History and Philosophy of Jokes, Holt lends his wit to a dissection of the [...]Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The “Puzzle of Existence” with Jim Holt
Jim Holt (photo: Michael Todd)
In this ThoughtCast interview, science writer Jim Holt takes us on a jaunty tour of being and nothingess, existence and emptiness, quantum tunneling and the uncertainty principle. The author of Stop Me If You’ve Heard This: A History and Philosophy of Jokes, Holt lends his wit to a dissection of the [...]Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Jonah Lehrer on Emotional Hijacking and “How We Decide”Note: this interview was broadcast on the WGBH affiliates WCAI/WNAN, on the Cape and Islands!
Jonah Lehrer (photo credit: Lori Duff)
Jonah Lehrer, the precocious author of Proust Was a Neuroscientist, has come out with a new book called How We Decide. He spoke at the Harvard Book Store, in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Click here to listen (28 [...]Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Jonah Lehrer on Emotional Hijacking and “How We Decide”Note: this interview was broadcast on the WGBH affiliates WCAI/WNAN, on the Cape and Islands!
Jonah Lehrer (photo credit: Lori Duff)
Jonah Lehrer, the precocious author of Proust Was a Neuroscientist, has come out with a new book called How We Decide. He spoke at the Harvard Book Store, in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Click here to listen (28 [...]Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Dopamine Economydopamine brain
Wall Street on Drugs: What motivated these former masters of the universe? And why did they act like kindergartners? ThoughtCast’s Jenny Attiyeh speaks with James Poterba, the Mitsui Professor of Economics at MIT, and Jonah Lehrer, the author of “Proust Was a Neuroscientist” and “How We Decide”, as well as the writer and [...]Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Dopamine Economy
dopamine brain
Wall Street on Drugs: What motivated these former masters of the universe? And why did they act like kindergartners? ThoughtCast’s Jenny Attiyeh speaks with James Poterba, the Mitsui Professor of Economics at MIT, and Jonah Lehrer, the author of “Proust Was a Neuroscientist” and “How We Decide”, as well as the writer and [...]Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Architects Nader Tehrani and Robert Campbell @ CCAE
Nader Tehrani
The Cambridge Center for Adult Education recently hosted a talk with the architect Nader Tehrani (an associate professor of architecture at MIT, and the co-founder of the influential Boston-based architecture and design firm Office dA) whose work is on view, among other locations, at the Museum of Modern Art –
Click here to listen [...]Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Architects Nader Tehrani and Robert Campbell @ CCAE
Nader Tehrani
The Cambridge Center for Adult Education recently hosted a talk with the architect Nader Tehrani (an associate professor of architecture at MIT, and the co-founder of the influential Boston-based architecture and design firm Office dA) whose work is on view, among other locations, at the Museum of Modern Art –
Click here to listen [...]Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Jonah Lehrer on Emotional Hijacking and “How We Decide”
Jonah Lehrer (photo credit: Lori Duff)
Jonah Lehrer, the precocious author of Proust Was a Neuroscientist, has come out with a new book called How We Decide. He spoke at the Harvard Book Store, in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Click here to listen (28 minutes.)
After his talk, ThoughtCast spoke with Lehrer briefly about the value of emotion in [...]Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Economic Pits with James PoterbaJames Poterba
What is the right expression to describe today’s economic nightmare? I’m sick of “mess” and “crisis” is too bland. What about “cesspool”? Well, I compromised with “pits” — feel free to add your own juicy descriptions in ThoughtCast’s comments section!
Either way, I dived into the “pool” with MIT’s Mitsui Professor of Economics James [...]Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Economic Pits with James Poterba
James Poterba
What is the right expression to describe today’s economic nightmare? I’m sick of “mess” and “crisis” is too bland. What about “cesspool”? Well, I compromised with “pits” — feel free to add your own juicy descriptions in ThoughtCast’s comments section!
Either way, I dived into the “pool” with MIT’s Mitsui Professor of Economics James [...]Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Samuel Huntington — on Immigration and the American IdentityNote: Sadly, Sam Huntington died in late December of 2008, so in memory of him, I’ve moved this 2005 interview to the top of my pile of posts. This interview was broadcast twice on WGBH, in Boston.
Sam Huntington
The eminent and provocative political scientist and prolific author, talks with ThoughtCast about what he sees as the [...]Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The New York Review turns 45!Note: this interview has been picked up by the public radio station WGBH, in Boston, and its sister stations WCAI and WNAN.
Robert Silvers (credit Melanie Flood)
The venerable New York Review of Books was launched amidst a newspaper strike in the winter of 1963, and has continued unabated ever since. Devoted to intensive and nuanced coverage [...]Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The New York Review turns 45!Note: this interview has been broadcast on the WGBH public radio affiliate, WCAI/WNAN.
Robert Silvers (credit Melanie Flood)
The venerable New York Review of Books was launched amidst a newspaper strike in the winter of 1963, and has continued unabated ever since. Devoted to intensive and nuanced coverage of politics, the arts, literature, science (and now movies [...]Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Faith and Philosophy with Harvey Cox and Simon BlackburnNote: this program was broadcast on the public radio stations WCAI/WNAN, the Cape and Islands affiliates of WGBH!
Harvey Cox
Simon Blackburn
In this half-hour, ThoughtCast talks with two very different men - one founded on faith, the other on reason. Harvey Cox, the renowned Harvard Divinity School Professor and author of The Secular City and When Jesus [...]Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Faith and Philosophy with Harvey Cox and Simon Blackburn
Harvey Cox
Simon Blackburn
In this half-hour, ThoughtCast talks with two very different men - one founded on faith, the other on reason. Harvey Cox, the renowned Harvard Divinity School Professor and author of The Secular City and When Jesus Came to Harvard, talks with ThoughtCast about his faith, and the religious resurgence taking place [...]Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Faith and Philosophy with Harvey Cox and Simon BlackburnNote: this program will soon be broadcast on WCAI/WNAN, the Cape and Islands affiliate of WGBH!
