Princeton University Podcasts

Prayer has been practiced in all religious traditions and is today a topic of much interest. Yet prayer is poorly understood. Conceived as a private act, its social and cultural dimensions are particularly neglected. Regarded as a tool for health and happiness, prayer is also shaped increasingly by popular writers, the media, and even by scholars claiming to study it scientifically. This symposium brings together a panel of scholars and practitioners to discuss the historical, cultural, social, and religious aspects of prayer and to consider its changing meanings and implications. Featuring Sister Mary Margaret Funk, Our Lady of Grace Monastery; David D. Hall, Harvard Divinity School; Carol Zaleski, Smith College; and Albert Raboteau, Princeton University. Held by the Cognition and Religion Initiative of the Princeton University Center for the Study of Religion.

Dick DeVos, President of The Windquest Group speaks on the relationship between religion and money, drawing on his experiences as a businessman and philanthropist. A response is given by Stanley N. Katz, Lecturer with rank of Professor, Woodrow Wilson School, This is the inaugural lecture in the Doll Family Lectureship on Religion and Money established at the Center for the Study of Religion by Henry C. Doll, Class of 1958, and his family. The purpose of the lectureship is to bring distinguished speakers to Princeton University who will inspire students, faculty, and the campus community toward a greater understanding of the many - and often neglected – relationships between religion and money in our own time and historically.

Harry S. Stout, Jonathan Edwards Professor of American Religious History at Yale University revisits the moral issues of the American Civil War. Part of the on-going series, Princeton Lectures in Religion and History. Sponsored by the Center for the Study of Religion.

Peter M. Ochs, Class of 1965 and Chairman of the Board of The Fieldstone Corporation speaks from his experiences in business and philanthropy. Part of the on-going series, Princeton Lectures in Religion and Ethics. Sponsored by the Center for the Study of Religion.

Pasquale Scaturro, geophysicist, adventurer, and expedition leader is one of the most successful and accomplished mountain and river expedition leaders in the world and has been exploring the far reaches of the planet for over 25 years. He is founder and president of Exploration Specialists an international geophysical and exploration company. For the last 26 years he has managed geophysical oil and gas exploration and development projects in many of the most remote, dangerous and politically and technically challenging areas on earth, and has explored throughout North and South America, Africa, and the former Soviet Union. For over 20 years Pasquale has been extremely active in high altitude mountaineering and has been the leader of numerous expeditions to major mountains worldwide including three expeditions to Everest. In 1998 he reached the summit of Mt. Everest and in 2001 he conceived, organized, and led the National Federation of the Blind NFB 2001 Everest Expedition, in which blind climber Erik Weihenmayer reached the summit. Pasquale has multiple descents of major world-class rivers including the Bio Bio in Chile, rivers throughout North America, the Omo and Zambezi in Africa. From November 2003 to April 2004 he organized and led the historic 114-day Nile First Descent Expedition, the first complete descent of the Blue Nile and Nile River from its source high in the mountains of Ethiopia to the Mediterranean Sea, a distance of 3,260 miles. He has filmed rafting and mountaineering projects for ESPN, PBS, Discovery Channel, National Geographic Channel, and OrbitaMax. A Spencer Trask Lecture

Einstein's real complaint about the quantum theory was not that it required God to play dice, but that it failed to "represent a reality in time and space, free from spooky actions at a distance." I shall use the rhetorical device of a computer-simulated lecture demonstration (a cartoon version of recent experiments in Vienna) to explain both the appeal of Einstein's criticism and the remarkable fact that the "reality" he insisted upon is nevertheless impossible. I will assume no background in quantum physics (or any other physics) but late in the lecture, in convincing you of the impossibility of Einstein's vision, I will ask you to engage in a kind of reasoning not unlike a (very easy) Sudoku puzzle. A Donald Ross Hamilton Lecture

Douglas Melton will discuss the biology and public policy challenges surrounding stem cell research. The potential of human embryonic stem cells for understanding human development and finding new therapies will be presented. Dr. Melton is a cell and molecular biologist as well as an advocate of embryonic stem cell research. His research focuses on the developmental biology of the pancreas. One of the primary goals of his work is to understand how human embryonic stem cells differentiate into pancreatic beta (insulin-producing) cells. An understanding of this process has implications for the treatment of type 1 diabetes, and a major limitation on research has been the number and quality of available human embryonic stem cell lines. Through private funding from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and a partnership between the institute, Harvard, and the Boston In Vitro Fertility Clinic, Melton and his colleagues have been able to develop additional embryonic stem cell lines. Melton has testified in Congress against current restrictions on the use of federal funds to support human embryonic stem cell research. He is also working on a method of producing stem cells that does not require human embryos, thereby avoiding some of the controversy in the stem cell debate. A Louis Clark Vanuxem Lecture

The President’s Lecture Series was established by President Shirley M. Tilghman in the fall of 2001 to give Princeton’s faculty an opportunity to learn about the work of their colleagues in other disciplines and to share their research with the University community. First proposed by Alan B. Krueger, the Lynn Bendheim Thoman, Class of 1976, and Robert Bendheim, Class of 1937, Professor in Economics and Public Policy, the lectures are presented three times a year and are open to the public. Past lectures have addressed a wide variety of topics, from “Jane Austen and War” to “How Bacteria Talk to Each Other.”

In 1956 the Dutch graphic artist M. C. Escher made an unusual lithograph with the title "Print Gallery." It shows a young man viewing a print in an exhibition gallery. Among the buidlings depicted on the print, he sees paradoxically the very same gallery that he is standing in. A lot is known about the way in which Escher made his lithograph. It is not nearly as well known that it contains a hidden "Droste effect," or infinite repetition; but this is brought to light by a mathematical analysis of the studies used by Escher. On the basis of this discovery, a team of mathematicians at Leiden produced a series of hallucinating computer animations. These show, among other things, what happens inside the mysterious spot in the middle of the lithograph that Escher left blank.

James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions