Linda Mayes and Helena Rutherford, of the Child Study Center at Yale University, deliver a lecture on the mechanisms of influence between children and parents in the processes of development, especially with regard to psychoanalysis.

The Psychobiology of Parenting and Attachment

Dr. Frank Salmon, Lecturer in the History of Art and Fellow of St. John’s College, Cambridge, delivers a lecture on the connections between the Classical architecture of antiquity and British architectural production in the eighteenth century.

Carrying Off the Colosseum: British Architectural Encounters with Rome in the 1770s

Steven Pinker, Harvard College Professor and Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology at Harvard University, delivers a lecture on the phenomenon of statistic decline in violence throughout human history.

The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence has Declined

In fulfilling its mission to examine the whole history of Antisemitism, the Yale Program for the Study of Antisemitism hosts a panel discussion examining the philosophical and social origins of Anti-Judaism in Early Christianity.

Antisemitism in the Ancient Mediterranean? Early Christianity and Anti-Judaism

Prof. Deborah Howard of Cambridge University delivers a lecture on her groundbreaking research on the acoustics of Renaissance churches and other concert venues in Venice. Intended to accompany the Franke Seminar entitled "Art and Music in Venice." Prof. Howard's lecture considers the acoustical needs of various composers and performers in the architectural spaces of Renaissance Venice. Her important research explores the performance possibilities in the various churches and concert venues of Venice and the way in which music written for those spaces may have sounded to different audiences. Prof. Howard is Professor of Architectural History in the Faculty of Architecture and History of Art and a Fellow of St. John"s College, Cambridge. She has published numerous books on the art and architecture of Venice and the Veneto.

Music and Architecture in Renaissance Venice

Prof. David Rosand, Emeritus of Columbia University, delivers a lecture on representations of music and music making by Venetian painters in the Renaissance. As a guest speaker giving a public lecture to accompany the Franke Seminar on Art and Music in Venice in the Fall of 2011, Prof. Rosandâ€™s presentation examines the depictions of music in Venetian Renaissance painting, including personifications of music itself, musicians, concerts, and instruments in the art of Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese, and their circle. Prof. Rosand also considers the metaphorical meaning of music as a signifier of harmony and order, and how those values were transferred to the image of Venice itself and Venetian culture. Prof. Rosand is the Meyer Schapiro Professor emeritus of Art History at Columbia University and has published numerous books on Venetian painting in the Renaissance.

Painting Music in Renaissance Venice

Dr. Andrew Gerber, Assistant Professor of Clinical Psychiatry at Columbia University, delivers a lecture on the use of fMRI in the study of physchopathology and psychotherapy.

How the Mind Models the World: New Ideas from MRI Findings

Simon Goldhill, Professor of Greek Literature and Culture and Fellow in Classics at King’s College, Cambridge, delivers a lecture on depictions of Sappho in the nineteenth century America, especially with regard to the female artist in the period.

Sappho, Lincoln, and the Senate: Picturing Nineteenth-Century Female Desire

Michael Pollan

Jack Hitt

Michael Pollan, critically acclaimed author and journalist, sits down with writer Jack Hitt to discuss the former’s recent work and other topics related to food and cooking.

"Michael Pollan ‘Raw’: A Conversation with Michael Pollan and Jack Hitt about cooking, eating, and writing”

Prof. Peter Meineck of New York University delivers a lecture on the depiction of war trauma in Ancient Greek drama, exploring the idea of “nostos” (homecoming) and its relevance to the experience of contemporary veterans. In addition to texts by the major Greek dramatists, Prof. Meineck considers non-dramatic works from the history and philosophy of the period, as well as the history of Athenian stagecraft, as part of a culture for which the scars of war were a factor of everyday life.Prof. Meineck is a Clinical Associate Professor of Classics at New York University as well as the founder and artist director of the Aquila Theatre Company, which brings Ancient and contemporary plays to the stage in a manner designed to appeal to the widest audience possible. He has translated works by Sophocles, Aristophanes, Aeschylus and others, and is the recipient of numerous awards for his translations and teaching.

Prof. Peter Meineck of New York University delivers a lecture on the depiction of war trauma in Ancient Greek drama, exploring the idea of “nostos” (homecoming) and its relevance to the experience of contemporary veterans. In addition to texts by the major Greek dramatists, Prof. Meineck considers non-dramatic works from the history and philosophy of the period, as well as the history of Athenian stagecraft, as part of a culture for which the scars of war were a factor of everyday life.<br>Prof. Meineck is a Clinical Associate Professor of Classics at New York University as well as the founder and artist director of the Aquila Theatre Company, which brings Ancient and contemporary plays to the stage in a manner designed to appeal to the widest audience possible. He has translated works by Sophocles, Aristophanes, Aeschylus and others, and is the recipient of numerous awards for his translations and teaching.

