Friday, June 25, 2010

June 28 - July 2 Programs

Jean’s Pick of the Week: I was sick as a dog on Monday, but I still feel privileged to have had the opportunity to talk with Bobby McFerrin. As I mentioned on the show, his rendition of Psalm 23 with a feminist/mother motif from his album Medicine Man was a life-changer for me. I never imagined I would actually be able to tell him that on the radio. But, come to think of it, isn’t that what live radio is all about?

Monday: Deep Blue Home: The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has redirected our attention to the tremendous fragility and richness of oceanic life. As dependent on oil as we might be, we are even more dependent on healthy oceans. We’ll explore our intimate ties to the ocean and discover working solutions to preventing oil spills and other human caused environmental disasters with Julia Whitty, filmmaker, journalist and author of Deep Blue Home, and Rick Steiner, formerly Marine Conservation Professor at the University of Alaska.

Tuesday: Pearls on the Ocean Floor: There’s more to Iran than uranium. In his first documentary, The Rising Tide, Mexican-American filmmaker Robert Adanto looked at young Chinese artists using video to capture the tumultuous changes sweeping through China. In his new film, he features some of the most influential Iranian women artists working in and outside of Iran.

Wednesday: To Kill a Mockingbird: Anticipating the Fourth of July next Sunday, We are working on a program based on the 50th anniversary of the publication of Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird. Why has this novel, which is so firmly rooted in the American South, become so popular the world over? And what makes it particularly relevant to Europe right now?

Thursday: Iraq: What Now? June 30th marks the one-year anniversary of American troops pulling out of Iraqi cities, and the legacy of the war there can already be seen. We’ll talk with journalist Anthony Shadid about his Pulitzer-prize winning coverage of the pull out and the year since as Iraqis have gone about the messy business of shaping their nation’s future.

Friday: The Best Steak in the World: Slate Magazine’s columnist Mark Schatzker was serious when he said he would find the best steak in the world. On the way to a unifying theory of steak, Schatzker traveled to Texas, Scotland, Japan, and even raised his own cows for slaughter. That’s dedication!

My husband and I spent a glorious couple of days in Door County last weekend. We even got as far as Rock Island, which is much more developed than the way I remembered it when I first visited the island back in the eighties with Ron Mason, the archeologist who, together with his wife Carol, discovered a major prehistoric site there. Just off the path to the pristine white sand beach where La Salle first landed the ill-fated Griffin, you can still see part of the palisade which once protected the site for no less than three separate tribes – the Potawatami, the Wyandot, and the Ontario. We watched two families of wild swans sail into sight. And the wild roses still smell sweet.

We live in a beautiful state.

Jean

Friday, June 18, 2010

June 21 - 25 Programs

Thursday, June 17, 2010

Jean’s Pick of the Week: The Rap Guide To Evolution: How can you not like a guy who starts off planting trees with his family in Vancouver, morphs into studying medieval English literature and ends up creating a rap version of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, and from there, the ultimate Rap Guide to Evolution. Hurrah for Baba Brinkman, and thanks to my husband for encouraging more programs based on science!



I’m spending the weekend in Door County and Washington Island, leaving Food Friday in Lori Skelton’s capable hands, but I wouldn’t miss talking with Bobby McFerrin on Monday for the world. You come too!

Monday: Bobby McFerrin: To some, Ten-Time Grammy-winner Bobby McFerrin will always be the guy who sang “Don’t Worry Be Happy”. But Bobby McFerrin’s work just can’t be reduced to one song. Throughout his inspiring career, he’s been pushing the frontiers of vocal music and collaborating with artists from all kinds of backgrounds. He joins us to talk about his new album VOCAbuLarieS, his life’s work, and his gift of bringing the world together through music.

Tuesday: Middle Eastern Women Get Political: About 20 young women from 10 Middle Eastern countries are gathering this month in Madison to sharpen their political skills at the National Democratic Institute or NDI. Among them is a young woman from Egypt, the founder of a new political party for the advancement of women’s rights. We’ll meet Sally El Baz and find out what her Reform and Development Party is all about.

Wednesday: God is Not One: Are we so afraid of conflict that we’ve become unable to disagree? Religion Scholar Stephen Prothero thinks it’s time we accept the fact that the world’s eight largest religions are not all eight sides of the same coin; on the most basic questions, like “How many gods are there?”, they can be completely contradictory. Can we learn to appreciate our differences while sticking to our own beliefs?

Thursday: LGBT Rights Groups Around the World: June is Gay Pride Month and major cities across the United States are celebrating with parades and festivals next weekend. We’re working on a show that will showcase stories and successes of LGBT rights groups around the world.

