The Open Mind (talk show)
Encyclopedia
The Open Mind is a long-running half-hour public affairs interview show. First broadcast in May 1956 over WRCA
television (now WNBC
) in New York City
, it currently originates from the studios of the CUNY Graduate Center and airs on public broadcasting stations nationwide. Its creator, Richard Heffner
, has been the host from its inception, except for several years in the 1960s when it was hosted by the late Princeton University
historian Eric F. Goldman
. It is currently distributed by American Public Television
.
, Allen Bloom, Gilbert Seldes
, Sidney Hook
, William F. Buckley), humanists (Erich Fromm
, Elie Wiesel
, Norman Cousins
), physicians and therapists (Ruth Westheimer
, R.D. Laing, Peter D. Kramer
, author of Listening to Prozac), politicians (Herman Badillo
, Ed Koch
, Mario Cuomo
, Daniel Patrick Moynihan
), jurists (Stephen Breyer
, Judith Kaye
, Thurgood Marshall
, Richard Posner
, Sol Wachtler
), educators (John Brademas
, Derek Bok, Michael Sovern, Vartan Gregorian
, John Sexton
), civil rights leaders (Martin Luther King, Malcolm X
, James L. Farmer, Jr.
), authors (Norman Mailer
, Betty Friedan
, Isaac Asimov
), economists (Paul Krugman
, Alan Greenspan
, Milton Friedman
), entertainers (Steve Allen
, Eli Wallach
, Robert Redford
), broadcasters (Mike Wallace
, Dan Rather
, Joan Ganz Cooney
), lawyers (Floyd Abrams
, William Kunstler
, Sol Linowitz
), and editors (Max Frankel
, Jason Epstein
, Norman Podhoretz
).
, Fred Friendly, Lewis Thomas
, and others. For the occasion, Heffner also presented two new programs that featured him as a guest. In the first, he was interviewed for a regular half-hour segment by Bill Moyers
. The second was a special one-hour show hosted by William F. Baker
, current president of PBS stations WLIW
and WNET
.
The program's title comes from the saying, attributed to Barnard College
dean Virginia Gildersleeve
among others, "Keep an open mind, but not so open that your brains fall out." However, during the hour-long interview with Baker, Heffner credited the title to J. Robert Oppenheimer, noting that he (Heffner) regretted never having interviewed the noted physicist. The theme music, "World Without Time," is by the Sauter-Finegan Orchestra
from their LP Adventures in Time. Heffner himself chose the theme from the NBC music library.
The Open Mind is one of the few first-run shows to be seen in commercial and public television at the same time. During the 1970s and 1980s, new episodes aired on commercial WPIX
, which was the show's production base, as well as WNET.
The Open Mind is currently involved in a project to digitize its entire archive of over 1400 episodes. The Open Mind Online Digital Archive now provides multiple video formats of all episodes, time coded transcripts, and advanced search tools. Archive materials are provided to the public at no cost. The archive can currently be viewed and accessed at http://www.theopenmind.tv. Most programs are also available to view and download at the Internet Archive
.
RCA
RCA Corporation, founded as the Radio Corporation of America, was an American electronics company in existence from 1919 to 1986. The RCA trademark is currently owned by the French conglomerate Technicolor SA through RCA Trademark Management S.A., a company owned by Technicolor...
television (now WNBC
WNBC
WNBC, virtual channel 4 , is the flagship station of the NBC television network, located in New York City. WNBC's studios are co-located with NBC corporate headquarters at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in midtown Manhattan...
) in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, it currently originates from the studios of the CUNY Graduate Center and airs on public broadcasting stations nationwide. Its creator, Richard Heffner
Richard Heffner
Richard Douglas Heffner is the creator and host of The Open Mind, a public affairs television show first broadcast in 1956. He is a University Professor of Communications and Public Policy at Rutgers University and also teaches an honors seminar at New York University...
, has been the host from its inception, except for several years in the 1960s when it was hosted by the late Princeton University
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....
historian Eric F. Goldman
Eric F. Goldman
Eric Frederick Goldman was an American historian, Rollins Professor of History at Princeton University, and Presidential advisor.-Life:...
. It is currently distributed by American Public Television
American Public Television
American Public Television is the largest syndicator of programming for public television stations in the United States.-History:...
.
Guests
Hundreds of guests have appeared on the show, including many prominent intellectuals (Max LernerMax Lerner
Maxwell "Max" Alan Lerner was an American journalist and educator known for his controversial syndicated column....
