The second annual Boston Book Festival will be held on Saturday October 16th, and note bene, it’s free and open to the public! ThoughtCast’s Jenny Attiyeh will be hosting a discussion titled True Story: The Art of Nonfiction. As soon as it’s available, we’ll post the recording, but in the meantime, here’s the blurb:
“Writing a work of non-fiction that’s a page-turner has its challenges. The authors of three diverse works tell all: Noah Feldman’s latest, Scorpions, digs into the amazing stories of four of FDR’s most influential Supreme Court justices. Richard Cohen’s Chasing the Sun is a compendium of entertaining and scholarly lore about our solar system’s brightest star. Kathryn Schulz succeeds in being both witty and erudite while answering the question “why do we love being right?” in Being Wrong.
Author: Jenny
Welcome to ThoughtCast, an online watering hole for ideas. Our focus is on conversations with authors, academics and intellectuals. I’m Jenny Attiyeh, the host and producer.
Faculty Insight: Nuclear strategy in the post-cold war world
Note: This interview was broadcast on WGBH radio, Boston’s NPR station for news and culture, on April 17, 2011!
Faculty Insight is produced in partnership with Harvard University Extension School. This second interview of the series is with nuclear strategist Thomas Nichols, who is a professor at the US Naval War College in Rhode Island, a fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and a lecturer at Harvard Extension School. He speaks with ThoughtCast’s Jenny Attiyeh about the conflict with North Korea, the potential for nuclear terrorism, and the reduction of nuclear stockpiles in the post-cold war world.
Is Addiction a Choice? Harvard’s Gene Heyman says yes!
Note: This interview was broadcast on WGBH radio, Boston’s NPR station for news and culture, on April 17, 2011!
Faculty Insight is produced in partnership with ThoughtCast and Harvard University Extension School. This first interview of the series is with Gene Heyman, a faculty member at the Extension School and a lecturer on psychology at Harvard Medical School. Professor Heyman’s controversial new book, called Addiction: A Disorder of Choice, asks if addiction is a disease, and anwers: no!
Coral reefs, hermit crabs and tube worms with Randi Rotjan
Note: This interview was broadcast on WGBH radio, Boston’s NPR station for news and culture, on April 17, 2011!
The Cambridge Science Festival returns this week with Inspiring Minds: Meet Women in Science, a program at the Museum of Science that includes a talk by Randi Rotjan, a coral ecologist at the New England Aquarium in Boston. Randi has been stung by jellyfish, coral, you name it. It’s all part of the job, studying coral reefs on location in exotic locales like the Red Sea or the Phoenix Islands, the world’s largest marine protected area. She goes face to face with hermit crabs as they line up, after the usual jostling, to form vacancy chains, waiting to trade in their old shells for newer, larger ones. It’s the classic upgrade, and it follows rules – perhaps ones we humans might care to copy.
Rules abound undersea – as does death. If the water temperature is too warm, corals bleach, starve and die. And if the tube worms that thrive near deep sea hydrothermal vents venture too far from the fissure, they’ll freeze. But most of the time, they’re doing just fine, thank you, feasting on the poisonous spewing gases they’re so fond of.
Watch this brief video on corallivory (the eating of live coral by fish!) to get you started.
And then click here 
(12 minutes) to listen to the audio interview, for the details.
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New England Poetry Club Prizewinner Richard Hoffman
The New England Poetry Club is apparently the oldest poetry reading series in the country. It was founded in 1915 by Amy Lowell, Robert Frost and Conrad Aiken. This spring, it awarded its Sheila Motton Prize to Richard Hoffman for his book of poetry called Gold Star Road. Hoffman is the Chairman of PEN New England, the Writer-in-Residence at Emerson College, and the author of Half the House: a Memoir, Interference & Other Stories, and Without Paradise, his second book of poetry.
To listen to Richard read from “Gold Star Road” (42 minutes), click here!
A runner-up for the Sheila Motton Prize was Wendy Mnookin for her book of poetry The Moon Makes Its Own Plea. She teaches poetry at Emerson College and at Grub Street, a non-profit Boston writing center. Her previous books of poetry are What He Took, Guenever Speaks and To Get Here.
To listen to Wendy read from “The Moon Makes Its Own Plea” (28 minutes), click here!
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A Conversation with Los Angeles Impresario Ernest Fleischmann
Note: this interview was broadcast on WGBH, Boston’s NPR station for news and culture, and was part of Classical KUSC’s A Tribute to Ernest, broadcast live from Walt Disney Concert Hall on 3/29/11.
Ernest Fleischmann, the former General Manager of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, can be credited with turning this once provincial institution into a world famous orchestra. He was also instrumental in hiring Esa-Pekka Salonen, the famous Finnish music director and composer, and more recently the flamboyant Venezuelan Gustavo Dudamel, who, baton in hand, has taken the classical music world by storm.
Now in his 80’s, Ernest looks back at his career in a conversation with ThoughtCast, at his home in the Hollywood Hills. This brief interview only skims the surface of his career and accomplishments, but it’s a pleasure to listen to that voice, and to tap into his reservoir of musical knowledge – and instinct.
Click here to listen (8:26 minutes.)
Sadly, Ernest Fleischmann died in June, 2010 after a long illness. He will be missed!
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