Friday: Spoon Fed: New York Times food writer, Kim Severson, joins us to talk about her new confessional food memoir, Spoon Fed: How Eight Cooks Saved My Life. In it she documents food goddesses—from Alice Waters to Marcella Hazan—who helped her gain the confidence to overcome alcoholism while taking her career from Alaska to New York City.

Happy Father’s Day to all you fathers! Here’s a tip: Never say to a daughter with acne, “Don’t worry, Jeannie, looks aren’t everything.” In spite of your good intentions, It might set her back by a few centuries.

Jean

Friday, June 11, 2010

June 14 - 18 Programs

Friday, June 11, 2010

Monday: The Life of Language: With a language disappearing every two weeks and neologisms springing up almost daily, understanding the origins and currency of language has never seemed more relevant. From an infant’s first words to the peculiar dialect of text messaging, we’ll explore the intricacies and quirks of our daily words with one of the world’s preeminent language specialists, David Crystal, as a part of our World Language Series.

Tuesday: The Rap Guide To Evolution: After having put Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales into a Hip Hop album called The Rap Canterbury Tales, Baba Brinkman was approached by a microbiologist “to do for Darwin what he did for Chaucer”. Not one to be intimidated by a challenge, Baba Brinkman wrote The Rap Guide To Evolution, telling the story of evolution all while drawing insightful analogies to the way Hip Hop culture works.

Wednesday: The Emotional Side of Math: Alex Bellos wants us to understand the emotional side of math. He has traveled all over the globe to report from the secret world of numbers and has met with the tribe that counts up to five only, the man who sets the odds for half the world’s slot machines, and the two Ukrainian brothers who consider themselves one mathematician.

Thursday: The Council of Dads: We’ll look ahead to Father’s Day with bestselling author Bruce Feiler. After being diagnosed with cancer, Feiler reached out to men from important passages in his life and asked them to carry forth his legacy should his young twin daughters grow up without him. The experience was a “passport to intimacy” with his friends and the story calls us all to consider the many roles of father figures in our lives.

Friday: Soul Food: Juneteenth celebrations, coming up this weekend, commemorate June 19, 1865 when the Emancipation Proclamation was finally enforced in the state of Texas, two and a half years after Abe Lincoln made his famous decree. I’ll be out of town so Lori Skelton will step in to talk with professor and food writer Frederick Douglass Opie about the celebratory foods of Juneteenth, as well as the rich history of soul food in the United States and the many foods of the African Diaspora.

Lend us your ears!

Jean

Friday, June 04, 2010

June 7 - 11 Programs

Thursday, June 3, 2010

Jean’s Pick of the Week: Courage and Light: Parker Palmer and Jim Brandenburg talking about burn-out and renewal– the A team, or better, the Yeah team.



I’ll be at a conference organized by the Social Science Research Council which funds our Inside Islam: Dialogue and Debates multi-media series beginning on Wednesday of next week, so we’ve been digging into the Here on Earth archives for some goodies while I’m gone. Meanwhile: Monday, it’s summer reading, and Tuesday, we take a long look at The World Cup super-soccer event about to begin in South Africa.

Monday: Summer Reading Without Borders! Are you looking for a great read to sink your teeth into? Chad Post brings panache to the literature without borders he publishes. He’s eager to share his list of “must reads,” and we’re eager to hear yours as well.

Tuesday: World Cup 2010 - Global Soccer: The World Cup, which starts this weekend, is easily the planet’s biggest global event. If Americans aren’t crazy about soccer yet, the rest of the world certainly is! Why does a simple game have the power to mobilize such a huge part of the world population? We’ll talk with Steven and Harrison Stark, a soccer-fanatic father-and-son team, co-authors of World Cup 2010: The Indispensable Guide to Soccer and Geopolitics.

Wednesday: Finding Beauty in a Broken World: While I was tramping on forced marches through the deserts of Utah last week, Terry Tempest Williams was at large in all the bookstores we visited. The conversation we had about her latest book, Finding Beauty in a Broken World, now out in paperback, was one of my favorite programs of the year.

Thursday: Why Him? Why Her? In honor of June, the wedding month, do tune in for this encore presentation of one of our most popular 2009 programs: “Why Him? Why Her?” with research professor of anthropology Helen Fisher. She answers the question that continues to befuddle humankind: What makes us choose the mates we do?

Friday: Never Trust a Thin Cook: If you’ve been grounded by the vertigo-inducing airfares this summer, join us for the next best thing – a sojourn in Modena (think white truffles, balsamic vinegar, and parmigiano) with Minnesota-based writer, Eric Dregni, author of the delightful and light-hearted memoir, Never Trust a Thin Cook.

Lend us your ears!

Jean