Conversations with History (Audio)

Conversations host Harry Kreisler welcomes Professor Paul Butler, Albert Brick Professor Law at Georgetown, for a discussion of the law and blacks. Topics covered include formative experiences including influence of his parents, his upbringing in Chicago, his education, and his work as a prosecutor. Emphasis is on how and why his ideas about reform and activism evolved as he came to understand black confrontation with the law. Series: "Conversations with History" [Public Affairs] [Show ID: 35257]

Conversations host Harry Kreisler welcomes Samuel Bowles, Research Professor and Director of the Behavioral Sciences Program at the Santa Fe Institute, for a discussion of his intellectual odyssey and his most recent book The Moral Economy. Topics covered include the influence of parents, his encounters with Nehru and Martin Luther King, and his education. He addresses the necessary changes in the agenda of economics as it grapples with the limits of incentives and the opportunities for bringing in a focus on community and altruism in order to confront global problems. He also offers advice to students entering the discipline of economics. Finally, he discusses his involvement in an online global effort to reform the economics curriculum through the creation of an online textbook, curriculum, and a community of economists from around the globe focusing on the economics of inequality, innovation, environmental sustainability and more. https://www.core-econ.org Series: "Conversations with History" [Business] [Show ID: 34594]

Conversations host Harry Kreisler welcomes Professor Jennifer Doudna of UC Berkeley for a discussion of her intellectual odyssey that led to the discovery of CRISPR-Cas9, a revolutionary tool for gene editing. In the conversation, they explore the implications of CRISPR-Cas9 for agriculture, biotechnology and biomedicine. They also discuss how education and public advocacy can broaden insight into the ethical and policy dimensions of the biological revolution that is upon us. Doudna received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2022. Series: "Conversations with History" [Humanities] [Science] [Show ID: 34595]

Conversations host Harry Kreisler welcomes Sherry Turkle, Abby Rockefeller Mauzé Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology at MIT for a discussion of her intellectual odyssey. In the conversation topics covered included her formative experiences, her education, and the evolution of her thinking about the impact of the objects of the cyber world--computers, internet, cell phones, and robots--on the essential elements of identity formation--solitude, conversation, and empathy. Series: "Conversations with History" [Humanities] [Science] [Show ID: 34497]

Harry Kreisler welcomes former Michigan Governor Jennifer M. Granholm for a discussion of lessons learned from her political career. She recalls her formative experiences, analyzes the essential qualities of leadership, and recounts the cascade of crises she confronted as a governor because of the failure of Michigan to recognize and adapt to challenges posed by international economic competitiveness and technological innovation. Leading at a time of structural manufacturing decline, she had to navigate transition to a new economy. Granholm concludes with an assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of the two parties in meeting these challenges. Series: "Conversations with History" [Public Affairs] [Humanities] [Show ID: 34345]