21. Madagascar: Journeys Through Time (1:17:00)

Date:
2022-04-12
Main contributors:
Dame Alison Richard
Summary:
Madagascar has always been a place of change, as even a brief glimpse at its long history makes clear. A widely held view is that human activities alone have driven recent environmental changes, and the island is a poster child for human destructiveness: forest cover has declined sharply, and all the largest-bodied animal species have gone extinct within the past thousand years. Evidence bearing on the decline and disappearance of the island’s giant elephant birds raises many questions about this simple story of human-driven change. A more nuanced understanding of the past is a vital foundation for efforts to ensure the continued survival of the many unique plants and animals to which Madagascar is still home.

22. Marketization, Social Protection, Emancipation: Grammars of Struggle in Capitalist Crisis (1:50:51)

Date:
2011-01-27
Main contributors:
Nancy Fraser
Summary:
Nancy Fraser Nancy Fraser Marketization, Social Protection, Emancipation: Grammars of Struggle in Capitalist Crisis Thursday, January 27, 2011 7:30 PM - 8:30 PM Rawles Hall 100 In this lecture, Fraser will examine Polanyi's conception of the double movement. Seeking to expand his idea of a two-sided conflict between partisans of deregulated markets and proponents of social protection, she will incorporate a third pole of social movement, aimed at emancipation. The result will be a revised understanding of the grammar of social conflict that better reflects the social struggles of the twenty-first century.

23. African American Intellectuals in Europe in the Interwar Period (1:06:01)

Date:
2009-01-20
Main contributors:
Werner Sollors
Summary:
In the period that witnessed the rise of communism and its transformation into Stalinism, the emergence of fascism, and two momentous "interwar wars," numerous African American intellectuals met their counterparts in Europe. Encounters include: Counte Cullen and Claire Goll (Paris), Claude McKay, Alain Locke, and George Grosz (Paris, Berlin, Moscow), McKay, Vladimir Mayakovsky, and Leon Trotsky (Soviet Union), Horace Cayton and Nancy Cunard (Paris and Hamburg),Alain Locke and the "Black Watch on the Rhine" (French-occupied Rhineland), Langston Hughes, James Yates, and the Spanish Civil War,and W.E.B. Du Bois in Nazi Germany. Common human misunderstandings create a comedy of intellectuals against the climate of political violence in interwar Europe.

24. Crying Wolf v. Fiddling while Rome Burns: Historical Perspectives on Scientists' Social Responsib... (1:20:33)

Date:
2015-03-09
Main contributors:
Naomi Oreskes
Summary:
Scientists working on climate change and other environmental issues often speak of the risk of “crying wolf,” concerned about losing credibility if the threats they are documenting do not turn out to be as serious as current research suggests. However, the opposite worry—that they might fiddle while Rome burns—is hardly ever mentioned. Yet from the standpoint of social responsibility, understating a threat might be worse than overstating it, so why are scientists more concerned with losing credibility than with failing to adequately warn against risk? Moreover, history shows us that scientists in the past often were willing to speak out strongly and clearly about perceived threats relevant to their scientific expertise. This talk explores the origins and historical development of the current tendency of scientists towards reticence, and the asymmetry of scientific anxiety.

25. From "Mr. Mom" to "Deadbeat Dads": Why paternal commitment is so variable in the human species an... (1:16:50)

Date:
2013-04-04
Main contributors:
Sarah Hurdy
Summary:
Compared to other mammals, human offspring are slow-maturing and outrageously costly to rear, yet men's motivation to care for children is highly variable. Some fathers will do anything to remain nearby and care for their children while others (even men certain of their paternity) act as if they don't know they have children. Most fall someplace in between, prompting evolutionists to ask how Darwinian natural selection could have favored production of such costly children without concurrent selection pressures on fathers to provide what progeny need to survive? Resolving this paradox of “facultative fathering” requires us to consider the deep history of the human family, and in doing so to rethink the tremendous potential for nurture that resides in human males.

