Smart Talks – Leading Thinkers in Multi-Media

Fiction/Literature

• Isabel Allende on a "Sense of Place" (Real Player – Video)
• Harold Bloom on "The Art of Reading a Poem" (Mp3 Stream) [Best to start at minute 13:00]
• Dave Eggers on his latest ook, "What is the What" (Real Player – Audio)
• Jonathan Safran Foer on "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close" (Quick Time – Audio)
• Richard Ford on his New book, "The Lay of the Land" (Real Player – Audio)
• Jonathan Franzen on The Corrections (Quick Time – Audio)
• Jhumpa Lahiri on her first novel, The Namesake (Access media from the linked page)
• Norman Mailer and John Buffalo Mailer discuss new book, "The Big Empty" (Mp3 stream)
  • A second interview on WNYC
  • Reads from his book, The Castle in the Forest (Youtube video)
• Toni Morrison on her book, "Love" (Real Player – Audio)
• Toni Morrison reads the "Dead of September 11" (Quick Time – Audio)
• Francine Prose on the pleasures of reading & writing (Online stream)
• Orhan Pamuk Interview: Nobel Prize Winner 2006 (Real Player – Audio
  • Pamuk on his novel, "Snow" (Online stream)
• Philip Roth on "Everyman" (Real Player – Audio)
• Philip Roth on "Everyman" and His Approach to Writing (mp3 stream)
• William Styron – 1990 NPR interview (Real Player – Audio)
• John Updike on His Early Stories & His America (Real Player – Audio)

Non-Fiction

• Richard Dawkins on "The God Delusion" (Real Player – Audio)
• Daniel Dennett in Multimedia (Various)
• James McPherson on "The Invention of Abraham Lincoln’s War Powers" (Real Player – Video)
• Joan Didion on The Year of Magical Thinking (mp3 stream)
• Jared Diamond on Failed Civilization (mp3 stream)
• Niall Ferguson on "The War of the Worlds"  (Real Player – Audio)
  • Another Niall Ferguson presentation (Real Player – Video)
• Bernard-Henri Lévy and William Kristol on American Vertigo (Real Player – Audio)
• Michael Pollan on writing (Google Video)
• Arthur Schlesinger Jr. on His Life (Google Video)
• Peter Singer on Life and Death (Real Player)

Political Commentary

• Noam Chomsky on the Middle East Crisis (Real Player – Video)
• Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer on Active Liberty (mp3 stream)
• Thomas Friedman on Globalization (Google Video)
• David Gelernter on Democracy and Computers (Real Player – Video)
• Al Gore Speaking to Congress on the Environment (YouTube Video)
• Amy Gutmann on Extremism (Real Player – Video)
• The Dalai Lama on the Heart of Non Violence Video – Real Player
• Francis Fukuyama on Nation Building: Beyond Iraq and Afghanistan (mp3 stream)
• Seymour Hersh on Iraq and Abu Ghraib (Google Video)
• William Kristol on American Politics after 9/11 (Real Player – Video)
• Anthony Kronman (former Dean of Yale Law School) on the Democratic Soul (Real Player – Video)
• Richard Levin, President of Yale, on Democracy and the Market (Real Player – Video)
• Joseph Nye on the Rise of China’s Soft Power (Quick Time – Audio)
• George Packer on His Book, "Assassins at the Gate" (Quick Time – Audio)
• Cornell West on "Democracy Matters" (mp3 stream)
• Malcolm X at Oxford University, 1964 (Audio – Real Player)

Science & Technology

• Tim Berners-Lee on the Future of the Internet (Quick Time – Video)
• Erik Kandel, a Nobel-Prize Winner, on His Book "In Search of Memory (Real Player – Audio)
• Daniel Goleman on Social Intelligence (Real Player – Audio)
• Steven Levitt: Beyond Freakonomics (Real Player – Video)
• Lawrence Lessig on the Ethics of the Free Culture Movement (Quick Time – Video)
• Steven Pinker on the Humanities and Human Nature (Real Player – Video)
• E.O. Wilson on the Environment  (Real Player)

Business Leaders

• Bill Gates on the Frontiers of Software (Real Player – Video)
• Steve Jobs on Life (Google Video)

World Leaders

• Madeleine Albright on Promoting Democracy (Real Player – Video)
• James Baker (A conversation with) – (Real Player – Audio)
• Stephen Breyer & Antonin Scalia on the US Judicial System (Real Player – Video)
• U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer on Active Liberty (Real Player – Audio)
• President Clinton on Global Challenges (Real Player – Video)
• Presidents Clinton and Vaclav Havel on the Challenges of New Democracies (Real Player – Video)
• The Dalai Lama at Stanford (iTunes – Audio)
  • Craving, Suffering and Choice: Spirtual and Scientific Explorations of Human Experience Part 1

• Craving, Suffering and Choice: Part 2

• Meditation and Teaching
• The Heart of Non-Violence