Friday, January 29, 2010

Feb 1 - 5 Programs

Jean’s Pick of the Week: For sheer breadth of thought and intellectual challenge, my choice is Jeremy Rifkin’s The Empathic Civilization.

Monday: Punk Astronomy: Punk astronomer Doug Reilly thinks that you are not spending enough time looking up. He explains why looking up at the awe-inspiring night sky is punk and why it might be the best way for us humans to expand our horizon of possibilities, and our consciousness.

Tuesday: Equality vs. Inequality: British husband and wife Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett join forces to show that one common factor links the healthiest and happiest societies: not wealth, not resources, not culture, but the degree of equality among their members. So, by that measure, how does America stack up? They are co-authors of the new book, The Spirit Level.

Wednesday: In The Whale: Winner of the 2009 BBC Prize for Nonfiction, Philip Hoare investigates the dark, shadowy beasts who swim below the depths only to surface in a spray of spume to find out what it is about them that exerts such a powerful grip on our collective imagination?

Thursday: Committed to the World Project: Get Engaged!: Christina Ammon inherited a diamond ring worth $22,000 from her grandmother. She did some quick calculations: $22,000 could restore sight to 660 people in Bangladesh; send 133 Nepalese children to school, protect 220 acres of rainforest, or provide 220 micro-beans to women in the Congo. Her question: do I want a diamond ring, or a better world?

Friday: Teaching Kids to Cook: Reformed picky eater Jill Colella Bloomfield believes that teaching kids to cook is the way to avoid the pitfalls of picky eating. She’ll share her strategies for helping kids discover there’s more to life than peanut and butter and jelly.

Have a great weekend.

Jean

Friday, January 22, 2010

Jan 25 - 29 Programs

Jean’s Pick of the Week: From Witnessing to Solidarity: We wracked our brains trying to come up with a Here on Earth angle for the crisis in Haiti, and thanks to our brilliant Here on Earth producer Carly Yuenger, I think we did it. Not just dead bodies and babies being born in the street and families with nothing more than a sheet over their heads, but some real solid information from experts in the new field of “Witnessing” to show us how to move from empathy to understanding and solidarity. We’ll continue this theme on Monday with a program about Haiti’s political history and legacy of vodou.



Monday: The Way We See Haiti: After the devastating earthquake in Haiti, Vodou has once again become a part of the public discussion about Haiti. Pat Robertsons remarks are only one of many examples of how the Euro-American perception of Vodou influences the public opinion about Haiti and its people. We’ll talk to Gina Athena Ulysse, Haitian-born anthropologist at Wesleyan University, and to Kate Ramsey, historian of Haiti at the University of Miami, about the complicated relationship between Haiti’s history, vodou and the West.

Tuesday: Why the Dreyfus Affair Matters? The prosecution of Alfred Dreyfus in nineteenth-century France, known as the Dreyfus Affair, exposed misconduct at the highest levels of the French Army and left France painfully divided and disgraced abroad. Author, lawyer, and Holocaust survivor, Louis Begley, transforms this history into a lessons and warnings for the United States as it heals itself from the misdeeds of Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib.

Wednesday: The Empathic Civilization. In this century, the human species will need to solve some very big problems, but does our changing world demand humans change, too? Bestselling author Jeremy Rifkin joins us to talk about his new book, The Empathic Civilization, which argues that beyond technological innovation, we need to change our consciousness and transform our idea of human nature itself.

Thursday: We're still working on it.

Friday: Winter Cooking. After the frenzy of holiday cooking, baking, and feasting, and with no major holidays until Easter, it often seems that winter cooking is an afterthought. Anne Bramley, a self-proclaimed lover of winter, disagrees. She'll show us that winter is full of inspiration in the kitchen, and that the holidays are not the only reason to look forward to a long cold snap.

Have a great weekend,

Jean

Friday, January 15, 2010

Jan 18 - 22 Programs

Jean’s Pick of the Week: While I’m writing this on Thursday, anticipating a delightful program on monastery cooking when Madeline Scherb joins us for A Taste of Heaven on tomorrow’s All About Food, I have to say it would be hard to beat the inspiration of Wednesday’s show with Dacher Keltner on The Compassionate Instinct, or the mental stimulation of today’s program with virtual reality guru Jared Lanier. Suffice it to say, it’s been a good week.



