Past Events

Today, more than 50 percent of the world’s population lives in cities. By 2050, some 75 percent will be urbanites. Future urban design will emphasize not only innovative architecture and engineering, but the environmental, health, and social aspects of city dwelling also. And the plans anticipate potential settlements beyond Earth -- Mars in particular. Justin Hollander is an internationally recognized expert on urban planning, with many academic and media contributions. He discusses the evolving concern for healthy urban design and the numerous challenges involved in this transition. Dr. Hollander also discusses his recent book on the prospect of Mars colonization: The First City on Mars: An Urban Planner’s Guide to Settling the Red Planet

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This special chocolate tasting experience includes a drinking chocolate kit and a one-hour pre-recorded virtual tasting class that you can enjoy at your leisure. Gather a loved one, get cozy and learn more from a local chocolatier.

The companion video recording features Bonnie Bennett, co-owner of Kakawa Chocolate House in Salem, MA demonstrating how to set up your tasting station. She will also present a brief history of chocolate. In the video class Bonnie will elaborate on the migration of chocolate from the European continent to North America, focusing on the history of the late 1700s to the present day. She will explore the influences of the first chocolate factory in the United States, located in Massachusetts, and the spice trade influences of the region as well.

The chocolate kit will be mailed to you directly and will include two liquid drinking chocolates and some of Kakawa’s signature eating chocolates that are representative of the last three centuries of chocolate history.

IMPORTANT NOTES: 

We can not deliver these kits to PO Boxes. Only physical street addresses are allowed.

Supplies are limited. Last year this event sold out quickly. Purchase your chocolate tasting kit and companion video in time for the holiday season.

You must purchase your kit by Tuesday, November 28, 2023 at 5pm ET. We will ship the chocolate kit to your preferred shipping address in early December. The companion video with instructions to this chocolate class will be sent to the contact email address provided when you registered.

By RSVPing for this event, you agree to receive timely news and updates on events, films, and special offers from GBH.

Photo credit: Can Stock Photo

The approach of the 250th anniversary of American independence has led scholars to reexamine the British Empire and the events of the imperial crisis that are generally understood to have led to the American Revolution.   The panelists of the keynote session  “Could the Empire Have Been Saved?”  engage this issue by discussing the problems in the empire revealed by resistance to imperial authority in British America between 1764 and 1774.  What kind of empire was it?  What was the character of British policy in the colonies?   Was the imperial crisis really a general crisis that touched all colonies and all members of British American society?  What was driving events forward?  Was the American Revolution really inevitable?  And might better decisions have avoided it?   In engaging  these questions, the panelists aim to reveal the broader implications of new thinking about the British empire and the coming of the American Revolution.

This keynote is part of the conference on the theme "Empire and Its Discontent" hosted by The David Center for the American Revolution at the American Philosophical Society and the Massachusetts Historical Society

Legendary French chef, Jacques Pépin--author, television personality and educator.is in the GBH Studios with award-winning BostonChef Jeremy Sewall, partner of Row 34 Restaurants, will touch upon Jacques’s career and culinary experiences cooking in some of the finest French restaurants in Paris and New York City. You'll learn more about Jacques’s friendship with chef and GBH television personality Julia Child, his involvement in a dozen PBS television programs and much more!

Jacques Pépin also shares more about his newest book, Cooking My Way, published in September 2023. He will be signing copies of this book during the post-reception in our Atrium that follows the formal program.

The event is moderated by Stephanie Leydon, Executive Producer of Digital Video at GBH News.

Photo credit: Tom Hopkins

American Experience PBS presents a conversation with the filmmakers of our two new films The Busing Battleground and The Harvest: Integrating Mississippi's Schools exploring the struggle for school integration in the United States. The conversation will feature clips from both films and discussions with the filmmakers on the progress of educational equity and the work that remains to be done.

The event will be held at the Jack Morton Auditorium on the campus of the George Washington University, 805 21st St NW, Washington, DC 20052 and will be livestreamed on the American Experience YouTube channel.

Both The Busing Battleground and The Harvest: Integrating Mississippi's Schools are available to stream now on PBS.org, the American Experience YouTube channel, and on the free PBS App.

Panelists:
Sharon Grimberg is an award-winning filmmaker with 25 years of experience working for public television. According to The Baltimore Sun, her 2020 film McCarthy, about the infamous Wisconsin senator, met “the highest hopes that the most enlightened founders of public broadcasting had for the medium.” From 2003-2015, Grimberg was the senior producer of AMERICAN EXPERIENCE where, she played a key role in the origination, development, acquisition, and editorial oversight of more than 130 films.

Cyndee Readdean is an award-winning director, producer, and writer. Her films have appeared on PBS, ABC, MSNBC and EPIX. Readdean directed and produced episode two of the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University award-winning series Reconstruction: America after the Civil War and the Emmy-nominated film The FBI & the Panther. Readdean is a member of DGA, PGA and WGA.

Douglas A. Blackmon is a Pulitzer-Prize winning author, journalist, and filmmaker. His bestselling first book, Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II, won a Pulitzer Prize in 2009. He was co-executive producer of the acclaimed documentary film based on Slavery by Another Name, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2012. A native of the Mississippi Delta, he directs the Narrating Justice Project and teaches in the Creative Media Industries Institute at Georgia State University in Atlanta.

