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Cambridge Forum

Let Cambridge Forum change your mind....

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

  • 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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  • 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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  • 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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  • 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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  • “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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  • 64 Americans die by firearm suicide daily — that is one death every 22 minutes - this tragic statistic segues to the subject of Cambridge Forum's final talk of the current series ,"GUNFIGHT: is healthy gun ownership ever possible?"

    Join Ryan Busse, former executive at Kimber America, a major gun manufacturer and author of the book "Gunfight" on Tuesday, June 27.Busse will talk about his battle with the gun industry which he says, has radicalized America. He is a senior adviser for Giffords, a gun violence prevention group led by Gabby Giffords, former Arizona congresswoman who was a victim of a mass shooting in 2011.

    Ryan Busse is joined by Dr. Mark I. Langdorf, Professor of Clinical Emergency Medicine at the University of California, Irvine, and serves as Editor-in-Chief of the Western Journal of Emergency Medicine. He sees emergency patients at the Level I Trauma center at the University of California, Irvine, Medical Center. Langdorf speaks, consults, and teaches locally, nationally, and worldwide on optimum care of emergency patients.

    ### Resources
    Study on the energy of riffle bullets - The Bullets He Carried https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7j5344pt
    NewYork Times Articles on why people buy guns -(paywall) https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/23/health/gun-violence-psychology.html?campaign_id=0&emc=confirmation_hh&instance_id=0&nl=system®i_id=189155058®i_id=189155058&segment_id=0&user_id=d6a49fd801884db732db1af29358c222
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  • Suicide rates are rising at an alarming rate in America and the populations most at risk are no longer white middle-aged men, they are increasingly young people and minorities; sadly this phenonenon is not just confined to the United States. **Cambridge Forum** considers what societal ills might be fueling this and whether we can do more to recognize and remedy this tragic trend. **Clancy Martin** is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Missouri in Kansas City. He is also a happily married father of five children. His latest book, “How Not to Kill Yourself” is a portrait of the suicidal mind - his own - and in it he provides both a personal account of the multiple attempts he had made to end his life but also the positive strategies he has devised to safeguard his own future and that of others. ** Professor Rory O'Connor** is Professor of Health Psychology at the University of Glasgow, Scotland and **President of the International Association for Suicide Prevention. **
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  • The old adage about the free lunch fits plastic perfectly – there there is no such thing. Yes, at first it was shiny, bright and inexpensive and seemed like it could be used for almost anything – until we got the price tag. And now it might be too late to fix it. 100 years down the road the world is discovering the myriad unintended consequences of plastic which far outweigh its cheap convenience. Almost daily, scientific research brings us fresh horrors about plastic; it is no longer just turtles or whales choking on the stuff, now it has invaded us. Microplastics are in our blood, human breastmilk and even our brains. Little did we know that when we put plastic into medical devices and food packaging, it would leach into those syringes and water bottles causing dangerous health consequences intrinsically and extrinsically. Only 5% of plastic can be recycled so that means 95% is being dumped into our oceans, landfills and bodies at an unremitting pace. What can be done to break our toxic addiction to plastic, and to terminate its lethal global legacy? To help us understand the scale of the problem and see what steps California and other countries are already taking with the Global Plastics Treaty – **Cambridge Forum** speaks to Dr. Roberto Lucchini, who edited the special edition of "Global Health" on the findings of the Minderoo Monaco Commission on Plastics and Human Health, John Hocevar, Greenpeace’s Oceans Campaign Director and Veronique Greenwood, a science journalist and essayist who frequently contributes to the New York Times, the BBC, and National Geographic. ### Resources [Plastic actually isn't cheap - Veronique Greenwood - Boston Globe](Plastic actually isn’t cheap - Veronique Greenwood - Boston Globe https://www.bostonglobe.com/2023/05/11/opinion/plastic-isnt-actually-cheap/) [Link to the report of Minderoo-Monaco Commission](https://annalsofglobalhealth.org/collections/the-minderoo-monaco-commission-on-plastics-and-human-health) [Trying to live a day without plastic- New York Times](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/11/style/plastic-free.html) [Plastic pollution could be slashed by 80% by 2040, UN says](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/may/16/plastic-pollution-could-be-slashed-by-80-by-2040-un-says) [Plastic Free President Coalition](https://www.plasticfreepresident.org/#coalition) [Greenpeace report (May 2023) on toxic hazards of recycled nlastic](https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/news/new-greenpeace-report-calls-out-toxic-hazards-of-recycled-plastic-as-global-plastics-treaty-negotiations-resume-in-paris/)
