Past Events

Nicole Lynn Lewis, founder of Generation Hope, Susan Blum, anthropologist at University of Notre Dame, and Paul LeBlanc, visiting scholar at Harvard Graduate School of Education, join moderator Anya Kamenetz to navigate discuss the question: What is college for today—and what is at stake for our democracy if its purpose erodes?

Massachusetts is home to the second-largest Brazilian population in the country, with thriving communities across Greater Boston and MetroWest. Brazilians are launching businesses, revitalizing neighborhoods, and creating pathways to economic opportunity.


Five local business leaders in the Brazilian community joined us for a conversation about entrepreneurship, economic mobility, and the growing influence of Brazilians in Massachusetts—and what their success means for the region’s future.

Learn what industries Brazilian entrepreneurs are building here and how are they shaping the state’s economic future.

From construction and real estate development to professional services, food, retail, and a growing number of women-led and family-owned enterprises, Brazilian entrepreneurs are helping drive innovation, job creation, and community investment across the Commonwealth.

Our panelists include:

• Real Estate Development & Construction - Nelson de Oliveira, Founder & CEO at Nelson Group
• Professional Services - Fernando Castro, President of Income Tax Plus
• Food Services - Renato Valentin, Co-founder of Tavern in the Square
• Personal Services - Flavia Leal, Owner of Flavia Leal Beauty School
• Consulting and Investment - Manuel Mendes, Global Executive Director of IXL Center for Innovation, Excellence and Leadership

Thanks to these organizations for an evening of networking in the GBH Atrium:

1. Brazilian American Center (BRACE)
2. Brazilian Women’s Group
3. Brazilian Workers Center
4. Brazilian Chamber of Commerce (CDLE USA)
5. Downtown Framingham INC
6. Brazilian Consulate
7. Massachusetts Alliance of Portuguese Speakers ( MAPS)
8. Brazilian Community Heritage Foundation 
9. Instituto Diáspora Brasil (IDB)

Join us at the GBH Studios at the Boston Public Library for a night of NOVA science trivia! Get ready for creative categories that test your knowledge of science, from the depths of the universe to the history of science.

Join host Tracy Chang as she explores a growing movement of young professionals who are walking away from comfortable, high-paying careers to take a run at public office. We’ll be joined by Marena Lin, a scientist who traded her specialized career path for the front lines of community organizing. From fixing broken food supply chains during the pandemic to fighting the frustrating "phone trees" of Medicare as a family caretaker. Together, we’ll explore why a new generation of professionals are deciding that fixing systemic problems from the inside is more important than a corporate paycheck.

GBH Amplifies is a community conversation series focused on expanding the reach of local voices from Greater Boston and beyond. The series features community leaders hosting public conversations in the GBH Studio at the Boston Public Library in Copley Square, providing a platform for inclusive perspectives on the issues that matter most to New England communities. GBH Amplifies happens weekly on Thursdays from 12:30-1:30pm at the GBH BPL Studio. This event is free and open to the public.

GBH Amplifies is also being supported by the Barr Foundation.

Registration is encouraged for this free event.

Limited seating is available on a first come, first serve basis. If you require a seat, we encourage you to arrive before the start time of this event.

This panel discussion launches Silence Dogood’s Precedented Times Series at Old North Church. Supported by Mass Humanities’ Promises of the Revolution initiative, this new series builds on the Silence Dogood Project’s projection-based storytelling to create spaces for live civic dialogue, rooted in Boston’s deep tradition of public dissent and collective action.

Inspired by historic New England town halls, this series convenes conversations in the very buildings where Bostonians have gathered for generations to wrestle with questions of liberty, justice, and power. Each event pairs leading historians with contemporary organizers to explore how today’s most urgent challenges have clear historical precedent, and how that perspective can inspire meaningful action.

For this first event, the esteemed panelists examine the forces of oppression and resistance shaping 18th-century Boston in order to trace how those dynamics continue to resonate, and discuss how we can learn from the past to take action today.

During the discussion, audience members had the opportunity to contribute reflections and responses in real time. These collective insights shape a culminating, community-authored statement—projected onto the exterior of Old North Church as a powerful closing moment, transforming individual voices into a shared public declaration.