26. Grand Strategy: an American problem? (1:30:31)

Date:
2012-03-08
Main contributors:
Charles Hill
Summary:
The Founders designed a polity almost fated to become a world power. Tocqueville's sense of democracy as a force of history was accompanied by his conclusion that democracies are "decidedly inferior" in the conduct of foreign affairs. Despite America's nineteenth-century reluctance to engage fully with world diplomacy, the U.S., as democracy's standard-bearer, emerged as "the leader of the Free World" in the course of twentieth-century wars waged by ideologically-driven powers seeking to overturn the established international state system. In this new century, democracy has emerged as problematic in new ways, affecting the bond between it and the U.S. role in maintaining world order, with special reference to challenges in the Middle East and Asia.

27. Hiding in the Climate Crisis: Honest Hope in Democratic Action (1:25:00)

Date:
2021-11-11
Main contributors:
Frances Moore Lappé
Summary:
It is easy to feel overwhelmed by the simultaneous political, economic, and climate crises upon us, but Frances Moore Lappé digs to their interacting roots so we can be sure that in attacking them our actions matter. Lappé shows us how our peculiarly brutal form of capitalism—enabling Big Money’s corruption of our democracy—has brought on climate catastrophe. Lappé also exposes and uproots our culture’s myths about our own nature that hinder us. Our deepest human needs beyond the physical are for power, meaning, and connection, she argues, and only democracy can fulfill them. Stepping up to meet our historic crises becomes an opportunity to meet our own legitimate needs. Through inspiring stories and startling facts on effective climate actions, Lappé helps us realize our own power to generate a new story as we tackle root causes with exhilarating, courageous action—together.

28. Life on a Young Planet (1:23:14)

Date:
2010-02-09
Main contributors:
Andrew H. Knoll
Summary:
Shells, bones, tracks, and trails record a history of animal evolution more than 600 million years long. Earth, however, is some four and a half billion years old. What kinds of life characterized our planet's youth and middle age? Genealogical relationships among living organisms, inferred from molecular sequence comparisons, suggest that the deep history of life is microbial, and over the past three decades, paleontologists have discovered a rich record of microbial life in rocks that long predate the earliest animals. Geochemical research has established a complementary record of environmental change, with major transitions that parallel those found among fossils. The general pattern that emerges is one of long-term co-evolution between life and environments throughout our planetary history.

29. Managing Nuclear Proliferation (1:35:18)

Date:
2008-09-23
Main contributors:
Thomas Schelling
Summary:
For more than sixty years, since Nagasaki in 1945, no nuclear weapons have been exploded in anger, despite several wars in which one side possessed nuclear weapons. The taboo is an asset to be preserved. New nuclear weapon states should recognize that the weapons have proven useful for deterrence; any other use will almost certainly bring universal opprobrium. Certain responsibilities will accrue to any new nuclear-weapon states: security against accident, sabotage, or unauthorized use. The United States was slow to recognize the need for such security, as it was slow to recognize the crucial importance of designing weapons safe from attack. Perhaps China, a mature nuclear-weapon state, is in a strong position to provide guidance to any nations contemplating nuclear weapons.

30. Managing the Greenhouse Problem (1:40:38)

Date:
2008-09-25
Main contributors:
Thomas Schelling
Summary:
The uncertainties are great but so are the certainties. Venus and Mars show what too much, or too little, greenhouse gas can do to the possibility of life. Carbon dioxides ability to absorb infra-red radiation can be measured. But the analysis of how much warming, what changes in climate, what impact on agriculture, on health and comfort, how well different countries can adapt, is still in progress; too little is known to predict what concentration will be too much, so no global rationing scheme is likely. Certainly the worst climate impacts will be on the rural poor; economic development is an important defense. An ambitious program of research, development, and exploration for new economical energy sources and locations for carbon sequestration is urgently needed. The already-developed nations will have to provide financial and technological assistance to the less developed.