Past Events

GBH Music and JazzBoston are co-hosting a new series to showcase the breadth of incredible jazz talent in the Greater Boston area. The event is held on the second Thursday of every month through February.

This month, pianist Hey Rim Jeon performs a mixture of original compositions and innovative solo piano arrangement of jazz standards and new repertoire from her upcoming album as well as her critically acclaimed albums Groovitude (2022) and Mona Lisa Puzzle (2009).

Despite its large size, Indonesia remains virtually invisible to most Americans. But as one of the world’s largest democracies, the world’s largest Muslim-majority nation, and as an economic driver of ASEAN, why does it fly below the radar? What are current issues in U.S.-Indonesian relations, and what role can the country play in Asia?

Join WorldBoston for a timely discussion of this topic with former Ambassador Robert Blake Jr. This program will feature an expert presentation, live audience Q&A, and time for networking and discussion with other globally-oriented participants in the Newsfeed Café.

Join the Paul Revere House for the first event in their 2024 Lowell Lecture Series. This three-part series focuses on the lesser-known express assignments Paul Revere completed. Speakers will share the importance of his courier work as part of a communications system that involved complex overlapping networks of leaders of all stations. The series will also explore the very practical aspects of long-distance horse journeys and the local colonial politics in key communities Revere interacted with.

In response to the Boston Tea Party, Parliament not only shut down the port of Boston but also revoked the Massachusetts Charter of 1691, which guaranteed the people considerable say in their government. Their sacred rights withdrawn, the people rose up as a body and rebelled. They forced all crown-appointed officers to resign. Everywhere except Boston, where British troops were stationed, they shut down county courts, which administered British authority, executive as well as judicial, on the local level. To fill the vacuum, they formed a Provincial Congress that levied taxes, gathered arms, and raised an army. When British soldiers marched on Lexington and Concord the following spring, they were trying to take back a province they had just lost. That’s when other colonies joined in, broadening the Massachusetts Revolution of 1774 into the American Revolution of 1775.

Presented in partnership with GBH, the Suffolk University History Department, Milton Historical Society/Suffolk Resolves House (Milton, MA), Carpenters’ Hall (Philadelphia, PA), Fraunces Tavern Museum (New York, NY), and the Portsmouth Athenaeum (Portsmouth, NH), with funding from the Lowell Institute. For more information, please contact staff@paulreverehouse.org or visit paulreverehouse.org.

The New England Aquarium and GBH present a special behind-the-scenes look at NOVA’s three-part series Sea Change: The Gulf of Maine as part of the Aquarium’s Lowell Lecture Series. Featuring imagery by acclaimed film producer and veteran photojournalist Brian Skerry, the series examines the changes taking place in the Gulf of Maine, a body of water that is warming 97 percent faster than the global ocean. Blending science, exploration, natural history, and stories of human experience, Sea Change illuminates how the gulf may serve as a preview of what might happen in other parts of the world due to climate change.

Join us in person or via live stream for a screening of highlights from the series followed by a panel discussion and Q&A with Skerry and other members of the filmmaking team about their experiences documenting and studying this spectacular wilderness, and how the communities that live and work along along the gulf’s shores are working to sustain its future. Panelists include:

• Laurie Donnelly, Executive Producer, Sea Change, and Director of Lifestyle Programming, GBH
• Dr. David Fields, Senior Research Scientist, Bigelow Labs
• Brian Skerry, Photographer and Producer, Sea Change
• Chun-Wei Yi, Writer, Director, and Producer, Sea Change
• Moderated by Dr. Letise LaFeir, Chief of Conservation and Stewardship, New England Aquarium

Free of charge and open to the public, the Lowell Lecture Series is made possible due to the generosity of the Lowell Institute. This event is presented in partnership with GBH. Doors open at 6:00 p.m. and the program starts promptly at 6:30 p.m.

NOVA is the most popular primetime science series on American television, demystifying the scientific and technological concepts that shape and define our lives, our planet, and our universe. NOVA is a production of GBH.

In-person tickets are currently sold out.

Join American Ancestors for the tale of one family spanning centuries and continents. Inspired by the discovery of a mysterious manuscript in an old Massachusetts farmhouse, the celebrated author John Kaag follows eight menbers of the Blood family from seventeenth-century England through the founding of the colonies and the American Revolution to the beginning of the twentieth century.

The Bloods were one of America’s first and most expansive pioneer families. They explored and laid claim to the frontiers—geographic, political, intellectual, and spiritual—that would become the very core of the United States. They were active participants in virtually every pivotal moment in American history, coming into contact with Emerson, Thoreau, John Brown, Frederick Douglass, Victoria Woodhull, and William James. The genealogy of the family tracks the ebb and flow of what Thoreau called “wildness,” the untamed spirit of Americans. John Kaag’s remarkable account reminds us of the risks and rewards that were taken in laying claim to the lands that would become the United States and shows how each family member embodied the elusive ideals enshrined in the Declaration of Independence.