, Allen Bloom, Gilbert Seldes
Gilbert Seldes
Gilbert Vivian Seldes was an American writer and cultural critic. He was editor and drama critic of The Dial. He also hosted the NBC television program The Subject is Jazz....
, Sidney Hook
Sidney Hook
Sidney Hook was an American pragmatic philosopher known for his contributions to public debates.A student of John Dewey, Hook continued to examine the philosophy of history, of education, politics, and of ethics. After embracing Marxism in his youth, Hook was known for his criticisms of...
, William F. Buckley), humanists (Erich Fromm
Erich Fromm
Erich Seligmann Fromm was a Jewish German-American social psychologist, psychoanalyst, sociologist, humanistic philosopher, and democratic socialist. He was associated with what became known as the Frankfurt School of critical theory.-Life:Erich Fromm was born on March 23, 1900, at Frankfurt am...
, Elie Wiesel
Elie Wiesel
Sir Eliezer "Elie" Wiesel KBE; born September 30, 1928) is a Hungarian-born Jewish-American writer, professor, political activist, Nobel Laureate, and Holocaust survivor. He is the author of 57 books, including Night, a work based on his experiences as a prisoner in the Auschwitz, Buna, and...
, Norman Cousins
Norman Cousins
Norman Cousins was an American political journalist, author, professor, and world peace advocate.-Early life and education:...
), physicians and therapists (Ruth Westheimer
Ruth Westheimer
Ruth Westheimer is an American sex therapist, media personality, and author. Best known as Dr. Ruth, the New York Times described her as a "Sorbonne-trained psychologist who became a kind of cultural icon in the 1980s...
, R.D. Laing, Peter D. Kramer
Peter D. Kramer
Peter D. Kramer, M.D., is an American psychiatrist, former Marshall Scholar and faculty member of Brown Medical School specializing in the area of depression. He considers depression to be a serious illness with tangible physiological effects such as disorganizing the brain and disrupting the...
, author of Listening to Prozac), politicians (Herman Badillo
Herman Badillo
Herman Badillo is a Bronx, New York politician who has been a borough president, United States Representative, and candidate for Mayor of New York City. He was the first Puerto Rican to be elected to these posts and be a mayoral candidate in the continental United States.-Early years:Badillo was...
, Ed Koch
Ed Koch
Edward Irving "Ed" Koch is an American lawyer, politician, and political commentator. He served in the United States House of Representatives from 1969 to 1977 and three terms as mayor of New York City from 1978 to 1989...
, Mario Cuomo
Mario Cuomo
Mario Matthew Cuomo served as the 52nd Governor of New York from 1983 to 1994, and is the father of Andrew Cuomo, the current governor of New York.-Early life:...
, Daniel Patrick Moynihan
Daniel Patrick Moynihan
Daniel Patrick "Pat" Moynihan was an American politician and sociologist. A member of the Democratic Party, he was first elected to the United States Senate for New York in 1976, and was re-elected three times . He declined to run for re-election in 2000...
), jurists (Stephen Breyer
Stephen Breyer
Stephen Gerald Breyer is an Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. Appointed by President Bill Clinton in 1994, and known for his pragmatic approach to constitutional law, Breyer is generally associated with the more liberal side of the Court....
, Judith Kaye
Judith Kaye
Judith S. Kaye is a retired New York judge who served as Chief Judge of New York from March 23, 1993 until December 31, 2008. She was the first woman to occupy the State Judiciary's highest office.-Early life and education:...
, Thurgood Marshall
Thurgood Marshall
Thurgood Marshall was an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, serving from October 1967 until October 1991...
, Richard Posner
Richard Posner
Richard Allen Posner is an American jurist, legal theorist, and economist who is currently a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in Chicago and a Senior Lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School...
, Sol Wachtler
Sol Wachtler
Solomon Wachtler, born , is a lawyer and politician from New York. He was Chief Judge of the New York Court of Appeals from 1985 to 1993. Known for the remark, "A marriage license should not be viewed as a license for a husband to forcibly rape his wife with impunity" , Wachtler was a key figure in...
), educators (John Brademas
John Brademas
John Brademas is an American politician and educator originally from Indiana. He served as Majority Whip of the United States House of Representatives for the Democratic Party from 1977 to 1981 at the conclusion of a twenty-year career as a member of the United States House of Representatives...
, Derek Bok, Michael Sovern, Vartan Gregorian
Vartan Gregorian
Vartan Gregorian is an Armenian-American academic, serving as the president of Carnegie Corporation of New York. He is an ethnic Armenian, born in Iran....