Combat Trauma and the Tragic Stage: Ancient Drama and Modern Catharsis

The Whitney Humanities Center

Yale’s Whitney Humanities Center presents “The Founders of Modern Physics,” a panel discussion among eminent scientists exploring the revolution in quantum mechanics and its intellectual milieu. This panel was part of “Intellectual Circles and Twentieth-Century Science,” a conference organized in conjunction with a series of events surrounding the 2008 Tanner Lectures on Human Values delivered by Noble Prize–winning physicist Steven Chu.

The Founders of Modern Physics

Ms. Nordstrom’s principal areas of interest are the anthropology of war andpeace, illegal economies and power, gender, globalization, and culture theory. She has conducted extensive fieldwork in warzones worldwide, with long-term interests in Southern Africa and South Asia. Her academic books include Global Outlaws: Crime, Money, and Power in the Contemporary World (2007) and Shadows of War: Violence, Power, and International Profiteering in the 21st Century (2004). She has received the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Fellowship, as well as numerous other grants, including from the U.S. Institute for Peace. In her 2008 Franke Lecture, anthropologist Carolyn Nordstrom examines invisible networks of social spaces and interactions, especially the dangerous extra-state and extra-legal interactions that we are meant not to see.  Paul Farmer responds to this talk.

Ms. Nordstrom’s principal areas of interest are the anthropology of war and<br>peace, illegal economies and power, gender, globalization, and culture theory. She has conducted extensive fieldwork in warzones worldwide, with long-term interests in Southern Africa and South Asia. Her academic books include Global Outlaws: Crime, Money, and Power in the Contemporary World (2007) and Shadows of War: Violence, Power, and International Profiteering in the 21st Century (2004). She has received the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Fellowship, as well as numerous other grants, including from the U.S. Institute for Peace. In her 2008 Franke Lecture, anthropologist Carolyn Nordstrom examines invisible networks of social spaces and interactions, especially the dangerous extra-state and extra-legal interactions that we are meant not to see.  Paul Farmer responds to this talk.

“emergent(cies)…,”

Louis IX

In her 2010 Franke Lecture, Alyce Jordan speaks about the Sainte-Chapelle as an activated liturgical and royal space and how and why Louis the Ninth’s chapel proved such a successful vehicle for the articulation of his own monarchic agenda. Professor Jordan’s research focuses on medieval stained glass and questions of narrative, identity, and representation.  Her book Visualizing Kingship in the Windows of the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris applies contemporary rhetorical theory and practices to better understand the monument and posits a radical re-envisioning of the original ensemble. In her 2010 Franke Lecture, Professor Jordan speaks about the Sainte-Chapelle as an active and activated space and how and why Louis the Ninth’s chapel proved such a successful vehicle for the articulation of his own monarchic agenda.

“The Sainte-Chapelle in Paris: Kingship, Crusading, and Legacy of Louis IX”

Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, a novelist, biographer, and professor of philosophy, delivers the Franke Lecture in the Fall of 2012 on the influences of the philosopher Baruch Spinoza upon literature and the enlightenment. Goldstein challenges a cultural portrait of Spinoza as distant from aesthetic concerns, and meditates upon Spinoza’s imprint upon writers including Melville, Goethe, George Eliot, Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Heine. Granted a prestigious “genius award” by the MacArthur Foundation, Goldstein is the author of several acclaimed philosophically-minded novels, has held multiple prestigious teaching appointments at universities including Columbia and Rutgers, and has written biographies of Kurt Godel and Spinoza.

Romancing Spinoza

Celebrating the Bollingen Prize for Poetry at Yale, nearly all the living winners of this prestigious prize are brought together for a group reading sponsored by the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library and the Whitney Humanities Center. The recording begins with a brief introduction to the Bollingen program and recipients of the prize by Patricia Cannon Willis, the Elizabeth Wakeman Dwight Curator of the Yale Collection of American Literature at the Beinecke Library. Following her introduction, each winner of the Bollingen Prize, in alphebetical order, reads a selection from his or her work. There are readings by prize winners John Ashbery, Robert Creeley, Louise Glück, John Hollander, Donald Justice, Stanley Kunitz, W.S. Merwin, Gary Snyder, Mary Strand, and Richard Wilbur. This event took place at the Center Church on the Green on Friday, September 20, 2002.

