Sept. 27 - Oct. 1 Programs

Jean’s Pick of the Week: Raving about Rara! If you were tuning in to Here on Earth on Thursday when we hosted the Brooklyn-based Rara band DJA-Rara live in Buck studio, you might have thought you had the wrong channel. The riotous cacophony of homemade instruments, horns, cymbals, drums, and rattles, played by 15-odd Haitian rabble rousers raised the rooftop and evoked the sound of joyous revolution. To quote our technical director Joe Hardtke: “Every once in a while, public radio needs to take off its white-collared shirt and get a little rough and dirty.”

Monday: Building with Whole Trees: Living in a treehouse is every kid’s dream. Visionary architect Roald Gundersen has turned this dream into an ecologically sound reality: houses made from whole, unmilled trees. We’ll explore our relationship to the forest and the spiritual dimensions of shelter with Roald and with Sister Gabriele Uhlein, a Franciscan nun and future resident of one of his treehouses.

Tuesday: Jerusalem's Sacred Esplanade: Jews and Christians call it the Temple Mount, Muslims call it the Noble Sanctuary, but for the new book Where Heaven and Earth Meet scholars from all three religions call it “Jerusalem's Sacred Esplanade.” We’ll talk with Jewish and Islamic scholars about the meaning of the sites. Plus, Norway’s former Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik, joins us to talk about his work in creating a “Universal Code on Holy Sites."

Wednesday: The New Bilingual Literature: Susana Chávez-Silverman’s memoirs might make you look twice unless you, too, grew up in a bilingual family. Susana is one of only a handful of bilingual writers who code switch mid-sentence, moving back and forth between Spanish and English.

Thursday: The Politics of the Brokenhearted: Just when you were about to despair of our democracy, along comes Parker Palmer with an invitation to participate in a conversation on the politics of the brokenhearted for citizens who want to reclaim the heart of American democracy and help heal the deep divides that threaten it.

Friday: The Honey Trail: From the Mississippi Delta, to the jungles of Borneo, to the deserts of Yemen, Grace Pundyk visited ten countries in her pursuit of liquid gold, vanishing bees, and a place to call home. Amazingly enough, she was also eager to get up at 4:00am to join Here on Earth from Singapore for this edition of Food Friday.

Have a great weekend!

Jean

Sept 20-24 Programs

Jean’s Pick of the Week: Thursday’s show on Mexican Independence Day. I think we succeeded in getting underneath the steady drum beat of headlines about drug cartel murders and government corruption to a feel for what the real Mexico has to shout about.

Monday: The Syringa Tree: The Syringa Tree is a gripping play about a young girl growing up in an Africaner family in apartheid South Africa. On the boards at APT this season, Colleen Madden turns in an astonishing virtuoso performance, playing all 24 characters. We’ll talk with Colleen and director Michael Wright.

Tuesday: Marrakech Gets a Facelift: In the October issue of Conde Nast Traveler, Raphael Kadushin reports how a dynamic group of local Moroccans and European expats came together to revive Marrakech's medina--one of the world's greatest, intact, walled medieval city centers, effectively salvaging not just the historic quarter but much of its rich culture as well.

Wednesday: Ramsey Clark Speaks Out on American Torture: For his new book, The Torturer in the Mirror, former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark teamed up with Iraqi dissident Haifa Zangana and sociology professor Thomas Reifer to reveal the scope of American culpability in the torture carried out during the war on terrorism. Ramsey Clark takes a historical view of torture and Professor Reifer discusses the ways the Obama administration has so far failed to clean up the policies of his predecessor.

Thursday: Madison World Music Festival: For a sneak preview of one of this year’s most exciting performances from this year’s UW-Madison World Music Festival, join us for a special live performance from DJA-Rara, the Brooklyn-based Haitian rara band. There are many explanations of the origins of rara, but whatever its beginnings, this raucous, peripatetic, and subversive music has endured and been embraced by the Haitian American community in New York City as an expression of Haitian pride, culture and identity.