A.I. companions increasingly replace human romantic, erotic, social, educational, therapeutic, and collegial relationships. Whether interpersonally or society-wide, we are ill-equipped to engage in moral discernment about the ethical implications of this shift. The turn to A.I. companions reveals fractured expectations, systemic pressures, and misaligned desires troubling human-to-human relationships misguided by echoes of religiously inflected sexual and gender-based historical trauma embedded in hierarchies of material embodiments and on-going abuses. Our response to this unveiling must reshape relational ethics. What are the possibilities for creative, morally grounded A.I. companion design and use to promote human and agentic flourishing rather than diminishment? What resources might religious communities offer that remedy historical wrongs and promote moral formation? Is theological education be a place for this work?

Keith Lockhart, conductor of the Boston Pops Orchestra, will accept the Third Lantern Award, which is presented annually to an individual who embodies the values symbolized in Old North’s iconic signal lanterns: leadership, courage, hope, tenacity, and active citizenship.

Stories from the Stage invites you to our home (studio) for a night of true stories that make you stop and think. Ever been so sure of something….until you weren’t? Maybe you walked away from a “perfect” plan, reconnected with someone from the past, or realized what you were chasing wasn’t really worth it. On April 16 guests will hear true, first-person stories about reversals, redirections, and revelations. Whether it was a small shift, or a life-altering pivot, hear true tales that made people think twice. From the moments that saved a life, to occasions a person regrets for the rest of their life. Storytellers will share their unbelievable accounts with you.

At Stories from the Stage, produced by GBH WORLD, ordinary people share extraordinary experiences that you will not soon forget. In each taping, we get up-close and personal with storytellers about what inspires them and the craft of storytelling.

Timeline

6:30pm Doors open to GBH's Atrium for the pre-reception

7:00pm Doors open to GBH's Calderwood Studio for seating

7-9:15pm Formal program with live storytellers

Note all on-site purchases will be credit card only.

Event registration is required. Seating is general admission.


Photo credit: Stories from the Stage

Cuba: A small island with an outsized story. From the days of being one of the world’s ultimate tourist spots to the echoes and impact of the Cuban Revolution to the 13 days that brought the world to the brink of nuclear war, Cuba is a unique place where history, culture, and resilience collide.

Governed by a communist regime for 67 years, shaped by decades of tension with the United States, and an exiled community that has flourished in South Florida and beyond, the island has become one of the most fascinating and complex societies in the world.

Join us as we explore Cuba through the lens of several Cuban Americans living here in Massachusetts.

Guests:

Ana Hebra Flaster
Author of Property of the Revolution: From a Cuban Barrio to a New Hampshire Mill Town

Grecia Ordoñez
Activist

Michael "Cuban Mic" Reyes
Radio Host

Jorge Lucas Álvarez Girardi
Researcher and Author of De verde como la palma a rojo como la sangre

GBH Amplifies is a community conversation series focused on expanding the reach of local voices from Greater Boston and beyond. The series features community leaders hosting public conversations in the GBH Studio at the Boston Public Library in Copley Square, providing a platform for inclusive perspectives on the issues that matter most to New England communities. GBH Amplifies happens weekly on Thursdays from 12:30-1:30pm at the GBH BPL Studio. This event is free and open to the public.

GBH Amplifies is also being supported by the Barr Foundation.

Registration is encouraged for this free event.

Limited seating is available on a first come, first serve basis. If you require a seat, we encourage you to arrive before the start time of this event.

The People’s Uprising and the Fall of the Warsaw Ghetto, April 1942–June 1943, a new book by Havi Ben-Sasson Dreifuss, sheds light on the lives, choices, and experiences of the tens of thousands of Jews who were not part of the underground armed resistance, but nonetheless supported the famed Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

This riveting and dramatic account focuses on the final year of the Warsaw ghetto, from the Great Deportation in the summer of 1942 through the suppression of the uprising in mid-1943. Drawing on powerful contemporary testimonies, diaries, and documents—many of them previously unexplored—Havi Ben-Sasson Dreifuss reveals how members of the broader Jewish population struggled to survive, maintain family and community life, and make impossible moral decisions in the face of fear, hunger, and daily violence. Looking beyond the fighters themselves, the book offers a story of devastation, but also of resilience and human dignity.