Bollingen Prize

Terrence W. Deacon delivers a lecture on the neuroscience and development of the human capacity for language and musical perception.  Prof. Deacon is the Chair of the Anthropology Department at the University of California at Berkeley. His research interests lie in the field of brain development and evolution, the origins of language, and bio-cultural evolution. Many of these interests are found in his book, The Symbolic Species: The Coevolution of Language and the Brain (1997). His lecture presented here, on the formation of human language and symbolic thought, is a part of the Shulman Lectures in Science and the Humanities delivered at the Whitney Humanities Center at Yale University.

Adapted to a Symbolic Niche: How Less became more in Human Evolution

In this lecture, cognitive neuroscientist Jamshed Bharucha discusses the ways that music creates emotion and how these emotions work within human interactions and relationships.  Professor Bharucha, who is also a classically trained violinist, has written extensively on the cognitive and neural underpinnings of music and has been awarded grants from the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health for his work. He began his academic career at Dartmouth College, where he was the John Wentworth Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences. He also served as Associate Dean, Deputy Provost, and Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences; a signature accomplishment of his administrative work at Dartmouth was the creation of the nation’s first brain-imaging facility for the study of cognitive neuroscience outside a clinical setting.  In July of 2011 he was named President of the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art.

The Alignment and Synchronization of Brain States Through Music

Mark A. Peterson discusses Galileo’s study of mathematics in relation to the arts.  Prof. Peterson argues that Galileo the mathematician, steeped in the art and literature of his day, needs to be better known, separate from his work as an astronomer.  Dr. Peterson is Chair of Physics and Professor of both Mathematics and Physics at Mount Holyoke College.  His research often explores the intersection of science and the humanities, history of science, as well as biophysical research.  Professor Peterson has published on such varied topics as computer science, Galileo, models of microhydrodynamics in biophysical settings, and others.

Galileo, Mathematics, and the Arts

In this discussion, Rebecca Goldstein, Harry Frankfurt, and Michael Cunningham discuss the ways in which novelists do and do not write philosophically.  The panel is chaired by Amy Hungerford.  The featured speakers are novelist and philosopher Rebecca Goldstein, professor of philosophy Harry Frankfurt, novelist and professor of English Michael Cunningham, and professor of English Amy Hungerford.

Can a Novelist Write Philisophically? Panel Discussion

In this lecture, Michael Ryan discusses the relationship between animal aesthetic preferences, sexual selection, and evolutionary biology.  Dr. Ryan is the Clark Hubbs Professor of Zoology at the University of Texas at Austin. His research involves animal behavior, focusing on mechanisms of communication involved in mate attraction and corollary evolutionary consequences.

Sexual Selection and the Brain: An Origin of Evolutionary Aesthetics

In the first of her two tanner lectures, Rebecca Goldstein discusses the overlap and conflict between philosophy and the literary arts, and whether novels can be philosophically justified.  Ms. Goldstein’s career bridges the divides between the humanities, the arts, and the sciences. Equally comfortable discussing physics or fiction, she is also an important voice in the current active debates between religion and science.  A Koret International Book Award winner, a multiple time National Jewish Book Award winner, a MacArthur Fellow, and a Whiting Foundation Writer's Award winner, in 2008 she was designated Humanist Laureate by the International Academy of Humanism and was named Humanist of the Year 2011 by the American Humanist Association. Her books include Finding Spinoza, 36 Arguments for the Existence of God, Incompleteness, Mazel, and The Mind Body Problem.

The Ancient Quarrel: Philosophy and Literature, Part One

In the second of her two Tanner lectures, Rebecca Goldstein discusses the overlap and conflict between philosophy and the literary arts, and whether novels can be philosophically justified.  Ms. Goldstein’s career bridges the divides between the humanities, the arts, and the sciences. Equally comfortable discussing physics or fiction, she is also an important voice in the current active debates between religion and science.  A Koret International Book Award winner, a multiple time National Jewish Book Award winner, a MacArthur Fellow, and a Whiting Foundation Writer's Award winner, in 2008 she was designated Humanist Laureate by the International Academy of Humanism and was named Humanist of the Year 2011 by the American Humanist Association. Her books include Finding Spinoza, 36 Arguments for the Existence of God, Incompleteness, Mazel, and The Mind Body Problem.