Friday: Eating Animals: Vegetarianism is nothing new, but for some reason Jonathan Safran Foer’s 2009 book, Eating Animals, sparked a nationwide conversation about how we eat. The paperback edition of this bestseller comes out this week and Jonathan Safran Foer joins us to continue the conversation he started, this Food Friday.

Wedding Report: And yes, I did survive three days of wedding festivities in Minneapolis last weekend when my son, UMN Ottoman historian Giancarlo Casale married UMN Ottoman art historian Sinem Arcak. The celebration began with an all-female henna party on Friday night that ended in a ritual mock kidnapping, followed on Saturday by a lamb and camel-rib roast held in Giancarlo’s backyard where an extraordinary Italian feast was prepared and furnished for the rehearsal supper entirely by the father of the groom, followed on Sunday by a mid-afternoon ceremony in Loring Park that featured vows and readings spoken in three languages – English, Turkish, and Aramaic, (I read the from Walt Whitman’s 1855 Preface to Leaves of Grass). The whole bash concluded with a Turkish feast prepared and orchestrated by the mother of the bride. Much dancing and drinking of wine. Altogether an extraordinary and exhausting affair. I came home nursing blisters on both feet.

Still recuperating!

Jean

Get Thee to a Winery

Jean Feraca to Present a Day of Reflection on Benedictine Hospitality at Holy Wisdom Monastery

More than a dozen years ago I spent a formative summer at St. Ben’s, as it was called in those days, which I wrote about in my memoir in a chapter called “Get Thee to a Winery.” I was at a critical juncture in my life – contemplating a possible third marriage to a Jewish atheist scientist as I reflected on the mistakes of the past. The answers I received during those weeks couldn’t have come from a truer or a more surprising source. The Benedictines hold hospitality in its widest meaning at the center of their spiritual life. My experience of that hospitality – being welcomed and received in all my brokenness – was not only deeply healing, but led directly to the work I do now as the “host” of the program you know as Here on Earth. I am looking forward to telling you “the rest of the story” in this Day of Reflection on Benedictine Hospitality at Holy Wisdom Monastery in Middleton on Saturday, October 30.

To register or for more information, contact Jerrianne at (608) 836-1631, ext. 158 or jbland@benedictinewomen.org.

Sept 13-17 Programs

Jean’s Pick of the Week: The Art of Listening: Our conversation with British sociologist Les Back actually slowed me down and brought me back in touch with what I’ve always loved most about radio – its intimacy. So easy to lose sight of in this age of multitasking and social networking. How rewarding to simply listen deeply to what another human being has to say.

Monday: Life With the Maasai: Robin Wiszowaty’s home town couldn’t have been closer to normal, and from a young age she knew the world beyond was more complex and interesting. Into the world she went, ending up in Kenya, adopted into a Maasai family. In her book, My Maasai Life, now out in paperback, she balances the insights gained through living this double life.

Tuesday: Wild Justice: What if Aesop’s fables were actually inspired by real events? There is more and more evidence that animals have an innate sense of cooperation, empathy and justice. How do these findings change the way we see our human morality? We talk to Marc Bekoff, ethologist, and Jessica Pierce, philosopher, about their book Wild Justice: The Moral Lives of Animals.

Wednesday: Who We Are in Antarctica: Lucy Jane Bledsoe is a science writer who has written a lot of award-winning fiction about Antarctica. In her latest book, a novel called The Big Bang Symphony, she describes the impact of Antarctica's extreme environment on three different women who go a long way to find their way home.

Thursday: After Columbus: In honor of Mexican Independence Day, we investigate the evolution of today's vibrant Latino culture. Later this month, PBS will broadcast When Worlds Collide, a special program exploring the century after "Old World" encountered "New World," hosted by award winning journalist and author, Rubén Martínez

Friday: World-Class Wisconsin Cheese!: Cheesemaking has a long and storied tradition in Wisconsin, but it’s also an ever-evolving tradition. In honor of the opening of Green County’s Cheese Days, we’ll talk to one homegrown and internationally acclaimed cheesemaker, Sid Cook of Carr Valley Cheese Company, about his move from commodity, to specialty, to original cheeses. We’ll also be joined by Carol Chen of the Center for Dairy Research who will lead us through the tasty process of “cheese profiling.”

