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Cambridge Forum hosts free, public discussions that inform and engage, so that people can better explore the varied issues and ideas that shape our changing world. CF broadcasts its live events via podcasts, weekly NPR shows and online presentations via GBH Forum Network on YouTube.

http://www.cambridgeforum.org

Is The American Century Over?

Tue, Jan 16, 2024

At the beginning of an uncertain New Year, Cambridge Forum considers America’s position on the international stage with the help of Professor Joseph Nye, one of the country’s foremost thinkers on American foreign policy. For the past eight decades, we have lived in “the American Century” – a period during which the US has enjoyed unrivalled global power – be it political, economic or military. Born on the cusp of this new era, Nye has spent a lifetime illuminating our understanding of the changing contours of America power and world affairs. His many books on the nature of power and political leadership have earned him his reputation as one of the most current & influential world scholars.

Joseph Nye shares his own personal memories of living through the American century. From his early years growing up on a farm in rural New Jersey to his time in the State Department, Pentagon and Intelligence Community during the Carter and Clinton administrations where he witnessed American power up close, shaping policy on key issues such as nuclear proliferation and East Asian security. After 9/11 drew the US into wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Nye remained an astute observer and critic of the Bush, Obama and Trump presidencies. Today Nye brings a fresh and insightful perspective about America’s future role in the world; its primacy may be changing, but is it for the better?

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Single-Minded: Can You Live a Happy Satisfied Life, Alone?

Tue, Dec 19, 2023

Cambridge Forum delves into a controversial topic – the state of singlehood.
Lots of health research indicates that people who live alone, have higher health risks and are generally unhappier. Well, not so, according to Bella DePaulo (Ph.D) author of a new book, “Single At Heart”. DePaulo is a 70-year old psychologist, who in addition to being single all her life, has also studied the state of being single from a professional standpoint and she is adamant that there are multiple myths about her chosen way of living.

“I could be living at a time or in a place where the prospects for staying single for life would have been much more daunting. Maybe it would have been nearly impossible for me to support myself financially without a spouse. Maybe attitudes toward single people would have been even more disparaging than they are now. That would have been a profound loss. For people like me who are single at heart, the risk is not what we’ll miss if we do not organize our lives around a romantic partner, but what we’ll miss if we do. We would miss the opportunity to live our most meaningful, fulfilling and psychologically rich lives by living someone else’s version of a good life instead of our own. We would not get to be who we really are.”

Joining DePaulo will be Fenton Johnson, who has written extensively about the state of marriage and the state of solitude. He is author of three novels and four works of creative nonfiction, most recently At the Center of All Beauty: Solitude and the Creative Life, a New York Times Editors’ Pick. At various times a contributor to NPR, Harper’s Magazine, and the New York Times Magazine, he has received numerous literary awards. Johnson has taught in the nation’s leading creative writing programs and is Emeritus Professor of the University of Arizona.

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Crushed Wild Mint: Language Rooted in Landscape

Tue, Dec 5, 2023

Cambridge Forum explores some indigenous thinking mixed with a little magic, talking to Jess Housty about her debut poetry collection, CRUSHED WILD MINT.

Jess Housty is a Haíɫzaqv parent, writer, and land-based educator from the community of Bella Bella, BC. Housty lives in unceded ancestral homelands where she works in community building, food sovereignty, and leadership development. She is a freelance contributor to The Tyee and in addition to her debut poetry collection from Nightwood Editions, she has a forthcoming collection of essays due out shortly from Magic Canoe Press.

Housty’s writing is enmeshed in her indigenous roots and values, “wealth is measured not by what you’ve accumulated but by what you give away. True abundance comes from community and turning a gift into more gifts”. She demonstrates this beautifully in “Sixty-Eight Plums”, a surprise bag of plums appears on her doorstep and provides an opportunity for her to carry the joy forward by making jars of plum jam, to leave at neighbors’ doors.

Sixty-Eight Plums (by Jess Housty)

When sixty-eight golden plums appear like a bowl of phosphorescence on your stoop, look both upward
and all around you
when you give a little thanks.

It is no small feat
that they have arrived here:

Someone planted trees,
smiling to themselves at the foolishness of growing plums in this climate
where the rain makes everything soft— makes everyone soft.

And for more than one hundred years the trees have probably not been tended but certainly been spared the axe
and the lightning and unhappy accidents, and survived to delight you.

And this week, this week of softening
and relentless rain, someone lifted their hand level with their heart or higher—
sixty-eight times to the branches
while shaking the weather
out of their hair—
and doing this, they thought of you.

So plunge your clean hands in the bowl (What else is there to do?)
and pick out the stems and leaves;
tear into the rain-soft flesh,

the sun-bright flesh, to pry out the pits;
and think of how you will carry forward joy when you leave jars of warm jam
on many doorsteps in the morning.

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Indigenous Heritage

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Building Bridges To Belonging

Tue, Nov 28, 2023

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."