The event will be moderated by Dr. Ivory Toldson. Dr. Toldson is the national director of Education Innovation and Research for the NAACP, professor of counseling psychology at Howard University and editor-in-chief of The Journal of Negro Education. Previously, Dr. Toldson was appointed by President Barack Obama to devise national strategies to sustain and expand federal support to HBCUs as the executive director of the White House Initiative on Historically Black Colleges and Universities.

Are there simple steps we can all take in our everyday lives to promote empathy, overcome difference and forge lasting connections? Yes, says Stanford Psychologist Geoffrey L. Cohen, whose scientific research offers proof that concrete solutions exist and work. Cambridge Forum invites you to join the discussion on whether we can learn how to build bridges to belonging.

We all yearn to belong but most of us don't fully appreciate that need in others. Sometimes, inadvertently, we threaten others' sense of belonging. Yet even small acts can establish connection, brief activities such as reflecting on our core values and practices that Cohen terms " situation-crafting" have been shown to lessen political polarization, improve motivation, combat racism and enhance health and wellbeing in ourselves and others.

Cohen's work examines the processes that shape people's sense of belonging and self, and implications for social problems. He studies the big and small threats to belonging and self-integrity that people encounter in school, work, and health care settings, and strategies to create more inclusive spaces for people from all walks of life. He says he's inspired by Kurt Lewin, "The best way to try to understand something is to try to change it."

Our planet is subjected to more than 50 earthquakes a day. Fortunately, most do not cause significant damage. But some earthquakes are extremely destructive (as recent events in Turkey and Afghanistan demonstrate) The complexity of these tectonic plates shifts make prediction very challenging but fascinating work. Dr. Meade explains the importance of better prediction of earthquakes and the huge challenge of developing better prediction tools.

Do you know what triggers migration? How do birds find their way to warmer climates? David Allen Sibley, author and illustrator of the The Sibley Guide to Birds will be joining us for a fascinating conversation about birding migration and how our feathered friends heed nature’s call.

David Allen Sibley is the author and illustrator of the series of successful guides to nature that bear his name, including The Sibley Guide to Birds. He has contributed to Smithsonian, Science, The Wilson Journal of Ornithology, Birding, BirdWatching and North American Birds and The New York Times. He is the recipient of the Roger Tory Peterson Award for Lifetime Achievement from the American Birding Association and the Linnaean Society of New York's Eisenmann Medal. He lives and birds in Massachusetts.

GBH News reporter Craig LeMoult will be our host and moderator for this event.

Photo credit: David Allen Sibley

At Ask The Expert, get access to experts specializing in a wide variety of topics, learn something new about a subject you are passionate about or discover a new interest. GBH invites you to drive the conversation by asking questions during the live event directly with our expert. It’s always interesting, and it’s always free!

Fintan O’Toole, one of Ireland’s leading public intellectuals, is a columnist for The Irish Times and Leonard L. Milberg ’53 visiting lecturer in Irish Letters at Princeton University. He also contributes to The New York Review of Books, The New Yorker, Granta, The Guardian, The Observer, and other international publications. His books on theater include works on William Shakespeare, George Bernard Shaw, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, and Thomas Murphy. His books on politics include the bestsellers We Don’t Know Ourselves: A Personal History of Modern Ireland; Heroic Failure: Brexit and the Politics of Pain; Ship of Fools; and Enough is Enough. In 2011, The Observer named O’Toole one of “Britain’s top 300 intellectuals.” He has received the A.T. Cross Award for Supreme Contribution to Irish Journalism, the Millennium Social Inclusion Award, the Journalist of the Year award from TV3 Studios in 2010, the Orwell Prize, the European Press Prize, and he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in the spring of 2023. In 2021, he published the #1 bestseller We Don't Know Ourselves: A Personal History of Modern Ireland, which won the Book of the Year Award at the Irish Book Awards and was selected for the New York Times's “10 Best Books of 2022.” O’Toole’s History of Ireland in 100 Objects, which covers 100 highly charged artifacts from the last 10,000 years, is currently the basis for Ireland’s postage stamps. He has recently been appointed official biographer of Nobel Prize-winning poet Seamus Heaney.

This Lowell lecture will herald the opening of Seamus Heaney’s Afterlives, Boston College’s international symposium marking the tenth anniversary of the poet’s death.

Cosponsored by the Boston College Irish Studies Program and with the support of an ILA Major Grant.

We are here every Thursday bringing you local musicians to make noise at the library! The Nick Grondin Group has been actively performing in the Boston jazz community since 2008, as well as performances in New York City, France, and Italy. Their album, A View of Earth was featured in Down Beat Magazine and the Italian, Guitar Club Magazine. They believe in bringing together diverse musicians to play creative music that is accessible to new jazz listeners, with the goal of creating new audiences for jazz of the Twenty- First Century. Informed by the jazz tradition, they mix in the sounds of blues, folk, rock and funk, with familiar songs and sounds from popular music to create innovative arrangements in a jazz setting. They blend the sounds of guitar, vocals, saxophones, keyboards, bass and drums into a melodic tapestry, which also features the players unique improvisational voices. Nick Grondin has been an active educator in the Boston area since 2008, first at ZUMIX in East Boston, and later at Harvard, Berklee and the New England Conservatory, where he also completed his Doctor of Musical Arts degree in Jazz Performance in May 2023. Join us for an evening of music, wine, and food. Registration is encouraged for this free event.