, John Sexton
John Sexton
John Edward Sexton is the fifteenth President of New York University, having held this position since May 17, 2002, and the Benjamin Butler Professor of Law at the New York University School of Law. From 1988 to 2002, he served as Dean of the NYU School of Law, which during his deanship became one...
), civil rights leaders (Martin Luther King, Malcolm X
Malcolm X
Malcolm X , born Malcolm Little and also known as El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz , was an African American Muslim minister and human rights activist. To his admirers he was a courageous advocate for the rights of African Americans, a man who indicted white America in the harshest terms for its...
, James L. Farmer, Jr.
James L. Farmer, Jr.
James Leonard Farmer, Jr. was a civil rights activist and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement. He was the initiator and organizer of the 1961 Freedom Ride, which eventually led to the desegregation of inter-state transportation in the United States.In 1942, Farmer co-founded the Committee...
), authors (Norman Mailer
Norman Mailer
Norman Kingsley Mailer was an American novelist, journalist, essayist, poet, playwright, screenwriter, and film director.Along with Truman Capote, Joan Didion, Hunter S...
, Betty Friedan
Betty Friedan
Betty Friedan was an American writer, activist, and feminist.A leading figure in the Women's Movement in the United States, her 1963 book The Feminine Mystique is often credited with sparking the "second wave" of American feminism in the twentieth century...
, Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov was an American author and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, best known for his works of science fiction and for his popular science books. Asimov was one of the most prolific writers of all time, having written or edited more than 500 books and an estimated 90,000...
), economists (Paul Krugman
Paul Krugman
Paul Robin Krugman is an American economist, professor of Economics and International Affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, Centenary Professor at the London School of Economics, and an op-ed columnist for The New York Times...
, Alan Greenspan
Alan Greenspan
Alan Greenspan is an American economist who served as Chairman of the Federal Reserve of the United States from 1987 to 2006. He currently works as a private advisor and provides consulting for firms through his company, Greenspan Associates LLC...
, Milton Friedman
Milton Friedman
Milton Friedman was an American economist, statistician, academic, and author who taught at the University of Chicago for more than three decades...
), entertainers (Steve Allen
Steve Allen
Steve Allen may refer to:*Steve Allen , American musician, comedian, and writer*Steve Allen , presenter on the London-based talk radio station LBC 97.3...
, Eli Wallach
Eli Wallach
Eli Herschel Wallach is an American film, television and stage actor, who gained fame in the late 1950s. For his performance in Baby Doll he won a BAFTA Award for Best Newcomer and a Golden Globe nomination. One of his most famous roles is that of Tuco in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly...
, Robert Redford
Robert Redford
Charles Robert Redford, Jr. , better known as Robert Redford, is an American actor, film director, producer, businessman, environmentalist, philanthropist, and founder of the Sundance Film Festival. He has received two Oscars: one in 1981 for directing Ordinary People, and one for Lifetime...
), broadcasters (Mike Wallace
Mike Wallace (journalist)
Myron Leon "Mike" Wallace is an American journalist, former game show host, actor and media personality. During his 60+ year career, he has interviewed a wide range of prominent newsmakers....
, Dan Rather
Dan Rather
Daniel Irvin "Dan" Rather, Jr. is an American journalist and the former news anchor for the CBS Evening News. He is now managing editor and anchor of the television news magazine Dan Rather Reports on the cable channel HDNet. Rather was anchor of the CBS Evening News for 24 years, from March 9,...
, Joan Ganz Cooney
Joan Ganz Cooney
Joan Ganz Cooney is an American television producer. She is one of the founders of the Children's Television Workshop , the organization famous for the creation of the children's television show Sesame Street. Cooney received her B.A...
), lawyers (Floyd Abrams
Floyd Abrams
Floyd Abrams is an American attorney at Cahill Gordon & Reindel. He is an expert on constitutional law, and many arguments in the briefs he has written before the United States Supreme Court have been adopted as United States Constitutional interpretative law as it relates to the First Amendment...
, William Kunstler
William Kunstler
William Moses Kunstler was an American self-described "radical lawyer" and civil rights activist, known for his controversial clients...
, Sol Linowitz
Sol Linowitz
Sol Myron Linowitz was an American diplomat, lawyer, and businessman born in Trenton, NJ.Linowitz helped negotiate the return of the Panama Canal to Panama under the direction of President Jimmy Carter...
), and editors (Max Frankel
Max Frankel
Max Frankel is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist.Frankel came to the United States in 1940. He attended Columbia College and began part-time work for The New York Times in his sophomore year. He received his B.A. degree in 1952 and an M.A. in American government from Columbia in 1953.He joined...
