ThoughtCast Podcasts

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A weekly podcast and public radio interview program on authors, academics and intellectuals. Primary Format : Arts Language : English Also Listed as: City : Boston State/Province : MA Country : USA Region : NA User Tags: User Votes: RSS Feed Website People found this Podcast Searching for: View this Podcast on a Google Map. Podcast iTunes Link Text Only listing of ThoughtCast Podcasts Methings.com listings of ThoughtCast Podcasts If you like this podcast, you might also like:

View the full archive of ThoughtCast The Origins of “Rock” Note: this piece was broadcast on WMUB, an NPR station in Oxford, Ohio. Why Not? What does the word rock mean? Simple enough question. But how did the term originate? Where — and why? These questions are bit more difficult to answer! Tune in for a quick romp through the origins of the word — with Berklee College [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Alan Dershowitz on Preemption and the Hezbollah Note: this interview was rebroadcast Jan. 21 at 10 pm on WGBH. It has also aired on WCAI/WNAN, WNED, KXOT and KYOU. And here are 2 reviews of this interview on PRX. Alan Dershowitz The controversial Harvard Law professor, author and celebrity lawyer Alan Dershowitz talks with ThoughtCast about his latest book, “Preemption: A Knife That Cuts Both [...] 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 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 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” 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 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 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 Faith and Philosophy with Harvey Cox and Simon Blackburn Note: 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 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 Virgil’s Georgics Note: This program was broadcast on April 8th 2007 on WGBH. Click here to read a review of the interview on PRX. David Ferry Noted Cambridge poet David Ferry has recently translated Virgil’s Georgics, and on ThoughtCast he joins Virgil scholar Richard Thomas, the chair of Harvard’s Classics Dept., for a detailed examination of this beautiful and insufficiently [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Peabody Sisters - with biographer Megan Marshall Note: This interview was broadcast on WGBH radio, on “Arts and Ideas.” Click here for details. Megan Marshall Author Megan Marshall has recently written a well-received biography of the three Peabody sisters - Elizabeth, Mary and Sophia - who were key players in the founding of the Transcendentalist movement in the early to mid 19th century. Elizabeth, the [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Lisa Randall, Harvard physicist WGBH broadcast this ThoughtCast interview on Arts and Ideas, and also features it on their “Science Luminaries” series, as part of “WGBH Science City.” Lisa Randall Professor Randall is a theoretical particle physicist who sees past the rest of us to a world of extra dimensions and parallel universes. Hers is a world of warped geometry, sink-holes [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Economist Amartya Sen on “Identity and Violence” Note: this interview was broadcast Jan. 21 at 10:30 pm on WGBH. To read a review of this program, click here: Amartya Sen Amartya Sen, the distinguished economist, philosopher, Nobel laureate and Harvard professor, talks with ThoughtCast about “Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny.” This new book examines the unfortunate connection between violence and our tendency to identify [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Marc Hauser on “Moral Minds” Marc Hauser Note: This interview was broadcast on WCAI/WNAN, and is also featured on WGBH’s Science Luminaries series, as part of WGBH Science City. The provocative Harvard psychologist Marc Hauser recently spoke about “The Evolution of Our Moral Intuitions” at the Harvard Museum of Natural History, as part of the Cambridge Science Festival. This ThoughtCast interview with [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The End of Our Universe among other timely topics… Note: this program was broadcast on WGBH’s sister stations WCAI & WNAN, on Sept. 9, 2007. Alex Vilenkin Want to know how the world is going to end? Just ask Russian cosmologist Alex Vilenkin. If it’s our own universe you’re talking about, well, it’s called the big crunch, and it’s going to be hot hot hot! But [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Jack Beatty, Public Intellectual Note: this interview was reviewed on PRX and earned 4 stars! And it will soon be broadcast on WCAI/WNAN, the Cape and Islands affiliate of WGBH. Public -- Or Private? Who are our public intellectuals today? What purpose are they meant to serve, and are they in fact serving it — or us? How public are they, [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Origins of “Rock” Note: this piece was broadcast on WMUB, an NPR station in Oxford, Ohio. Why Not? What does the word rock mean? Simple enough question. But how did the term originate? Where — and why? These questions are bit more difficult to answer! Tune in for a quick romp through the origins of the word — with Berklee College [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Steve Reich Meets The Borromeo String Quartet! Note: this piece was broadcast on New Hampshire Public Radio and also on WDAV’s Artist Spotlight. Borromeo String Quartet (photo: Christian Steiner) Steve Reich is perhaps the preeminent composer living today. And one of his most heart-wrenching and affecting works is called Different Trains for String Quartet and Tape. It tells the story of Steve [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Griefer, Google Cooking and other Neologisms Note: This piece was broadcast on Word of Mouth on New Hampshire Public Radio and on WCVE in Richmond VA. a now-old neologism! Today’s online world is in overdrive. Think of it as a novelty factory – spewing out new ideas, products, and neologisms – new words, or phrases. Take the word blog, for example, [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website