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Out Of Sight

Tue, Nov 14, 2023

Cambridge Forum’s OUT OF SIGHT accompanies two men, Mark Erelli a musician and Andrew Leland a writer, on their separate journeys from the world of sightedness to one of blindness. Mark Erelli was performing in 2020, when he looked down at his guitar and couldn’t see his fingers on the frets. A subsequent diagnosis of RP (retinitis pigmentosa) provided some answers, but many new questions. Does diminished eyesight decrease one’s insight? What does it mean to be ‘fully seen’ by oneself and others?

These questions, along with Erelli’s drive to regain his creative agency, formed the basis for “Lay Your Darkness Down.” In THE COUNTRY OF THE BLIND: a memoir at the end of sight, Andrew Leland is suspended in the liminal state of the soon-to-be blind. Midway through his life with RP, he now sees the world as if through a narrow tube. Soon - he doesn’t know when – he will lose his sight. Leland embarks on a sweeping exploration of the state of blindness including his changing relationships with his wife, son, and self. His book represents his determination not to merely survive the transition but to grow from it – a state of being few of us know much about but from which we have much to learn.

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Beyond Belief

Tue, Oct 17, 2023

The effort to destroy facts and make American ungovernable didn’t come out of nowhere. It is the culmination of seventy years of strategic denialism, according to Lee McIntyre. In “On Disinformation” he shows how the war on facts began, and how ordinary citizens can fight back against the scourge of disinformation that is now threatening the very fabric of our society. McIntyre explains how autocrats use propaganda to manipulate the populace and deny obvious realities, why the best way to combat disinformation is to disrupt its spread and offers ten smart steps to fight back and win the war against truth.

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Can Local News Fix The Crisis In Democracy?

Wed, Oct 4, 2023

Many people think that America is coming apart at the seams, for a variety of reasons. Most glaringly, polarization has split entire communities, dividing friends and families from each other so that prospects for the next election look grim. However, there might be some good news on the horizon. Literally. Recent research shows that one way to improve voter activity, decrease polarization and boost municipal bond rating is to inject community news into people’s lives. Local news, it would seem, acts as a binding agent for democracy.

Charles Sennott, founder and Editor of The GroundTruth Project discusses with a panel of journalists and media entrepreneurs from around the country how delivering local news can glue democracy back together.

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Doppelganger with Naomi Klein

Thu, Sep 14, 2023

Award-winning author and Guardian columnist, Naomi Klein has departed from her usual topics with this newest book which enters more personal territory. Doppelganger uses the fact that Klein has often been mistaken for author Naomi Wolf, as a jumping-off point to explore conspiracy theories and what Klein calls the “Mirror World”. Klein looks at how “far-right movements feign solidarity with the working class, AI-generated content blurs the line between genuine and spurious, and new-age wellness entrepreneurs turned anti-vaxxers further scramble our familiar political alliances.” Doppelganger explores “what it feels like to watch one’s identity slip away in the digital ether, an experience many more of us will have in the age of AI”.

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Reclaiming Life From Work

Tue, Sep 19, 2023

Cambridge Forum kicks off a new series considering the changing nature of work with SIMONE STOLZOFF, journalist and author of THE GOOD ENOUGH JOB: Reclaiming Life from Work.

From the moment we ask children what they want to “be” when they grow up, we teach them a fateful lesson: we are what we do. For many Americans, jobs have become akin to a religious identity – they provide a paycheck, but also meaning, community and a sense of purpose. The question is at what cost and are we asking too much of our jobs, to fulfill all these needs. Stolzoff examines how work has come to dominate our lives and why we find it difficult to separate identity and self-worth from our jobs. He also explains what we lose when we expect too much from our careers and offers strategies on how to build a healthier relationship with work.

The Good Enough Job punctures the myths that keep us chained to our jobs and asks us to consider how to divide who we are, from what we do.

It questions the spin that employers tell us about the value of our labor and makes the case for reclaiming our lives in a world centered around work.

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Living on Borrowed Time

Tue, Sep 5, 2023

“And as the summer unfolded, it became evident that it’s not just smoke, and not just Canada. This has been the summer from climate hell all across the Earth, when it ceased being possible to escape or deny what we have done to our planet and ourselves” says Professor Michael Flannigan, of Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops, British Columbia, who has been studying the interaction of fire and climate for over 35 years. “Temperatures are rising at the rate we thought they would, but the effects are more severe, more frequent, more critical. It’s crazy and getting crazier.” NYT August 23, ’23

Following the most bizarre climatic summer on record, Cambridge Forum starts its new season by considering what our uncertain future holds, in a new series: “Living on Borrowed Time”. In this first program, Cambridge Forum talks to Jeff Goodell, NY bestselling author and contributing editor at Rolling Stone; and Dr. Mike Flannigan, Research Chair for Predictive Services, Emergency Management and Fire Science at Thompson Rivers University and the Scientific Director of the Canadian Partnership for Wildland Fire Science.

Goodell has covered climate change for more than two decades for Rolling Stone. His latest book, “The Heat will Kill You First” presents a searing examination of the impact that rising temperatures will have on our lives and on our planet.

Dr. Flannigan has been studying fire and weather/climate interactions including the potential impact of climatic change and lightning-ignited forest fires for over 40 years.

Join this important discussion in our Zoom webinar and don’t forget to tell your friends – your future may depend upon it.

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