CUNY Radio Podcasts » CUNY Lecture Series

The Power of Audio Storytelling

beebong — Mon, 10 Jun 2013 20:02:42 +0000

As founder and executive producer of “Radio Diaries,” Joe Richman has urged people to record their own lives and histories since 1996, and along with the groundbreaking series, “Teenage Diaries,” has helped pioneer the genre of first-person narratives for National Public Radio. In a conversation at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism, Richman discusses the power of audio storytelling and the importance for a radio producer of mining through hours and hours of raw tapes to find the best material. But in the end there will be more nuggets of gold than you can use. If fact, Richman says, “If you’re not heartbroken about something in the story that you had to leave out, then you didn’t cut enough.”

Dershowitz-Beinart Israeli Debate, Round 2

lmort40 — Mon, 03 Jun 2013 19:39:41 +0000

In a follow-up discussion to their appearance last fall, jurist Alan Dershowitz and journalist Peter Beinart continued the debate, “The Crisis of Zionism,” as part of the Perspectives: Conversations on Policy and Place series at the Graduate Center. Beinart insists that with power comes responsibility. “Because Israel has emerged as a successful country, with millions of non-Jews living under its domain, it’s in a very unusual situation,” said Beinart, an associate professor at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism. “The test now is what it means to be a Jewish state.” Dershowitz, on the other hand, is more concerned with external threats from its enemies than preserving Jewish values. “Israel’s soul will take care of itself, so long as its body is kept intact,” said Dershowitz.

Alice Kober and ‘The Riddle of the Labyrinth’

lmort40 — Tue, 28 May 2013 15:50:55 +0000

In her new book, “The Riddle of the Labyrinth: The Quest to Crack an Ancient Code,” Margalit Fox chronicles the pursuit to decipher Linear B — an unknown script dating to the Bronze Age — and how key research by a Brooklyn College classics professor, Alice Elizabeth Kober, helped to crack its code. But “because she (Kober) was a woman and because history is written by the victor, her contribution was all but lost to history.” In a lecture at Brooklyn College, Fox, a linguist and senior obituary writer for the New York Times, wrote that she wanted to correct a gaping omission in the story of one of the world’s great intellectual puzzles and to narrate a vital piece of American women’s history.

Rethinking Kahn’s Architectural Vision

lmort40 — Tue, 14 May 2013 18:08:29 +0000

In “Rethinking Kahn,” part of the Bernard and Anne Spitzer School of Architecture spring lecture series, architectural historian William J.R. Curtis discusses the legacy of famed architect Louis Kahn, including his final project — Four Freedoms Park — a four-acre memorial to Franklin D. Roosevelt that was completed posthumously as “a powerful work of monumentality.” Reflecting on his own initial reservations about the project, which was conceived by Kahn four decades ago and opened on Roosevelt Island in 2012, Curtis praised the architect’s vision. “We could never know how Kahn would have realized this space.”

Slicing and Schmoozing at Russ & Daughters

lmort40 — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 19:56:40 +0000

Nostalgia buffs tend to romanticize it, but for generations of immigrants who were forced to live in its jam-packed tenements, the Lower East Side was a place to leave as soon as possible, according to Mark Russ Federman. “Today you have hotels, bars, clubs, restaurants — it’s a vibrant place,” says Federman, who was at the Graduate Center to discuss his new book, “Russ & Daughters: Reflections and Recipes From the House That Herring Built.” A third-generation, former owner of the venerable appetizing store, Russ & Daughters, Federman says that people are feeling nostalgic for the few iconic institutions that remain. “You’ll find pockets of the old Lower East Side — like Russ & Daughters and Katz’s — people come from all over to recapture that scene.”

Winning the “God’s Particle” Lottery

lmort40 — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 20:14:42 +0000

For physicists, it’s like hitting the mega millions jackpot over and over. “After decades of thinking and searching, it seems that one of the major building-blocks of our understanding of what the world is made of has fallen into place,” says Neal Weiner, professor of physics at New York University, about the announcement that the Higgs boson had been discovered at the CERN laboratory in Geneva last summer. In a lecture, “The Higgs Boson: Theory & Experiment, Search & Discovery” at the Graduate Center, Weiner explained the enormity of the finding, which was named after the British theoretical physicist, Peter Higgs who proposed its existence in the 1960s, and why it is the “God particle,” as it is sometimes called, that gives matter mass and holds the physical fabric of the universe together.

Steve Earle Speaks Candidly of His Life in Music

lmort40 — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 15:20:12 +0000

To write a good song you have to find a connection between what you know and what the audience knows, according to three-time Grammy award winner Steve Earle. “Early on, I wrote a song called “Little Rock on the Road” — about my then 3-year-old son — while I was on the road,” said Earle, in a candid conversation about his life’s highs and lows, part of the Extraordinary Lives series with Bill Kelly, president of the Graduate Center. “Truck drivers would come to me thinking it was about them.” Earle’s singer-songwriter career started with the 1986 release of his debut album, “Guitar Town,” and since then his songs have been recorded by numerous artists, including Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson.

From the Beginning, a War to End Slavery

lmort40 — Mon, 11 Mar 2013 15:34:35 +0000

Graduate Center history professor James Oakes shatters a widespread belief that the Civil War was first a war to restore the Union and, only gradually, when it became a military necessity, a war to end slavery. “Liberty and union, now and forever, were one and inseparable,” says Oakes. “That is what Lincoln and the Republicans believed.” Oakes, whose recent book, Freedom National: The Destruction of Slavery in the United States, 1861-1865, is a powerful history of emancipation, appeared at the Graduate Center as part of the Conversations series, along with Sean Wilentz, professor of history at Princeton University.

Morgenthau Urges Action on Immigration Reform

lmort40 — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 20:00:35 +0000

Former New York District Attorney Robert Morgenthau reiterated his longtime commitment to the rights of undocumented immigrants, while urging lawmakers to pass a comprehensive reform policy. “It’s extremely shortsighted to lock them up,” said Morgenthau, who has called for changes in the immigration laws themselves, spoke at event sponsored by the Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute at Hunter College. Morgenthau, who has referred to the treatment of immigrants in the United States as a “national disgrace,” told the audience that he also felt it was our duty to provide that opportunity. “We owe it to immigrants to create a pathway to citizenship because we need them.”

Sotomayor’s ‘Beloved World’

mboutros — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 21:38:25 +0000

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor hopes that telling her own story won’t just paint a picture of her personal life, but of the experiences that can help us all to overcome what divides us. “If you speak a different language, if you have a different color skin, if you come from a background that is different from the norm — people forget these are superficial differences,” says Sotomayor, while reading from her new book My Beloved World. Speaking at the Heritage Lecture Series at Hostos Community College, she recalled stories from her Bronx neighborhood and her family. In writing her memoir, Justice Sotomayor wanted words to “paint pictures” of her experience to emphasize the values shared across all cultures. “At essence, everyone shares the most common of values,” she says.