I’m heading to the Twin Cities on Friday to attend my Number One Son’s Turkish-Italian wedding, featuring roast camel! Report to follow, Inshallah!

Jean

Sept 6-10 Programs

Jean's Pick of the Week: I loved today's program about the kyosho jutaku movement of micro houses in Japan. It always makes me happy when Here on Earth introduces a new idea drawn from another culture that listeners grab and run with. We're planning another program about new ideas in architecture for later this month (Sept. 27th), this one closer to home, featuring the astonishing treehouse designs from a firm called, appropriately enough, Whole Trees in Stoddard, WI. I walked into one of their half-finished houses that's going up at the Christine Center and said, "Oh, my God, this is the future."



Monday: For Labor Day, we've chosen a fun show from our recent archives featuring Canadian Hip Hop artist Baba Brinkman, author of The Rap Guide to Evolution. Having once re-made Chaucer's Canterbury Tales into a very clever Hip Hop album, Baba (that really is his name) was approached by a microbiologist "to do for Darwin what he did for Chaucer." It's a pretty amazing piece of work and a great way to teach evolution.

Tuesday: Virtual Cosmopolitanism: The Internet was supposed to be a tool that would open us to the world. But in his research on its use, Ethan Zuckerman finds that it does just the opposite. What are the dangers of allowing the Internet to form our worldview, and how can they be avoided?

Wednesday: The Art of Listening: British Sociologist Les Back has been thinking a lot about famous listeners like Studs Terkel, about the importance Holocaust survivor Primo Levi placed on the connectivity offered by listening, and about why, despite the central role listening plays in a healthy political sphere, it just seems to be getting harder and harder to be good at it.

Thursday: TBA

Friday: Breaking Bread with Immigrants: While teaching new immigrants English in Boston, Lynne Christy Anderson found that sharing food was the perfect way to get to know her students. Stories of home tend to be the central ingredient in the delicious recipes she shares in her book Breaking Bread: Recipes and Stories from Immigrant Kitchens.

I'll be on my way to my son's wedding in Minneapolis by the time Lori opens up the show on Friday. I'll tell you all about it.

Have a great Labor Day weekend!

Jean

Science and the Public in Europe - 9/1

Dominique Haller

The guest of yesterday's show, Dominique Brossard, UW-Madison Associate Professor of Life Sciences and Communication, grew up in six different countries on three continents: Argentina, Nicaragua, Ethiopia, Uruguay, France, and the US. This diverse life experience has given her some interesting insight into how other societies deal with controversial scientific issues. She talks with Jean about participatory engagement in Scandinavia and France:

Aug 30 - Sept 3 Programs

Jean's Pick of the Week: I was very pleased with the way our program about the so-called Ground Zero Mosque controversy turned out yesterday. The way Ed Linenthal and Moustafa Bayoumi complemented each other allowed for a rich diversity of responses, some of them downright inspiring. We talked about it at today’s editorial meeting and all agreed that we learned a lot from that program. Kudos to Here on Earth producer Saideh Jamshidi, our Iranian-American summer intern, whose last day was today.

Monday: Who we are in Antarctica: Lucy Jane Bledsoe is a science writer who's written a lot of award-winning fiction about Antarctica. In her latest book, a novel called The Big Bang Symphony, she describes the impact of Antarctica's extreme environment on three different women who go a long way to find their way home.

Tuesday: Remember Charlie Chan, that grammatically challenged, Chinese-aphorism slinging detective who became an icon of American film? More than just a discarded racial stereotype, his new biographer says we can learn a lot about American attitudes toward China from Charlie Chan.

Wednesday: Science, The Media, and the Public Debates: The debate about stem-cell research has flared up again since a federal judge put a halt to it last week. What are the cultural and political factors that influence such scientific issues? What makes them take a different course in different countries?