The GBH BPL studio will host Outspoken Saturdays, a spoken word poetry event for emerging artists. Every first Saturday of the month, the series will be created in collaboration with spoken word artist Amanda Shea. Join us!

Registration is encouraged for this free event.

The 2020 book, Climate Crisis and The Global Green New Deal, by Noam Chomsky and Robert Pollin is recognized as a major source of information about the climate change crisis and also the best solution, which involves science, politics and economics: "A survival manual for civilization" as Daniel Ellsberg called it. Dr. Pollin is an internationally recognized expert on the economics of the climate change crisis, the billions of people who will be affected, and the economic steps necessary for restoring our planet and civilization. Here, he explains in very accessible terms, the problem and the solution.

GBH is proud to be the exclusive public media partner of Open Streets Boston! Join us and grab your bike, rollerblades, skateboard, or walk through the car-free streets of Hyde Park. On Sunday, August 11, Hyde Park Ave. and River St. to Fairmount Ave. and Davison St. will be filled with live art, music, kid's activities, food trucks, resource tables and the opportunity to connect with neighbors and support local businesses!

The event is free and open to everyone!

When Women Ran Fifth Avenue: Glamour and Power at the Dawn of American Fashion is a glittering portrait of the golden age of American department stores and of three visionary women who led them. Journalist Julie Satow draws back the curtain to reveal the masterminds behind the creation and shopping experience at Hortense Odlum’s Bonwit Teller, Dorothy Shaver’s Lord & Taylor, and Geraldine Stutz’s Henri Bendel.

The twentieth century American department store was a palace of consumption where every wish could be met under one roof – afternoon tea, a stroll through the latest fashions, a wedding (or funeral) planned. It was a place where women, shopper and shopgirl alike, could stake out a newfound independence. Whether in New York or Chicago or on Main Street, USA, men owned the store buildings, but inside, women ruled. In this hothouse atmosphere, three women and their department stores rose to the top, Hortense Odlum (Bonwit Teller), Dorothy Shaver (Lord & Taylor), and Geraldine Stutz (Henri Bendel). They took great risks and forged new paths for the women who followed in their footsteps. Her new book captures the department store in all its glitz, decadence, and fun, and showcases the women who made that beautifully curated world go round.

Join us for this stylish account, an illustrated presentation by the author followed by a discussion with fashion curator Petra Slinkard.

American Experience presents a virtual PAST FORWARD conversation exploring the role of international politics and nationalism at the Olympic Games. This conversation is inspired in part by our streaming films The Boys of '36 and Jesse Owens.

In this conversation, panelists will examine the political motives behind competing at and hosting the Olympics. They will also question whether the Games themselves should be thought of as an event fostering peace or as a soft-power battleground for superpowers, examining the role of the United States in creating both of these perceptions. The conversation will seek to understand how the ambitions of individual athletes fit within a nation state's view of the Games as a means toward national glory, throughout history and today.

Panelists:

Dave Zirin writes about the politics of sports for the Nation Magazine. He is their first sports writer in 150 years of existence. Winner of Sport in Society and Northeastern University School of Journalism's 'Excellence in Sports Journalism' Award, Zirin is also the host of Edge of Sports Television on The Real News Network and the Edge of Sports Podcast. He has been called “the best sportswriter in the United States,” by Robert Lipsyte. Dave Zirin is, in addition, a columnist for the Progressive.

Kendra Gage is an Assistant Professor in Teaching in History at the University of California, Riverside. She received her doctoral degree from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas in the department of History. Her research and teaching focus on 20th Century America, Sports and Olympics History, the American West, Black Feminist Thought and the Civil Rights Movement. She is currently reworking her manuscript for publication Creating the Black California Dream: Virna Canson and the Black Freedom Struggle in the Golden State's Capital, 1940-1988," which uses the life of Virna Canson as a lens for incorporating Sacramento's activities within the larger historical framework of the Civil Rights Movement.

The discussion will be moderated by Adriane Lentz-Smith. Adriane is an Associate Professor of History at Duke University, where she teaches courses on the Civil Rights Movement, Black Lives, Modern America, and History in Fact and Fiction. A scholar of African American history as well as the histories of the twentieth-century United States and the US & the World, Lentz Smith is the author of Freedom Struggles: African Americans and World War I (Harvard University Press, 2009), as well as numerous other scholarly articles and reviews.

This event will be live-streamed on our YouTube and Facebook pages.