The Ancient Quarrel: Philosophy and Literature, Part Two

Danny Meyer discusses the role and concept of hospitality in the context of the restaurant industry, and how hospitality contributes to an excellent dining experience and thus to a successful restaurant business.  Mr. Meyer is the CEO of Union Square Hospitality Group, which includes Union Square Cafe, Gramercy Tavern, Eleven Madison Park, Tabla, Blue Smoke, Jazz Standard, Shake Shack, The Modern, the cafes at New York City’s Museum of Modern Art, Maialino, as well as Union Square Events, the company’s catering and events business, and Hospitality Quotient, a learning business empowering companies to transform their business through the power of hospitality. Mr. Meyer, his restaurants, and chefs have earned an unprecedented twenty-one James Beard Awards. Mr. Meyer coauthored the Union Square Cafe Cookbook (1994) and Second Helpings from Union Square Cafe (2001) with his partner, Chef Michael Romano. His first business book, Setting the Table (2006), was named a bestseller by the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and BusinessWeek. An active national leader in the fight against hunger, Mr. Meyer has long served on the boards of Share Our Strength and City Harvest.  He is equally active in civic affairs, serving on the executive committees of NYC &amp; Co, Union Square Partnership, and the Madison Square Park Conservancy.

The Power of Hospitality

A multi-disciplinary panel of evolutionary biologists, joined by a philosopher and an artist, discuss how and why we order and describe the natural world the way that we do now and possible alternatives.   The featured speakers from Yale are Michael Donoghue, the G. Evelyn Hutchinson Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology; Jacques Gauthier, professor of geology and geophysics and curator of vertebrate paleontology and vertebrate zoology at the Peabody Museum; Richard Prum, the William Robertson Coe Professor of Ornithology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology; and Zoltan Szabo, professor of philosophy. Also taking part in the discussion are Kevin de Queiroz, curator and research zoologist at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History, and artist, writer and naturalist James Prosek.

Naming Nature: A Conversation on the Nature, Use and Limitations of Biological Taxonomies

In this lecture, writers Adina Hoffamn and Peter Cole discuss the recovery of a cache of Hebrew manuscripts from a Cairo geniza (repository for sacred text), whose discovery and analysis have shed light on 900 years of Jewish life.  NEA, NEH, Guggenheim and McArthur award-winning poet and translator, Peter Cole was the Franke Visiting Fellow at the Whitney Humanities Center in 2006. Adina Hoffman is the author of House of Windows: Portraits from a Jerusalem Neighborhood and My Happiness Bears No Relation to Happiness: A Poet’s Life in the Palestinian Century, a biography of Taha Muhammad Ali, from Yale University Press. Her essays and literary criticism have appeared in the Nation, the TLS, the Raritan, the Boston Globe, the Washington Post, New York Newsday, World Literature Today, and on the World Service of the BBC.  Ms. Hoffman was the Franke Visiting Fellow in 2008.  Together Ms. Hoffman and Mr. Cole are the founders and editors of Ibis Editions—a small press that publishes the literature of the Levant.

Sacred Trash: The Lost and Found World of the Cairo Geniza

Noel Carroll discusses art as socio-emotional contagion: how the emotional arousal brought about by the arts provides important forms of social and emotional education that justify the social costs of the arts over the course of human history.  Mr. Carroll is a Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the CUNY Graduate Center. His research interests include aesthetic theory; philosophy of film, literature, and the visual arts; social and cultural theory; philosophy of history; ethics; philosophy of the emotions; and history of early modern philosophy. Mr. Carroll has published more than fifteen books, most recently, Art in Three Dimensions (2010) and On Criticism (2009). He has also written extensively as a journalist and is the author of five documentaries.

Art, Aesthetics, and Evolution

Critically acclaimed food writer Claudia Roden, the 2010 Franke Visiting Fellow at the Whitney Humanities Center, shares the ingredients of her successful career chronicling, memorializing, and reconstructing cultural worlds through cooking.  Ms. Roden has a particular interest in the historical, social, and cultural background of cooking.  In the words of the historian Simon Schama, “Claudia Roden is no more a simple cookbook writer than Marcel Proust was a biscuit baker. She is, rather, memorialist, historian, ethnographer, anthropologist, essayist, poet, who just happens to communicate through ta’am—taste.”  Ms. Roden’s international accolades include six Glenfiddich Awards, the James Beard Award, induction into the Cookbook Hall of Fame, and many more.

A Good Soup Holds History and Culture

The best podcast episodes of the most interesting stories and things. From skyping someone while they're in space, to tracking down and meeting a telephone scammer in person, to the story of a Galapagos. These episodes will keep you and all your friends entertained and captivated for hours. Learn something new in every episode! Add episodes you're interested into your queue below!

Best Episodes: Interesting Stories & Things

The best philosophy podcast episodes. Asking questions about how to live a better life, what it means to be and do good, to the idea of God. This topic includes episodes that bring about important questions that everyone should be asking themselves. Add episodes you're interested into your queue below!