Our collection of audio files are available for download on SoundCloud or iTunes U, under the Yale University Humanities section. You may listen to our featured podcasts in streaming mp3 format by following the links below:
Audio
| Podcast | Speaker(s) | Date |
|---|---|---|
Why Books Still MatterJohn Donatich, director of Yale University Press, delivers the keynote address of “Why Books Still Matter,” a conference commemorating the one-hundredth anniversary of the Press. The conference brought together university press publishers and scholars for a variety of panel discussions on the digital future of academic publishing, the idea of the press in the modern university, and the broader question “Whither the University Press?” John Donatich, director of Yale University Press, delivers the keynote address of “Why Books Still Matter,” a conference commemorating the one-hundredth anniversary of the Press. The conference brought together university press publishers and scholars for a variety of panel discussions on the digital future of academic publishing, the idea of the press in the modern university, and the broader question “Whither the University Press?” |
John Donatich |
11/14/2009 |
Spatial ThinkingTversky taught at Hebrew University and at Stanford University, where she is emerita professor of psychology. Much of her work involves human perception of space and explores topics such as memory, categorization and language; the metaphorically spatial, especially time and event perception and cognition; and applications, notably diagrams, interfaces, design and visual communication. Her recent articles include “Visualspatial Reasoning,” “Some Ways that Graphics Communicate,” “What Do Sketches Say About Thinking?” and “Multiple Mental Spaces.” |
Barbara Tversky |
11/10/2009 |
The First Vienna CirclesMusic at the Whitney presents songs and chamber music by Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert performed by Yale undergraduate music students in conjunction with the 2008 Tanner Lectures on Human Values and a series of events on intellectual circles. The program features Haydn’s La Roxelane; Mozart’s Das Veilchen, K. 476, Die Zufriedenheit, and Piano Quartet in E-flat Major, K. 493; Beethoven’s Zärtliche Liebe, WoO123, Wonne der Wehmut, op. 83, No. 1, and Piano Trio in E-flat Major, Op. 70, No. 2; and Schubert’s Sonata in D Major, D. 384 and Der Hirt auf dem Felsen, D. 965. Performer remarks on the pieces are included. |
Music at the Whitney |
11/07/2009 |
The Founders of Modern PhysicsYale’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. |
Gino Segre, Douglas Stone, Ramamurti Shankar, Robert Shulman, moderated by Meg Urry |
10/31/2009 |
Science Building(s) CollaborationYale’s Whitney Humanities Center presents “Science Building(s) Collaboration,” a panel discussion considering Louis Kahn’s Salk Institute and what makes buildings work for science. This panel was part of “Intellectual Circles and Twentieth-Century Science,” a full-day conference organized in conjunction with a week-long series of events surrounding the 2008 Tanner Lectures on Human Values delivered by Noble Prize–winning physicist Steven Chu. |
David Brownlee, Carles Vallhonrat, Reinhold Martin, Thomas Pollard, moderated by Carter Wiseman |
10/31/2009 |
Golden Eras of Scientific InstitutionsSteven Chu is a Nobel Prize-winning physicist and the director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and professor of physics and of molecular and cell biology at the University of California-Berkeley. He was previously at Stanford and Bell Laboratories. At Stanford, he helped start Bio-X, a multidisciplinary initiative linking the physical and biological sciences with engineering and medicine. In 2009 Prof. Chu was appointed the 12th United States Secretary of Energy. Prof. Chu’s second lecture draws on his experience at Bell Labs and Stanford’s Bio-X to discuss what best enables institutions to support effective interdisciplinary collaboration and scientific progress. |
Steven Chu |
10/30/2009 |
The Epistemology of Physics and Scientific RevolutionsSteven Chu is a Nobel Prize-winning physicist and the director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and professor of physics and of molecular and cell biology at the University of California-Berkeley. He was previously at Stanford and Bell Laboratories. At Stanford, he helped start Bio-X, a multidisciplinary initiative linking the physical and biological sciences with engineering and medicine. In 2009 Prof. Chu was appointed the 12th United States Secretary of Energy. Prof. Chu’s first lecture gives a brief history of how scientific revolutions build on previous scientific revolutions, focusing on physics from Ptolemy to Copernicus, Kepler and Newton, and on to today’s counter-intuitive physical theories. |
Steven Chu |
10/29/2009 |
Doctor Atomic and His Gadget: Composing the American MythologyKnown for moving American concert music away from academic modernism and toward a more expansive humanist musical language, Adams brings wide ranging creative insight to his Tanner Lectures. As well as his renowned orchestral and choral work and politically charged operas, Adams’ recent memoir, “Hallelujah Junction: Composing an American Life,” has been lauded as an explication of the creative process and was named a New York Times Notable Book. In his teaching, writing and composition, Adams has been hailed as a “philosopher/craftsman, attempting to reflect and render the truth as he observes and feels it, in all its complexity and its simplicity.” In the second of his Tanner lectures, Adams discusses how signal events in a nation’s history can rise to the mythic level and why, despite controversies, he regards these mythic events as rich and legitimate material for musical and dramatic treatment. |
John Adams |
10/29/2009 |
Doctor Faustus and His Composition: Reflections on Thomas Mann's Fictional ComposerKnown for moving American concert music away from academic modernism and toward a more expansive humanist musical language, Adams brings wide ranging creative insight to his Tanner Lectures. As well as his renowned orchestral and choral work and politically charged operas, Adams’ recent memoir, “Hallelujah Junction: Composing an American Life,” has been lauded as an explication of the creative process and was named a New York Times Notable Book. In his teaching, writing and composition, Adams has been hailed as a “philosopher/craftsman, attempting to reflect and render the truth as he observes and feels it, in all its complexity and its simplicity.” |
John Adams |
10/28/2009 |
Map of a Vanished Town: Recollecting the Palestinian Past through BiographyAdina 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, published by Yale University Press. Her essays and criticism have appeared in The Nation, Raritan, the Boston Globe, the Washington Post, New York Newsday, World Literature Today, and on the World Service of the BBC. In her 2008 Franke Lecture, Hoffman talks about the relation between the life of Palestinian poet Taha Muhammad Ali and the erased physical and psychic landscape of his former village. |
Adina Hoffman |
10/07/2009 |