January 25, 2014 · ▶ Video
From Children's Sights to Our Insights: Ethiopian Children's Drawings, Stories and Inner Lives
A study by Nathan Szajnberg featured Ethiopian/Israeli six-year-old children's drawings depicting their lives, fantasies, fears, hopes, and wishes. Roundtable participants applied...
Theodore Shapiro, Ellen Handler Spitz, Nathan M. Szajnberg
December 7, 2013 · ▶ Video
Secrecy and Transparency
The internet enables unprecedented sharing and manipulation of individual and social information, with implications for privacy, healthcare, citizenship, national security, and...
Alex Abdo, Jack Z. Bratich, Elizabeth Haase, Ted Jacobs, Michael Lewis
June 8, 2013 · ▶ Video
Altruism and Empathy
The roundtable explores whether selflessness represents a necessary illusion and examines the tension between evolutionary adaptation and pure altruism. It investigates how humans...
Stephanie Brown, Lisa Cataldo, Alan Leslie, Wynn Schwartz
May 11, 2013 · ▶ Video
Synthetic and Systems Biology: Reinventing the Code of Life
The roundtable explores how synthetic and systems biology enable DNA reengineering at unprecedented pace. These interdisciplinary fields combine biology, engineering, computer...
Andrea Califano, Mark Fishman, M.D., Michael Hecht, Christopher Mason, Saeed Tavazoie, Michael Waldholz
April 27, 2013 · ▶ Video
Ignorance and Curiosity
Physics Nobel laureate David Gross asserts that "the most important product of science is ignorance." The event explores how science pursues better questions alongside knowledge,...
Heather Berlin, Susan Engel, Stuart Firestein, Paul Harris, Alan Hirshfeld
April 13, 2013 · ▶ Video
Music to Whose Ears? Music, Emotion, and Mind
The roundtable explores Leonard Meyer's 1956 treatise examining philosophical positions on musical meaning. Key questions addressed include how musical meaning might be defined --...
Greg Calbi, Jesse Harris, Marina Korsakova-Kreyn, Gilbert Rose, Alina Rubinstein
March 16, 2013 · ▶ Video
Elizabeth Bishop: A Conversation about Her Poetry
The event features "one of the great masters of American poetry of the 20th Century" (Elizabeth Bishop, 1911-1979). The roundtable highlights her "skill at recounting the results...
Bonnie Costello, Alice Quinn, Lloyd Schwartz, Jean Valentine
March 9, 2013 · ▶ Video
The Topology of Fear
The roundtable explores how emotions influence decision-making, particularly regarding fear and risk assessment. Key topics include responses to catastrophic threats like climate...
Graciela Chichilnisky, Paul Glimcher, Linda Keen, Joseph LeDoux, David Lichtenstein
February 23, 2013 · ▶ Video
Love, the Interrogative
The roundtable explores the nature of love through multiple disciplines. Milan Kundera's concept that "love is a continual interrogation" frames the discussion, examining whether...
Andrea Bayer, Lucy L. Brown, Michael Klein, Fred Sander, Dan Slater
February 16, 2013 · ▶ Video
Urdu Poetry: Ghalib and the Ghazal
The event focuses on "Plaintiffs in Paper Robes: The First Ghazal of Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib." Speakers examine the poetry of Ghalib and the ghazal form by analyzing the...
Frances Pritchett, Mustafa Menai
November 17, 2012 · ▶ Video
Animal Language
The roundtable explores "multiple adaptive strategies for the efficient transmission of information" across animal species. The event examines "the phonics and sonics of animal...
Christopher W. Clark, Ray Dougherty, James L. Fuller, James Higham, Diana Reiss
October 27, 2012 · ▶ Video
Male-Male Competition: Globalization, War, and Violence
The roundtable examines Darwin's focus on male-male competition in The Descent of Man, where he devoted twelve chapters to what he termed "the law of battle." The discussion...
R. Brian Ferguson, John Horgan, E. James Lieberman, Maxine Sheets-Johnstone
October 26, 2012 · ▶ Video
Life and Movement
The roundtable explored how "evolution, coordination dynamics, sports, social interactions, and aesthetics help us understand movement and life." Key topics included...
Jesus Ilundain-Agurruza, Albert A. Johnstone, J. A. Scott Kelso, Maxine Sheets-Johnstone
October 13, 2012 · ▶ Video
Why Do Economists Disagree?
"A pre-election roundtable of a politically diverse group of noted economic theorists exploring their philosophical convergences and divergences."
Graciela Chichilnisky, Robert H. Frank, Jeffrey Miron, Joseph Salerno
September 15, 2012 · ▶ Video
What Can Mathematics Teach Us About Mind/Brain?
"Philosophy meets mathematics meets neuroscience in this roundtable investigating how cutting-edge mathematical models are elucidating the computational rules encoding brain...
Ned Block, G. Bard Ermentrout, Kenneth Miller, George Reeke, Jr., Xiao-Jing Wang