Harvey Cox
Simon Blackburn
In this half-hour, ThoughtCast talks with two very different men - one founded on faith, the other on reason. Harvey Cox, the renowned Harvard Divinity School Professor and author of The Secular City and When Jesus Came to [...]Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Getrude Stein, Alice B. Toklas&Janet Malcolm!Gertrude & Alice (photo credit: Cecil Beaton)
They were a strange pair: Gertrude Stein, the avant-garde writer, salonniere and collector of art and artists, and her lover and companion, the querulous Alice B. Toklas, standing beakishly in the background. But together they formed a whole. Two Lives: Gertrude and Alice, a new book by journalist Janet [...]Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Getrude Stein, Alice B. Toklas & Janet Malcolm!
Gertrude & Alice (photo credit: Cecil Beaton)
They were a strange pair: Gertrude Stein, the avant-garde writer, salonniere and collector of art and artists, and her lover and companion, the querulous Alice B. Toklas, standing beakishly in the background. But together they formed a whole. Two Lives: Gertrude and Alice, a new book by journalist Janet [...]Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Getrude Stein, Alice B. Toklas & Janet Malcolm!
Gertrude & Alice (photo credit: Cecil Beaton)
They were a strange pair: Gertrude Stein, the avant-garde writer, salonniere and collector of art and artists, and her lover and companion, the querulous Alice B. Toklas, standing beakishly in the background. But together they formed a whole. Two Lives: Gertrude and Alice, a new book by journalist Janet [...]Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The New York Review turns 45!
Robert Silvers (credit Melanie Flood)
The venerable New York Review of Books was launched amidst a newspaper strike in the winter of 1963, and has continued unabated ever since. Devoted to intensive and nuanced coverage of politics, the arts, literature, science (and now movies and the Internet!), the paper, as it’s called, is considered to be [...]Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website How Fiction Works— with James WoodThis entry is part 21 of 6 in the series Talks@Harvard Book Store
James Wood (photo credit: Cade Martin)
James Wood, the sincere, somewhat old-fashioned, unpretentious yet high-minded New Yorker literary critic, spoke at the Harvard Book Store recently about his new book, How Fiction Works.
Click here: to listen (30 minutes).
Also… ThoughtCast will be interviewing Wood [...]Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website How Fiction Works — with James Wood
James Wood (photo credit: Cade Martin)
James Wood, the sincere, somewhat old-fashioned, unpretentious yet high-minded New Yorker literary critic, spoke at the Harvard Book Store recently about his new book, How Fiction Works.
Click here: to listen (30 minutes).
Also… ThoughtCast will be interviewing Wood shortly – hooray! – and we’re interested in your input! We’d like [...]Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website How Fiction Works with James WoodThis entry is part 6 of 6 in the series Talks@Harvard Book Store
James Wood (photo credit: Cade Martin)
James Wood, the sincere, somewhat old-fashioned, unpretentious yet high-minded New Yorker literary critic, spoke at the Harvard Book Store recently about his new book, How Fiction Works.
Click here: to listen (30 minutes).
Also… ThoughtCast will be interviewing Wood [...]Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Public Radio goes Hollywood!Note: This piece has been mentioned on Current.org and the PRPD site — thanks for that!
Public radio could easily be described as a smashing success story. Take NPR, for example. From its counter-cultural roots in the early 1970s, it has grown to become one of the most trusted sources of journalism in the United States. [...]Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Public Radio goes Hollywood!Public radio could easily be described as a smashing success story. Take NPR, for example. From its counter-cultural roots in the early 1970s, it has grown to become one of the most trusted sources of journalism in the United States. Although it still is accused of liberal bias, an equal number of liberals and conservatives [...]Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Public Radio goes Hollywood!Note: This piece has been mentioned on Current.org and the PRPD site — thanks for that!
Public radio could easily be described as a smashing success story. Take NPR, for example. From its counter-cultural roots in the early 1970s, it has grown to become one of the most trusted sources of journalism in the United States. [...]Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Our American“Empire” with Niall FergusonNote: This interview was broadcast on the public radio station WCVE in Richmond, VA.
In some ways, the Scottish historian Niall Ferguson is the Russell Crowe of the academic world: charismatic, unconventional, and definitely controversial. He’s also a big fan of the British Empire — and wants the United States to follow in its footsteps. That [...]Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Our American Empire with Niall FergusonIn some ways, the Scottish historian Niall Ferguson is the Russell Crowe of the academic world: charismatic, unconventional, and definitely controversial. He’s also a big fan of the British Empire — and wants the United States to follow in its footsteps. That means it’s our job to form colonies in hot climates, for years on [...]Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Our American Empire with Niall FergusonIn some ways, the Scottish historian Niall Ferguson is the Russell Crowe of the academic world: charismatic, unconventional, and definitely controversial. He’s also a big fan of the British Empire — and wants the United States to follow in its footsteps. That means it’s our job to form colonies in hot climates, for years on [...]Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Our American “Empire” with Niall FergusonNote: This interview was broadcast on the WGBH public radio affiliate WCAI/WNAN and on WCVE in Richmond, VA.
In some ways, the Scottish historian Niall Ferguson is the Russell Crowe of the academic world: charismatic, unconventional, and definitely controversial. He’s also a big fan of the British Empire — and wants the United States to follow [...]Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | |