Past Events

Come say "hi!" to GBH at this year's 20th anniversary Fluff Festival. This family-friendly festival celebrates years of Somerville innovation, namely, Marshmallow Fluff! It is sure to be a flufftastic day of live music, delicious food, fun games and so much more. You won't want to miss it!

Melissa Lane is the Class of 1943 Professor of Politics at Princeton University, where she is also Associated Faculty in Classics and in Philosophy, and has received the Phi Beta Kappa Teaching Prize, the Stanley J. Kelley Teaching Award of the Department of Politics, and the Faculty Community Engagement Award of the Pace Center for Civic Engagement.

She currently also holds a three-year appointment dedicated to delivering periodic public lectures in London as the fiftieth Professor of Rhetoric at Gresham College. She has held a Guggenheim Fellowship in the field of Classics, as well as fellowships and visiting professorships at a number of institutions including the ANU, Auckland, Harvard, Oxford, Stanford, the American Academy in Rome, and the École Normale Supérieure. Lane was educated in Californian public schools, then at Harvard University and the University of Cambridge, where she received an MPhil and PhD in Philosophy and then taught for fifteen years before moving to Princeton in 2009.

Her most recent monograph, titled Of Rule and Office: Plato's Ideas of the Political and published in 2023 by Princeton University Press, was awarded the 2024 Book Prize of the Journal of the History of Philosophy; her 2012 book Eco-Republic continues to be widely discussed. Lane has appeared multiple times on ‘In Our Time’ on BBC Radio Four, and been published in periodicals in the US, UK, Italy and Germany.

This lecture is supported by an ILA Major Grant.

The Lowell Humanities Series is sponsored by the Lowell Institute, Boston College's Institute for the Liberal Arts, and the Provost's Office.

Join the American Archive of Public Broadcasting for a Transcript-A-Thon at the Boston Public Library! Bring your laptop and explore archival public media from the past 70+ years to help make historic programs more accessible and discoverable for all.

Refreshments will be provided by the Boston Public Library Café with a volunteer wristband.

Join us at Parkside Bookshop in Boston's South End for a live version of "Bookmarked: The Under the Radar Book Club." Callie Crossley, host of "Under the Radar," will be interviewing New York Times best-selling author B.A. Shapiro about her latest book, "The Lost Masterpiece," to learn more about the history behind the story, the author's inspiration and much more.

Tickets are free, and RSVPs are appreciated.

With J.L. Bell, Historian.

Beyond Paul Revere and his companions, Americans have passed along stories of other notable riders on April 19, 1775. Historian J. L. Bell investigates the facts and fiction behind such figures as Hezekiah Wyman, the dreaded “White Horseman”; Abel Benson and Abigail Smith, children said to have helped raise the alarm in Middlesex County; and Israel Bissell, the post rider credited with carrying news of the fight all the way to Philadelphia.

Analysts of American policy in 2025 have the unusual advantage of being able to assess the new president’s likely policies regarding the Middle East against the backdrop of what he did in his first term, four years earlier.

Join WorldBoston for a timely Great Decisions discussion of this topic with Mona Yacoubian, senior adviser and director of the Middle East Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

This program will feature an expert presentation, live audience Q&A, and time for networking and discussion with other globally-oriented participants.

The Boston Public Library welcomes Paola Mendoza as a speaker for the Lowell Lecture Series. As a Latinx film director, best-selling author, and film director, Mendoza will speak to the BPL community about her own experience as a community organizer and change-maker, sharing her personal journey.

Mendoza is in conversation with BPL President David Leonard and in addition to her film and activism work, she also discusses her work as an author.

Mendoza’s talk on her life as an activist, artist and leader contributes to the library’s organizational artistic theme of Revolutionary Art.

Join GBH at the 2025 Open Streets event series, where neighborhood streets are closed to vehicular traffic to create room for community and play. The events allow local businesses to expand into the street and to safely make space for music, games, bicycling, community tabling, and more. On September 14, join us on Dorchester Ave. from Ashmont St. to Adams St.

How can creativity help us survive—and reimagine—systems that fail to meet our most basic needs?

Inspired by "Kristina Wong: Food Bank Influencer", this dynamic panel discussion moderated by Director of Artistic Programming and Interim Executive Director of Emerson’s Office of the Arts, Ronee Penoi, explores how artists, cultural organizers, and communities are responding to the intertwined food and housing crises with ingenuity and solidarity. From pandemic-era mutual aid kitchens to grassroots rent parties that kept the lights on and the music playing, we’ll examine how cultural expression has long been a lifeline in times of precarity.

Panelists will discuss the radical potential of the arts to foster collective care, build community resilience, and galvanize action around economic justice. Together, we’ll reflect on how performance, storytelling, and creative organizing can disrupt narratives of scarcity and shame—and instead amplify voices, strategies, and solutions rooted in abundance and mutual support.

Join ArtsEmerson for a timely conversation that lives at the intersection of art and activism.

 

WorldBoston's signature Diplomacy Now program is an opportunity to consider American diplomacy within the context of U.S. national interests.

This year’s program focuses on “The U.S., China, and the Great Powers.”
with Nicholas Burns (ret.) Ambassador to China, and the Roy and Barbara Goodman Family Professor of the Practice of Diplomacy and International Politics at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government.