Past Events

Tom Wheeler, Chairman of the FCC from 2013 to 2017 under President Obama and Walter Shorenstein Media and Democracy Fellow, discusses technological change, President Trump’s FCC, regulation of social platforms, and more during a talk at the Shorenstein Center. Image: [Shorenstein Center](https://shorensteincenter.org/tom-wheeler-fcc-net-neutrality-platform-regulation/ "Shorenstein Center")

Acclaimed health and food policy journalist and Brandeis University Senior Fellow Maryn McKenna talks about her book 'Big Chicken: The Incredible Story of How Antibiotics Created Modern Agriculture and Changed the Way the World Eats.' She is joined in conversation by University of Massachusetts Lowell philosophy professor Nicholas Evans.

Boston Review, Harvard Book Store, Mass Humanities, and the Cambridge Public Library welcome a panel of acclaimed educators--Brandon Terry, Tommie Shelby, Elizabeth Hinton, and Cornel West--to discuss the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr.

BostonTalks throws it back to the epic time of the 1960s! Hear short talks on rock ’n’ roll music and women’s activism during the 1960s.

Journalist and celebrity biographer Andrew Morton presents a talk on his latest book, _Wallis in Love_, that chronicles the tumultuous and controversial relationship between Wallis Simpson and King Edward VIII.

Denmark has national healthcare. As a consequence of this, they have health records on their entire population dating back decades. This makes Denmark an ideal setting for conducting epidemiologic research. Psychiatric epidemiology deals with the distribution and determinants of psychiatric disorders and related events in populations. Jaimie L. Gradus, DSc, MPH, provides a brief overview of the field of psychiatric epidemiology, a discussion of the strengths of using Danish data, as well as relevance of the results to the US population.

Elizabeth Bruenig, a columnist at _The Washington Post_, sat with Shorenstein Fellow Richard Parker and others to discuss the evolving dynamic between religion, politics, and the left at a time when the political climate is charged with alt-right racist declarations and President Trump's anti-immigrant sentiments. [](https://news.wgbh.org/2018/03/05/politics-government/wapos-elizabeth-bruenig-intersection-religion-and-politics "") **» SEE ALSO:** [Elizabeth Bruenig's interview with WGBH News.](https://news.wgbh.org/2018/03/05/politics-government/wapos-elizabeth-bruenig-intersection-religion-and-politics"")

Learn about the complex relationship between Big Agriculture in the U.S. and one of California's major crops: the strawberry. Industrialized agriculture produces massive crops, but this process requires plant breeding that may sacrifice flavor and nutritional quality. Industrialized agriculture also depends on extensive use of fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides that can destroy the soil and cause serious environmental pollution and health concerns. In her forthcoming, Dr. Julie Guthman examines how efforts to manage a single soil pathogen ( Verticillium dahliae) gave rise to the modern strawberry industry, and the impact it had on California. Dr. Guthman will also discuss her other studies of industrialized agriculture in America and its impact on the environment and human health.

Has love become a transactional affair or do we still pine for old-fashioned declarations of love? In the week leading up to Valentine’s Day, over one million people will visit poets.org in search of the perfect way to express love and devotion to their friends and lovers. Even in these days of electronic intimacy, a “text” does not seem to carry the same kudos as a handwritten love note. Historically, perhaps no human experience is more represented in art and literature than that of love, but will the e-mail ever replace the love letter and will recipients take the trouble to save them for decades to come? Image: [Giuseppe Imperato/Flickr](https://www.flickr.com/photos/ueros/ "")

In this installment of the _Master Series_ Third Thursdays, Ada Cohen, professor of Art History and the Israel Evans Professor in Oratory and Belles Lettres at Dartmouth College, explores a traditional Assyrian frieze known as the "winged genius" and contextualizes it within the greater scope of the Assyrian empire.