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  • What was Cambridge like back when it was called Newtowne and even before that? A new history book, ostensibly for kids, aims to paint a more multi-dimensional view of the area charting its cultural influences and history starting back 10,000 years ago, when indigenous people farmed, fished and built communities there. The Massachusett tribe were the first documented humans known to have lived on this land. Art Historian **Suzanne Preston Blier**, Harvard Professor of Fine Arts and of African and African American Studies has just published “_The Streets of Newtowne: A Story of Cambridge, MA._” Blier, a Cambridge civic activist, serves as President of the Harvard Square Neighborhood Association, a group she helped to found in 2017. Joining her to help amplify our understanding of Newtowne’s diverse past are **Nicola Williams**, President of The Williams Agency, located in an historic building on Story Street. Once a boarding house run by former slave Harriet Jacobs, who self-published her book, “_Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl_” Jacobs went on to become an abolitionist, activist and suffragette. Williams serves on the board of the Sustainable Business Network of Boston. Also **Sage Carbone**, Community Programs Director for the Fenway Community Development Corporation. Sage is a descendant of the Massachusett tribe and a resident of Cambridge, where she is active in the collective Cambridge City Growers which distributes thousands of seedlings to urban gardeners. Augmenting the historical discussion will be **Daniel Berger-Jones**, in the guise of Ralph Waldo Emerson, who delivered his famous “American Scholar” address in the church in 1837. This speech was referred to as America's "Intellectual Declaration of Independence” by Oliver Wendell Holmes. Turn up in person or sign up now to register for the event. ### Resources [ Winthrop Park – Cambridge’s first Puritan settlement and the first Planned City in North America is under the care of the Winthrop Park Trust: ](https://www.winthropparktrust.org/) [The Vassal-Craigie-Longfellow House on Brattle Street (National Park Service)](https://www.nps.gov/long/index.htm) [Ned Blackhawk’s new book “The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of US History”](https://www.portersquarebooks.com/book/9780300244052) [Link to Cambridge Day article on MIT and Indigenous People genocide ](https://www.cambridgeday.com/2023/05/08/an-indigenous-look-into-mit/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=an-indigenous-look-into-mit) Impage copyright: Envato
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  • Recent concerns about the long-term implications of artificial intelligence apps like Chat GPT have prompted journalists, academics and entrepreneurs to seek a temporary halt to the training of AIs saying "AI systems with human-competitive intelligence can pose profound risks to society and humanity." In this Forum, we consider the direct and also unseen impacts of utilizing a tool that has yet to be regulated or even fully understood. **Gary Marcus**, scientist, entrepreneur, and author of "Rebooting AI: Building Artificial Intelligence we can trust" is Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Neural Science at NYU and host of the podcast Humans versus Machines. **Jane Rosenzweig** is Director of the Harvard Writing Center, freelance writer and author of Writing Hacks newsletter. **Wesley Wildman** is a Professor of Philosophy, Theology, and Ethics + Computing & Data Sciences at Boston University.. **Andrew Kimble**, Director of Online Lifelong Learning at BU School of Theology, will act as moderator. ### Resources [The moratorim explained - Thehindu.com](https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/technology/explained-the-moratorium-call-on-chatgpts-successor/article66689078.ece) [Guy Marcus' podcast](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/humans-vs-machines-with-gary-marcus/id1532110146) [Jane Rosenzweig's article in the boston Globe about what we lose when machines do the writing (published before ChatGPT was released)](https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/what-we-lose-when-machines-do-the-writing/ar-AA13WJdW) [Jane Rosenzweig's newsletter](https://writinghacks.substack.com/) [Would AI replace jobs? From the BBC](https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20230418-ai-anxiety-artificial-intelligence-replace-jobs) [Article on CDS Policy on Generative AI Assistance (GAIA) in courses](https://www.bu.edu/cds-faculty/2023/03/24/cds-adopts-generative-ai-chatgpt-policy/) [BU GAIA Policy](https://www.bu.edu/cds-faculty/culture-community/conduct/gaia-policy/) [Wesley's research center: The center for Mind and Culture](https://mindandculture.org/) [ChatGPT and large language model bias (cbsnews)](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/chatgpt-large-language-model-bias-60-minutes-2023-03-05/)
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