Friday, February 27, 2009

March 2-6 Programs

Jean’s Pick of the Week: Mardi Gras! We managed to bring both the dark and the light side of Mardi Gras into the conversation – perfectly in keeping with the real essence of Fat Tuesday. I especially appreciated the wonderful callers from New Orleans and Mobile who added such a rich dimension to the show.

Pledge Report: We’re actually ahead of where we expected to be thus far into the drive, thanks to your incredibly generous support. The drive ends at 1:00pm on Monday, so here’s what’s coming up on Here on Earth in the week ahead:

Monday: Canadian Physicist Searches for the Next Einstein in Africa: Neil Turok is a TED prize winner who founded the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences in Cape Town. He’s working to promote math and science education in Africa so that the world’s next Einstein may be African.

Tuesday: Daughters of Shame: Jasvinder Sanghera, founder of Karma Nirvana, author of Shame and Daughters of Shame, helps women escape from forced marriages and honor-based violence.

Wednesday: Nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Film, Waltz with Bashir is an animated documentary film written and directed by Israeli veteran Ari Folman. It tells the director’s own story of his attempt to piece together the lost memory of a massacre in which he participated during the 1982 Lebanon War. Folman himself joins us from Israel.

Thursday: Inside Pakistan: Real People; Real Lives: You may have noticed the buzz about Daniyal Mueenuddin’s collection of linked stories: In Other Rooms, Other Wonders and that’s because it’s a really terrific book that provides a window into a remote world rarely captured in fiction. Plus, the guy’s story is amazing – he grew up in Lahore, Pakistan and Elroy, Wisconsin!

Friday: Can anybody be a food critic? Maybe so, but not like Moira Hodgson, the daughter of a British foreign service officer, who discovered American food in Saigon, ate wild boar and snails in Berlin, and learned how to make potatoes 57 different ways from her Irish grandma. She serves it all up in her memoir, It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time: My Adventures in Life and Food.

Again, thanks so much for all your support this week. Your reward will be in heaven and so long as you keep listening to WPR!

Jean

Friday, February 20, 2009

Feb 23-27 Programs

Our Winter Membership Drive just started today and we’ve put a lot of thought into a special line-up of topics and guests – and prizes! – designed to keep you tuned in:

Monday: Everybody gets a chance to win a state-of-the-art Ipod pre-loaded with some of our best programs when John Nichols joins us to talk about the Israeli elections and help us raise money! Nobody does it quite like John. He turns into a carny barker during Pledge.

Fat Tuesday: Nothin’ like a Mardi Gras party to shake those low down Winter Blues.

Wednesday: MAN ON WIRE! MAN ON WIRE! MAN ON WIRE! Here’s your chance to connect with world famous tightrope walker Philippe Petit who pulled off one of the greatest feats of all time when he walked a tightrope between the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center. He tells the whole riveting story in the DVD which can be yours for a pledge of support to Here on Earth. I’ve waited a long time for this one.

Thursday: Honeymoon in Tehran: Time magazine correspondent Azadeh Moaveni tells her tale of love and anguish in the Islamic Republic.

Friday: We’re wearing sackcloth and ashes this first food Friday in Lent, looking for a monk who can ladle out some simple wholesome tasty monastery food. Any ideas? Lean fare, but definitely not slim pickings.

I saved a little love leftover from Valentine’s Day – just for you!

Do help us meet those pledge goals and thank you, thank you, always, for all you do!

Jean

Friday, February 13, 2009

Feb 16-20 Programs

Jean’s Pick of the Week: It’s been a long time since I’ve had quite the mental workout that James Moore (Darwin’s Sacred Cause) and Sean Carroll (Remarkable Creatures) gave me in our program Darwin’s Tree of Life last Wednesday. Altogether a fascinating exercise in blending biology-history-anthropology that left me with a whole new understanding of Darwin and an appetite for more. Turns out Darwin, Huxley, Dickens, Lincoln, and even Walt Whitman, (whose Leaves of Grass was published just four years before On the Origin of Species) were all contemporaries who, in Sean Carroll’s words, “threw off the shackles of the old order.” Now that’s something worth pursuing.

I also greatly enjoyed talking with Ellen Kuras on Tuesday about her beautiful and poignant film, The Betrayal, which follows the epic story of a Laotian family forced into exile as a result of the undeclared war the US waged in Laos during the Vietnam War.

NB: Our next program in the Inside Islam series on Love and Dating in the Muslim World which was originally scheduled for Feb. 12 has been re-scheduled for this coming Wednesday, Feb. 18.

Here’s what’s coming up this week:

Monday: I’ll be hosting an Open Line, asking for feedback on our recent programming, including our Inside Islam series, and suggestions about upcoming shows.

