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Forum Network

Free online lectures: Explore a world of ideas

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GBH Forum Network

The Forum Network is a public media service of the GBH Educational Foundation that offers thousands of video lectures by the world's foremost scholars, authors, artists, scientists, policymakers, and community leaders, made available to the public for free.

Lectures hosted on The Forum Network are presented by community organizations and educational institutions from the Boston area and beyond.

From science to the humanities, from local to global topics, The Forum Network is committed to providing outstanding educational content for lifelong learners, and to encouraging deeper understanding and civic engagement around the vital issues of our time.

Explore lectures by Topics, Series, Partners, and Speakers. To provide viewers with more information, lectures are further augmented with speaker biographies, related lectures and books, captions and transcripts, and downloadable audio.

In the past, GBH has collaborated with other public media partners—WETA in Washington, DC; Public Broadcasting Atlanta; and WNET New York—to record public speaking events. While the structure of the Forum Network changed in 2014 to focus specifically on the Boston region, previously recorded lectures remain archived in this website.

Major support for the GBH Forum Network comes from the Lowell Institute, an organization created to carry out the 1836 bequest of John Lowell Jr., to make free public lectures available to the citizens of Boston

Stay in touch with Forum Network. » Facebook Find us on Facebook and Twitter. Become a partner by joining our network as a local community content contributor. Email forumnetwork@wgbh.org with the subject line "New Partner".

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About GBH Educational Foundation

GBH enriches people's lives through programs and services that educate, inspire, and entertain, fostering citizenship and culture, the joy of learning, and the power of diverse perspectives. GBH serves New England, the nation, and the world with programs that inform, inspire, and entertain. GBH is PBS's single largest producer of content for television (prime-time and children's programs) and the Web. Some of your favorite series and websites -- Nova, Masterpiece, Frontline, Antiques Roadshow, Curious George, Arthur, and The Victory Garden, to name a few -- are produced here in our Boston studios. GBH also is a major supplier of programs heard nationally on public radio, including The World. And we're a pioneer in educational multimedia and in media access technologies for people with hearing or vision loss. Our community ties run deep. We're a local public broadcaster serving southern New England, with 11 public television services and three public radio services -- and productions (from Greater Boston to Jazz with Eric in the Evening) that reflect the issues and cultural riches of our region. We're a member station of PBS and an affiliate of both NPR and PRI. In today's fast-changing media landscape, we're making sure you can find our content when and where you choose -- on TV, radio, the Web, podcasts, vodcasts, streaming audio and video, iPhone applications, groundbreaking teaching tools, and more. Our reach and impact keep growing. GBH has been recognized with hundreds of honors -- Emmys, Peabodys, duPont-Columbia Awards -- even two Academy Awards. In 2002, a special institutional Peabody Award cited GBH's 50 years of service to the "community, the nation, and the world with outstanding productions and collaborations."

GBH is devoted to bringing you new experiences, taking you to new worlds, and giving you the very best in educational content. We're here for you -- and it all happens thanks to your interest and generous support!

https://forum-network.org/

  • The Moral Side of Murder / The Case for Cannibalism

    Sun, Sep 13, 2009
    Lecture One: "The Moral Side of Murder" If you had to choose between killing one person or five, what would you do? What's the right thing to do? Professor Michael Sandel launches into his lecture series by presenting students with a hypothetical scenario that has the majority of students voting for killing one person in order to save the lives of five others. But then Sandel presents three similar moral conundrums -- each one artfully designed to make the decision increasingly complex. As students stand up to defend their conflicting choices, Sandel's point is made. The assumptions behind our moral reasoning are often contradictory, and the question of what is right and what is wrong is not always black and white. Lecture Two: "The Case for Cannibalism" Sandel introduces the principles of Utilitarian philosopher, Jeremy Bentham, with a famous 19th century law case involving a shipwrecked crew of four. After 19 days lost at sea, the captain decides to kill the cabin boy, the weakest amongst them, so they can feed on his blood and body to survive. The case leads to a debate among students about the moral validity of the Utilitarian theory of maximizing overall happiness -- often summed up with the slogan "the greatest good for the greatest number".
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  • Free to Choose / Who Owns Me?

    Sun, Sep 27, 2009
    Lecture Five: "Free to Choose" Libertarians believe the ideal state is a society with minimal governmental interference. Sandel introduces Robert Nozick, a libertarian philosopher, who argues that individuals have the fundamental right to choose how they want to live their own lives. Government shouldn't have the power to enact laws that protect people from themselves (seat belt laws), to enact laws that force a moral value on society, or enact laws that redistribute income from the rich to the poor. Sandel uses the examples of Bill Gates and Michael Jordan to explain Nozick's theory that redistributive taxation is a form of forced labor. Lecture Six: "Who Owns Me?" Libertarian philosopher Robert Nozick makes the case that taxing the wealthy -- to pay for housing, health care, and education for the poor -- is a form of coercion. Students first discuss the arguments in favor of redistributive taxation. If you live in a society that has a system of progressive taxation, aren't you obligated to pay your taxes? Don't the poor need and deserve the social services they receive? And isn't wealth often achieved through sheer luck or family fortune? In this lecture, a group of students ("Team Libertarianism") are asked to defend the objections against Libertarianism.
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  • Yusef Komunyakaa Reads "Facing It"