Monday: Dickens in Hard Times: Although there aren’t many mysteries about the life of Charles Dickens, you don’t really know Dickens until you hit hard times.

Tuesday: Ink yourself!: Almost one in four Americans has a tattoo today. Gone are the days when only bikers, sailors and self-declared rebels displayed their tattooed arms; today, even academics are getting into the act by tattooing their favorite formula or graph on their bodies. We’ll explore the history of this phenomenon and the reasons for this increased popularity with UW-Madison Professor of Anthropology, Neil Whitehead.

Wednesday: Dark Green Religion: Religious conservatives often reject evolution, religious liberals incorporate it, and secularists embrace it. But there is a little-recognized, rapidly growing fourth reaction to the Darwinian revolution. It is emerging from those engaged in what we might call nature spirituality, or nature religion.

Thursday: Committed to the World: Christina Ammon joins us from Nepal to explain why she’s auctioning off a three carat diamond ring she inherited from her grandmother to fund social causes around the world.

Friday: The Wonder in Wonder Bread: One in seven people in the world doesn't have enough to eat. What's the key to eliminating world hunger? According to Louise Fresco, the answer may lie in mass-produced white bread.

That’s all folks!

Jean

Sunday, January 10, 2010

Jan 11-15 Programs

Pick of the Week: Lori's pick is Life Behind the Iron Curtain. Here's why.


Jean is coming back on air on Monday. Here's what we producers have prepared for her.

Monday: Life at Dawn. Oh, say can you see by the dawn's early light? In Diane Ackerman's latest book, Dawn Light, she asks, Do you see? Do you hear? Do you smell and taste and touch everything the light reveals? What better way to get a fresh start on the new year.

Tuesday: A Journey To Iran's Musical Past. For a talented group of Iranian poets and composers enjoying fame, the Iranian revolution of 1979 extinguished hopes, dreams and careers. After first encountering their silenced music in 2003, singer Monika Jalili turned her career and life around to bring it back to life.

Wednesday: Born to Be Good. Led by Dacher Keltner, the Greater Good Science Center is at the forefront of the positive psychology movement. We hear stories and research from Greater Good magazine and about Keltner's research on the evolution of positive emotions.

Thursday: You Are Not A Gadget. We talk with Jaron Lanier, father of virtual reality, about his new manifesto, You Are Not A Gadget, and why we should not put our technology on a pedestal above our selves.

Friday: A Taste Of Heaven. Ever wondered what food is served in heaven? While we might not find a question to that answer, Madeline Scherb's book, A Taste of Heaven, can give us hints by introducing us to the food prepared and eaten by nuns and monks in monasteries and convents around the world.

Thanks for listening,

Here on Earth team

Saturday, January 02, 2010

Jan 4 - 8 Programs

Going…going…gone! That goes for 2009 and also for me. I’ll be on vacation the first week of January, leaving that wild redhead, Lori Skelton, filling in for me.

Monday: Elephants on the Edge: G. A. Bradshaw marshals research from neuroscience, psychology, and animal behavior to argue that the mind of the elephant is remarkably similar to our own. The shock of violent death,the grief of losing an infant, and the loss of freedom affect them in much the same way as people.

Tuesday: Dartmouth Students Help Build a School That Booms in Dar es Salaam: Two decades ago, Fatuma Gwao, a single Tanzanian mother of four, started a day care for orphaned children in her own living room. Today, with the help of an American woman and students from Dartmouth College, she runs a school that offers education, health services and opportunities to children who would otherwise have no one to turn to.

Wednesday: The Lost Art of Letter Writing: In his new book, Yours Ever, Thomas Mallon explores this endangered literary genre with letters from Florence Nightingale, Henry Miller and the Duchess of Windsor.

Thursday: Life Behind the Iron Curtain: Then and Now: Kapka Kassabova escaped from Communist Bulgaria as a 17 year old. After the fall of the Iron Curtain, she returned to the country of her childhood and was forced to face the emotional consequences of growing up in Bulgaria’s repressive regime. Her book, A Street Without A Name, tells the story of her return to Bulgaria.

Friday: TBA

Happy New Year, Everybody!

Jean