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!
James Wood, the sincere, somewhat old-fashioned, unpretentious yet high-minded New Yorker literary critic, spoke at the Harvard Book Store recently about his new book, How Fiction Works.
Click here: 
to listen (30 minutes).
Also… ThoughtCast will be interviewing Wood shortly – hooray! – and we’re interested in your input! We’d like to discuss, among other topics, different kinds of literary creativity. What makes a great critic, rather than, say, a great novelist, or poet? What does the critic look for? How personal is the art of criticism, and how much a matter of taste – or instinct? Just how ‘creative’ is it?
Please add your thoughts in the comments section below, or email them to feedback at thoughtcast dot org!
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Note: This interview has been picked up by the public radio stations WGBH, in Boston, its affiliates WCAI and WNAN, and WCVE in Richmond, VA.
In some ways, the Scottish historian Niall Ferguson is the Russell Crowe of the academic world: charismatic, unconventional, and definitely controversial. He’s also a big fan of the British Empire — and wants the United States to follow in its footsteps. That means it’s our job to form colonies in hot climates, for years on end.
But are we up for this? While Niall would like that to be the case, he doesn’t really think so, because, he says, we’re an empire “in denial” …
Click here: to listen to a 4 minute excerpt.
Click here: to listen to the entire interview (15:30 minutes).
And to listen to this interview with Niall Ferguson on the WGBH Forum Network, click here!
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Note: This program was broadcast on the public radio station WCVE.
Cyber law expert Jonathan Zittrain is one of the canniest thinkers out there, pondering the wide world of the web, and his new book is called The Future of the Internet – And How to Stop It. It’s a call to arms. Before it’s too late, he says, we must make sure the Internet stays in our hands – not in those of industries like Verizon, or Apple, seductive as their services might seem at times. Anybody say iPhone??
Click here: to listen (5 1/2 minutes).
For those to whom Jonathan is a new phenomenon, he is the co-founder of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard, a professor at Harvard Law School, and also the Chair in Internet Governance and Regulation at Oxford University. He’s an expert on Internet law.
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Note: a portion of this interview was broadcast on the WGBH public radio affiliates WCAI/WNAN!
Whither the European Union? This is not a question we (in America) often ask ourselves. But perhaps we should. As we now live in an era of borderless commerce – and threats – it might be wise for us to know a bit more about how our key ally, Europe, is faring. Is the EU more than just a powerful economic bloc? Does it have political clout as well? What about a common foreign policy, and the means to back it up?
Harvard economist Alberto Alesina has devoted himself to these questions. In a book he co-authored with Francesco Giavazzi, he asks: The Future of Europe: Reform or Decline??
Click here: to listen. (27 minutes)
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Note: this program was broadcast on the WGBH public radio sister stations WCAI/WNAN, on the Cape and Islands, and on WRNC-LP!
In this half-hour, ThoughtCast talks with two very different men, with one thing in common — a belief in humanism. Harvey Cox, the renowned Harvard Divinity School Professor and author of The Secular City and When Jesus Came to Harvard, talks with ThoughtCast about his faith, and the religious resurgence taking place here in America and abroad. Cox has a unique take on Christianity — while he doubts the Resurrection, he celebrates the life of Jesus, and urges us all to follow in his footsteps, and take his teachings to the streets, to enact them in our flawed, real, and secular world.
Simon Blackburn on the other hand rejects religion but embraces the wisdom of philosophy. He too is an author — of Truth: A Guide, Think and Being Good, among others — and he teaches philosophy at the University of Cambridge, in England. What he offers is a philosophy that’s not just for the educated elite, but for the rest of us!
Click here: to listen (29 minutes)
And to listen to a WGBH Forum Network lecture moderated by Harvey Cox, on the Boston civil rights movement, click here!
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