    Wed, Apr 1, 2009
    Yusef Komunyakaa reads his poem "Facing It" about seeing the Vietnam Veteran's Memorial wall in Washington, D.C. through his eyes as a war veteran and contemporary poet.
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  • Adrienne Rich Reads "What Kind of Times Are These"

    Wed, Apr 1, 2009
    The poem "What Kind of Times Are These" from Rich's book *Dark Fields of the Republic*, makes reference to the Bertolt Brecht poem "For Those Born Later": "What kind of times are these/ When it's almost a crime to talk about trees/ Because it means keeping still about so many evil deeds?"
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  • Gerald Stern Reads "The Dancing"

    Thu, Apr 1, 2010
    "The Dancing," from Gerald Stern's 1984 collection *Paradise Poems,* captures the discord between the poet's relatively carefree all-American upbringing and the suffering endured by his fellow Jews during the Holocaust.
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    Lidia Cooks from the Heart of Italy

    Tue, Mar 23, 2010
    Lidia Bastianich, host of the *Lidia's Italy* television series and best-selling author discusses her latest cookbook, *Lidia Cooks from the Heart of Italy*.
    Forum Network
    Food and Wellness
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    GBH Forum Network

  • Inventing Modern America: Microwave to the Mouse

    Tue, Nov 27, 2001
    This lively panel, discussing Inventing Modern America: From the Microwave to the Mouse, celebrates the best of American ingenuity and inventiveness. Through in-depth profiles of 35 inventors, Inventing Modern America: From the Microwave to the Mouse tells the often-surprising stories of how everyday objects and technologies were created. Each profile is illustrated with historical photographs, diagrams, and patent drawings that illuminate the inventor's life, inventive process, and creations. The book was developed by the Lemelson-MIT Program for Invention and Innovation, whose mission is to inspire a new generation of American scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs.
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  • NOVA: The Bible's Buried Secrets I

    Thu, Nov 6, 2008
    Panelists discuss the historic, scientific and theological mysteries brought up in The Bible's Buried Secrets, NOVA's landmark two-hour special. The Bible's Buried Secrets takes viewers on a fascinating scientific journey that began 3,000 years ago and continues to this day. The film presents the latest archeological scholarship from the Holy Land to explore the beginnings of modern religion and the origins of the Hebrew Bible, or the Old Testament. This archeological detective story tackles some of the biggest questions in biblical studies. Where did the ancient Israelites come from? Who wrote the Bible, when, and why? How did the worship of one god - the foundation of modern Judaism, Christianity, and Islam - emerge? A powerful intersection of science, scholarship, and scripture, The Bible's Buried Secrets provides unique insight into the deeper meaning of these biblical texts and their continuing resonance through the centuries. The Bible's Buried Secrets can be streamed **[here](http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/bible/program.html)**, on the NOVA website.
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  • Adam Pertman on Adoption

    Fri, Nov 4, 2005
    Adam Pertman argues that adoption is changing the way we form our families, the way we perceive families, the importance of blood ties, how families are formed, what they look like and the way we perceive basic concepts of life like nature and nurture. According to Pertman, adoption is having a significant effect on helping us understand how our country is changing, how our lives are changing. [*Adoption: An American Revolution*](http://www.adoptionfilm.org) is a major multimedia project that plans to explore how transformations taking place in adoption today are having far-reaching effects on all our public and private lives. The centerpiece of the project will be a two-hour documentary special for national public broadcasting. The documentary will feature a rich tapestry of original stories, illuminating the joys, the challenges and the impact of adoption. The television broadcast will be linked to an ambitious adoption education effort, with innovative adoption-related materials for public libraries and schools, a new Web site with adoption resources, and more.
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  • American Experience: John & Abigail Adams

    Tue, Jan 10, 2006
    American Experience producer Elizabeth Deane provides a strikingly intimate look inside a marriage of true companions in the new documentary, John & Abigail Adams. For this couple, life included not just the great events memorialized in textbooks, but also laughter, loneliness and family tragedy. To present the couple's story in their own words, Deane drew extensively on the more than 1,000 Adams letters that survive, born of their lengthy time apart, as John served his country at the Continental Congress in Philadelphia and as a diplomat in Europe. Their revealing, often deeply personal correspondence, chronicles an inspiring political marriage along with the birth of a nation. A visionary and gifted political thinker, Adams moved a reluctant Congress to declare independence from England, and single-handedly secured millions of dollars in loans to keep the American army from collapse during the Revolutionary War. Later, he was named the first US ambassador to England. He penned the Massachusetts constitution, which would serve as the basis for the US constitution. He was the nation's first vice president and its second president. Through it all, Abigail remained his most trusted political advisor and confidante, as well as his dearest friend. She adored him and he adored her.
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