Thursday: Smaller Living Designs from Japan: Japanese architects may have a jump on the rest of the world in cultivating what is sure to become a top virtue of the 21st century: doing more with less. A new design trend in Japan -- kyosho jutaku -- is building creative houses on teeny tiny parcels of land. Architect Azby Brown will take us on a tour of the cutting edge in ultra-small living. He has lived in Japan for years and has written about sustainable living during Japan's Edo period, way before anyone was talking about global warming.

Friday: Eating Animals: Vegetarianism is nothing new, but for some reason Jonathan Safran Foer’s 2009 book, Eating Animals, sparked a nationwide conversation about how we eat. The paperback edition of this bestseller comes out this week and Jonathan Safran Foer joins us to continue the conversation he started, this Food Friday.

Now, isn't that a pretty great line-up? But it ain't nothin' without you!

I'm hoping to see some of you avid memoirists at the workshop I'm giving this weekend at Woodland Pattern Bookstore in Milwaukee.

Adios,

Jean

Jean's Pick of the Week for August 16th

Jean's Pick of the Week: Why People Run:Well, let’s face it, it’s the end of August, school is about to begin again and we felt the need to lighten up. I hope you’ve enjoyed this week on Here on Earth as much as I have. It’s hard to pick a favorite – we even found a way to have fun with Inside Islam – but since I have to choose, I’ll pin my star on Born to Run. Christopher McDougall’s book about the ultrarunners of the Tarahumara has been out for a year, he’s done a slew of interviews, but you’d never know it from his level of enthusiasm, and what a great way to celebrate the gifts of an indigenous tribe. Long may they run.

August 23 - 27 Programs

Thursday, Aug. 19, 2010

Calling All Memoirists! I’ll be hosting a memoir writing workshop at Woodland Pattern Bookstore in Milwaukee next weekend on Saturday and Sunday. For those of you who don’t yet know, Woodland Pattern is one of the last great independent bookstores in the country, especially dedicated to supporting new and established writers and artists. I was thrilled when they asked me to teach this workshop, and I understand that there are still some places available. For more information, call Jenny Henry at 414-263-5001 www.woodlandpattern.org.

Monday: Former First Lady Rosalynn Carter : is on a crusade to improve the lives of Americans with mental illness. In her new book, Within Our Reach, she says we still have a long way to go to remove the stigma that surrounds mental illness.

Tuesday: The Rise of A Middle Class in the Middle East : As part of the Inside Islam series this week we will discuss the force for change that is welling up in the Middle East - the rise of a mobile middle class of entrepreneurs, investors and consumers. Although almost invisible to the West, our guests see in this newest of social movements the key to tipping the scales of power away from extremism.

Wednesday: Mosque Madness:The proposal to build an Islamic Community Center that includes a mosque near Ground Zero in New York City has roused a hornet’s nest of controversy. Nine years after 9/11, what does it tell us about the state of American values, the purpose of a public monument, and the level of Islamaphobia?

Thursday: Healing From Trauma: Jim Finley grew up in a rough family in Akron, Ohio, and escaped into a Trappist monastery as soon as he could. Today he’s a clinical psychologist who uses principles derived from his monastery training to teach people how to heal from trauma.

Friday: TBA

Have a great weekend!


Jean

Aug 16-20 Programs

Thursday, August 12, 2010

I have another presentation coming up this month. I will be offering a premium two-day workshop on Writing a Literary Memoir at Woodland Pattern Book Center in Milwaukee on Saturday and Sunday, Aug. 28-29. For more information, call 414-263-5001, or visit www.woodlandpattern.org. Deadline for sign-up is Friday, Aug. 20.

Jean's Pick of the Week: Having been a student of drama, I can’t resist a topic that leads with Greek tragedy. Theater of War allows us to confront the real psychic cost of warfare across nations and across time. A former West Point graduate I had a talk with recently told me that the only people who come back sane from the theater of war were psychopaths to begin with.

