One of my favorite podcasts is the University Channel Podcast from Princeton Univ. Here are some of the interesting speeches which you can listen to while you travel or whatever – get that ipod out.
American Gospel: God, the Founding Fathers, and the Making of a Nation – Jon Meacham, managing editor of Newsweek and author, chronicles America’s ongoing struggle between politics and
religion from George Washington to Ronald Reagan. He examines the role
religion has played in many of the major events in our nation’s history
such as the Declaration of Independence, the Civil War and Martin
Luther King, Jr.’s call for civil rights. Meacham’s latest book looks
at how our founding fathers’ views on faith have shaped religion’s
place in American public life (read my post on it)
- Lessons from the Lincoln Administration for the War on Terror – Michael Stokes Paulsen, University of Minnesota Law School
- The Market Approach to Understanding Religion –
Sociologist Rodney Stark says an economic model is the best way to understand the rise and fall of religions. - Subsidized Religion – Sociologist and Pulitzer Prize-nominated author Rodney Stark, who debunks the notion that Christianity has held back scientific progress in his new book, delivered the second in a series of four lectures about why religions succeed or fail.
- Christian Establishments and the Neglect of Faith – Fourth and final lecture in a series by sociologist Rodney Stark, on Why Religions Succeed or Fail (could not get the third lecture)
- Training Christians To Be Politicians – Michael Farris, president of Patrick Henry College in Leesburg, Virginia
- Personal Ethics and Public Decision-Making – Panelists: Nancy Kassebaum Baker, United States Senator from Kansas (1979-1997). Alice M. Rivlin, Senior Fellow, Economic Studies Program and Director, Greater Washington Research Program, The Brookings Institution; The Honorable Steve Tobocman, Michigan House of Representatives (MPP/JD ’97).
- One Nation Under God: Religion, Nation, and the Drive for Statehood in the Post-Soviet World – Christopher Marsh, Associate professor of political science, Baylor University
- God’s Politics –
Jim Wallis, founder of Sojourners Magazine and author of "God’s Politics" addresses Harvard’s Institute of Politics Forum. - Rehabilitating Eugenics – Christine Rosen, fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. Author of Preaching Eugenics: Religious Leaders and the American Eugenics Movement.
Must eugenics be a dirty word? As long as the state is not coercing
people to accept eugenics, is there any harm in pursuing it?
The Conservative Movement: Its Past, Present and Future (streaming only :) – A 3-day conference hosted by the James Madison Program in American
Ideals and Institutions and the Center for the Study of Democratic
Politics at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School.- Human Rights & Islam & the West (stream video only) – Human Rights advocate Shirin Ebadi. In Farsi with translation
- From Islamism to Muslim Democracy – A panel discussion at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.
- Confessions of a Muslim Dissident: Why I Fight for Women, Jews, Gays, and Allah – Irshad Manji addresses the ideas in her international best-seller, "The Trouble with Islam Today: A Muslim’s Call for Reform in Her Faith"