Tuesday: Under the Blue Flag: My Mission to Kosovo: Philip Kearney, A restless DA in San Francisco leaves a comfortable career to take to the lawless streets of Pristina, Kosovo, in an attempt to bring some very deadly criminals to justice just two years after a NATO bombing campaign had brought a halt to the conflict between Kosovo and Serbia.

Wednesday: Love and Dating in the Muslim World: True Stories of Finding Love: I have to say we’ve had a lot of fun gathering these stories from Muslims in the Madison community: newlyweds, seasoned couples, young men, and new converts. They’ll be edited for broadcast in the live program, but you can listen to the unedited version on our blog: www.insideislam.wisc.edu.

Thursday: The February pledge drive starts today, but Here on Earth won’t be actively soliciting your support until Friday, “Bread Day.” During World War II, European Jews were commonly portrayed as sheep led to the slaughter. Some groups, however, managed to defy certain death. Nechama Tec is the author of Defiance, the book on which the movie is based. It tells the story of hundreds of partisans who survived the war by finding temporary refuge in the forest and resisting the people who wanted to kill them.

Friday: Give Us Bread!: our web producer Lisa Bu found Peter Reinhart on TED: Peter is a master breadmaker and a theologian (they so often go together); co-founder of the award-winning Brother Juniper’s Bakery in Sonoma, California, author of five books on bread baking including the latest: Whole Grain Breads: New Techniques, Extraordinary Flavor. It’s a big, gorgeous book, our gift to you for a pledge of support of $175.

And to keep you tuned in throughout the drive: you won’t want to miss John Nichols on Monday, Feb. 23, and Philippe Petit, star of Man on Wire, the mad Frenchman who walked a tightrope between the World Trade Center Towers, Wednesday, Feb. 25.

Happy Valentine’s Day, Lovers All!

Jean

Sunday, February 08, 2009

Feb 9-13 Programs

Just back from a week in the California desert, to hit the ground running…isn’t it awful how the ever accelerating pace of modern life leaves such precious little time for the little civilities…

Here’s what’s up the Here on Earth sleeve for the coming week:

Monday: Inside North Korea: Kim Jong Ill made headlines last week by threatening to start a war with South Korea. But there’s more to North Korea than its saber-rattling dictator. Join us as we meet the people behind North Korea’s Iron Curtain with Daniel Gordon and Nicholas Bonner, two British documentarians who won access to the world’s most isolated country.

Tuesday: The Betrayal/Nerakhoon: The epic story of a family forced to emigrate from Laos after the chaos of the secret air war waged by the U.S. during the Vietnam War. We’ll talk with Director Ellen Kuras who spent the last 23 years chronicling the family's extraordinary journey in this deeply personal, poetic, and emotional film.

Wednesday: There will be nation-wide events this year in celebration of Darwin Day, February 12. We’re tapping two of the best: acclaimed UW geneticist Sean Carroll, author of Remarkable Creatures, and James Moore, co-author of DARWIN’S SACRED CAUSE: How a Hatred of Slavery Shaped Darwin’s Views on Human Evolution.

Thursday: Do Muslims date? If they don’t date, how do they decide who to marry? Join us for Muslim Love Stories: The Changing Nature of Muslim Courtship: a pre-Valentine’s Day special in our ongoing series, Inside Islam: Dialogues and Debates, and check out www.insideislam.wisc.edu to share your story.

Friday: Taking Stock: Will This Romance Survive a Week in the Kitchen? Second to travel, the best test of a budding romance is to cook together. Lori and Bill, both food lovers, decided to spend their entire vacation tackling complicated recipes like soup stock and French terrines. Points scored? Pounds gained?

Let us know what you think of our programs. Our hotline is ready to record your comments 24/7. Just call 1-877-GLOBE07. And thanks.

Jean

Sunday, February 01, 2009

Feb 2-6 Programs

Here's what's coming up in the first week of February.

Monday: Elegant, heart-filled and mysterious, Mariachi music has travelled a long road from working-class Mexico to concert stages worldwide. Join Veronica Rueckert and her guests to uncover Mariachi's history and celebrate its best recordings.

Tuesday: Roy Bourgeois is a an American priest in the Maryknoll order of the Roman Catholic Church and founder of the human rights group SOA (School of the Americas) who’s facing excommunication by the Vatican for participating in a ceremony it considers illicit and invalid: the ordination of a woman. Meanwhile, the American Church is so short of priests it’s been forced to import them from Africa.

Wednesday: Japan’s Soft Power: Japan is quietly emerging as a global trendsetter in pop culture, as well as in green technology and environmental practices.

Thursday: Hidden Lives: The Women of Kandahar: A photojournalist teams up with an Afghan-American to tell the stories of Afghan women living in compounds behind the doors of the women’s quarters.

Friday: Science in the Kitchen: Join Jean with esteemed author Harold McGee, author of On Food and Cooking, and Herve This, the French founder of a new trend he calls "molecular gastronomy."

Jean