Monday: Roman Catholic Women Priests: The world was shocked when the Vatican recently equated the sin of pedophilia with the sin of women’s ordination. In spite of the ban, the ordination of Roman Catholic women priests goes on unabated. To talk about the issue, we’ll be joined by Maryknoll priest and activist, Roy Bourgeois, who has been excommunicated for his support of women’s ordination, and Reverend Alice Iaquinta, Regional Program Coordinator for Roman Catholic Women Priests in the U.S. who offers a structural critique of the Vatican’s rhetoric.

Tuesday: Why People Run: Born to Run is a book of wild narrative full of insane characters, extreme sports and one crazy idea: running barefoot is the answer to safe, pain-free and endurance. Christopher McDougall gathered information about Mexico’s Copper Canyon unknown tribe of the Tarahumara’s running style and put them in test. The result became a book that goes against all odds of multi-million dollar shoe making industry that promotes the jelly and soft cushion shoes.

Wednesday: Mullah Nasruddin: Islam’s Holy Fool:In his interfaith congregation in Seattle, Jamal Rahman, a Muslim Sufi minister and one of the Interfaith Amigos, usually opens his sermon by quoting his favorite Sufi visionary teacher: Mullah Nasurddin: “I am getting sick and tired of this lousy cheese sandwich,” complained Mullah repeatedly. “Mullah, tell your wife to make something different,” his co-workers advised. “But I am not married,” Mullah replied. “I am the one who is making these sandwiches.”

Thursday: The Adventures of Tintin:is one of Europe’s all time favorite comics. Not only did generations grow up with the reporter hero and his dog, Snowy (called Milou in French) but the comic has been translated into dozens of languages and adapted for television, film, radio and theater. We’re working on a program that will take us through the decades and around the world with this classic comic. My son Giancarlo loved his Tintin comics and I truly believe they were one of his major early influences on his international career.

Friday: Egyptian Comfort Food:

Nabil Seidah is a renowned biochemist, one of my husband’s closest friends, and a great Egyptian cook. He and his wife Anneke rolled out the red carpet for us when we visited them at their home in Montreal last winter where Nabil cooked complex earthy comfort food for us based on recipes, techniques, and ingredients he learned in his mother’s kitchen.

I’m off to Paint the Town Blue…Have a great weekend and stay in touch…

Jean

Aug 9-13 Programs

On Thursday, August 12 from 6 to 9 p.m. I will attend "Paint the Town Blue," a major fundraising event for the Exchange Center for the Prevention of Child Abuse, being held in the atrium of the Boardman Law Firm, One South Pinckney Street, 4th Floor, overlooking the Capitol in downtown Madison. I will also be signing copies of my award-winning memoir, I Hear Voices, which will be available for sale at the event to benefit the Exchange Center.

Tickets: www.thexchangecenter.org
Contact: Sara at 608-729-1141 or sjohnson@thexchangecenter.org

I'll be facilitating an exciting interfaith retreat which will take place next weekend, Aug. 13-15, at the Christine Center in Willard, Wisconsin. If you've never been to the Christine Center, it's in Amish country north of Black River Falls, where bear and deer and hummingbirds abound. It's a very special place run by a group of enlightened Franciscan nuns who have dedicated their pristine center to global transformation. Tapping into Rich Mystical Traditions will be team-led by Father Thomas Ryan and Rabbi Sigal Brier (see Wednesday's show below) who will explore together the role of creativity in spiritual life, the Sabbath practice, the Body in Prayer, mystical rhythms, and more.

Monday: Theater of War: Sophocles, the ancient Greek general and playwright, depicted the timeless psychological wounds inflicted by war upon warriors in his plays. In the Theater of War project, actors and actresses read Sophocles's plays to active service members and their families in military sites to show them that they are not alone, across time, in dealing with mental pain when they come back from battlefields. Bryan Doerries and Phyllis Kaufman, director and producer of Theater of War, tell us about their experience with the project.

