Christopher Lydon
Watson Institute
November 19, 2007
A new podcast series, Open Source at the Watson Institute, has been launched as a follow-on to public broadcasting's Radio Open Source. Nationally recognized radio host Christopher Lydon, a visiting fellow at Watson, will continue his groundbreaking combination of interviews, blogs, and other media at Brown, where the podcast series will include leading figures in world politics, art, and other fields. “ ‘An American conversation with global attitude’ could be the motto of the revived Open Source,” Lydon says.
Recent podcasts have included such visitors and campus figures as former US Ambassador Richard Holbrooke ’62, a Brown professor at large; former US Senator and Distinguished Visiting Fellow Lincoln Chafee ’75; Haitian-American author Edwidge Danticat MFA ’94; and Palestinian pianist Saleem Abboud Ashkar.
Here, in Lydon’s own words, is how Open Source at the Watson Institute is coming together:
“…My fellowship here commits me to keep exploring and innovating in the interactive new media – at the intersection of pod- and broad-casting where the new discourse of a global age is taking shape.
“Brown and Watson overflow with blessings for Open Source, starting with the brilliant Rafael Viñoly building that both nestles and goads us to think anew. Nikita Khrushchev's son Sergei is upstairs writing, as is the exiled Zimbabwean novelist Chenjerai Hove, and former presidents Ricardo Lagos Escobar of Chile and Fernando Henrique Cardoso of Brazil…
“Brown students keep knocking on my door – this new rainbow generation of ‘millennials,’ most of them with digital media skills and native confidence in the expanding universe of the Web…
All we want to be, as we keep growing up, is – as producer Mary McGrath distilled the message – ‘the best damn podcast’ on your computer or your Nano.”