, Jason Epstein
Jason Epstein
Jason Epstein is an American editor and publisher.A 1949 graduate of Columbia College of Columbia University, Epstein was hired by Bennett Cerf at Random House, where he was the editorial director for forty years. He was responsible for the Vintage paperbacks, which published such authors as...
, Norman Podhoretz
Norman Podhoretz
Norman B. Podhoretz is an American neoconservative pundit and writer for Commentary magazine.-Early life:The son of Julius and Helen Podhoretz, Jewish immigrants from the Central European region of Galicia, Podhoretz was born and raised in Brownsville, Brooklyn...
).
History
In 2006, the program celebrated its 50th anniversary with rebroadcasts of vintage interviews with Richard HelmsRichard Helms
Richard McGarrah Helms was the Director of Central Intelligence from 1966 to 1973. He was the only director to have been convicted of lying to the United States Congress over Central Intelligence Agency undercover activities. In 1977, he was sentenced to the maximum fine and received a suspended...
, Fred Friendly, Lewis Thomas
Lewis Thomas
Lewis Thomas was a physician, poet, etymologist, essayist, administrator, educator, policy advisor, and researcher.Thomas was born in Flushing, New York and attended Princeton University and Harvard Medical School...
, and others. For the occasion, Heffner also presented two new programs that featured him as a guest. In the first, he was interviewed for a regular half-hour segment by Bill Moyers
Bill Moyers
Bill Moyers is an American journalist and public commentator. He served as White House Press Secretary in the United States President Lyndon B. Johnson Administration from 1965 to 1967. He worked as a news commentator on television for ten years. Moyers has had an extensive involvement with public...
. The second was a special one-hour show hosted by William F. Baker
William F. Baker
William Franklin Baker is an American television executive. He is Executive in Residence at Columbia University School of Business, Journalist in Residence at Fordham University and the Claudio Aquaviva Chair at the Graduate School of Education, and President Emeritus of Educational Broadcasting...
, current president of PBS stations WLIW
WLIW
WLIW, channel 21, is a non-commercial educational public television station licensed to Garden City, New York; which serves as a secondary Public Broadcasting Service member station for the New York City television market...
and WNET
WNET
WNET, channel 13 is a non-commercial educational public television station licensed to Newark, New Jersey. With its signal covering the New York metropolitan area, WNET is a primary station of the Public Broadcasting Service and a primary provider of PBS programming...
.
The program's title comes from the saying, attributed to Barnard College
Barnard College
Barnard College is a private women's liberal arts college and a member of the Seven Sisters. Founded in 1889, Barnard has been affiliated with Columbia University since 1900. The campus stretches along Broadway between 116th and 120th Streets in the Morningside Heights neighborhood in the borough...
dean Virginia Gildersleeve
Virginia Gildersleeve
Virginia Crocheron Gildersleeve was an American academic, the long-time Dean of Barnard College, and the sole female US delegate to the April 1945 San Francisco United Nations Conference on International Organization, which negotiated the UN Charter and created the United...
among others, "Keep an open mind, but not so open that your brains fall out." However, during the hour-long interview with Baker, Heffner credited the title to J. Robert Oppenheimer, noting that he (Heffner) regretted never having interviewed the noted physicist. The theme music, "World Without Time," is by the Sauter-Finegan Orchestra
Sauter-Finegan Orchestra
The Sauter-Finegan Orchestra was an American swing jazz band popular in the 1950s.The orchestra was led by Eddie Sauter and Bill Finegan, who were both experienced big band arrangers. Sauter played mellophone, trumpet, and drums, and had attended Columbia University and Juilliard; Finegan had...
from their LP Adventures in Time. Heffner himself chose the theme from the NBC music library.
The Open Mind is one of the few first-run shows to be seen in commercial and public television at the same time. During the 1970s and 1980s, new episodes aired on commercial WPIX
WPIX
WPIX, channel 11, is a television station in New York City built, signed on, and owned by the Tribune Company. WPIX also serves as the flagship station of The CW Television Network...
, which was the show's production base, as well as WNET.
The Open Mind is currently involved in a project to digitize its entire archive of over 1400 episodes. The Open Mind Online Digital Archive now provides multiple video formats of all episodes, time coded transcripts, and advanced search tools. Archive materials are provided to the public at no cost. The archive can currently be viewed and accessed at http://www.theopenmind.tv. Most programs are also available to view and download at the Internet Archive
Internet Archive
The Internet Archive is a non-profit digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It offers permanent storage and access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, music, moving images, and nearly 3 million public domain books. The Internet Archive...
.