Tuesday: The Oath: Abu Jandal is a taxi driver in Yemen who used to be Osama Bin Laden's bodyguard. His brother-in-law, Salim Hamdan, a Guantanamo Bay detainee and the first man to face the controversial military tribunals, once worked as Bin Laden's driver. In The Oath, Oscar-nominated filmmaker Laura Poitras tells the cross-cut tale of these two men whose fateful meeting propelled them on divergent courses with Al-Qaeda. The film opened this week in Madison.

Wednesday: An Interfaith Mash-Up: This is another program in our ongoing series on Interfaith Dialogue: A rabbi who teaches spiritual practices based on the Kabbalah teams up with a Catholic priest who teaches mediation and yoga as spiritual practice.

Thursday: The Senate has just confirmed Elena Kagan as the newest Justice on the Supreme Court. During her confirmation hearings, one topic especially caught our attention—Kagen's support for the practice of looking abroad for legal inspiration. Recently, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg seconded that opinion. We speak with legal scholars about the history and uses of turning to foreign law for good ideas.

Friday: Pickling and Preserving Summer's Bounty: Who better to lead us through the culinary spiritual exercises of mid-August when the garden is at its most robust than Wisconsin's own French chef, Monique Hooker.

Jean

August 2 - 6 Programs

Producers' Note: Jean is still on her writers retreat this week so we have created a lineup of our five best shows from 2010. We are looking forward to being back in the studio August 9th!

Monday: Crazy Like Us: Ethan Watters is tracking mental illness around the globe, and he is finding that the world is going crazy—American style. As doctors and pharmaceuticals cross borders, illnesses as defined by Western medicine, like depression and anorexia, are popping up in places they never before occurred while local ways of understanding mental health issues—from melancholy to what we call schizophrenia—are being lost. We talk about cultural differences in understandings of the inner life, and why homogenization might not be a good thing.


Tuesday: Jamming with Whales: Remember David Rothenberg, the musician and philosopher who traveled all over the world studying the song patterns of birds to make his music? Well, he's at it again, this time with whales. His new book and album document his jam sessions with humpback whales around the world.

Wednesday: Poet Nick Lantzr: Nick Lantz is a poet like no other. In his book, The Lightning That Strikes the Neighbor’s House, which won the Felix Pollak Poetry Prize, he writes poems about the Challenger explosion, Bigfoot, a love letter written from inside a missile silo, and a plea for post 9/11 redemption.

Thursday: Heaven: Our Enduring Fascination With The Afterlife: What does belief in the afterlife tell us about what it means to be human? What is universal about our differing views of heaven? Join us with Lisa Miller, religion editor for Newsweek, when we wrestle with Heaven.

Friday: Corked: Kathryn Borel was like her father in every way but one: she just didn't get it when it came to wine. So she decided to take him on a drunken father-daughter road trip through the French countryside, where they finally connected, over wine.

Enjoy!

July 26 - 30 Programs

Thursday, July 22, 2010

I will be on a writer’s retreat for the next two weeks, so we’re taking the opportunity to showcase the best programs we’ve done this year. The first week we’re dedicating to our Inside Islam series; for the second week, we’ve chosen five of the shows we think most worthy of re-visiting. We hope you will enjoy these selections and let us know what you think of our choices.


Jean's Pick of the Week: Putting An End to Stoning: The sense of outrage and revulsion that most of us feel at news reports of stonings, like the one we reported coming out of Iran right now that threatens the life of a woman accused of adultery, is a kind of fuel, I think, that can galvanize the international community around this issue and help bring the practice to an end forever. Inshallah.



Monday: Aisha: Mohammed’s Youngest Wife: Kamran Pasha’s novel, Mother of the Believers: A Novel of the Birth of Islam, tells the story of the rise of Islam through the eyes of Aisha, the Prophet Muhammad's youngest and most favorite wife, one of the most influential women in Islamic history. As Mother of the Believers shows, Aisha is more than the controversy around her age; (she was still a child at the time of her betrothal). She was a teacher, political leader, a warrior, and, with her incredible memory, an invaluable source of information on all aspects of the Prophet Muhammad's life.


Tuesday: The Art of Qur’anic Recitation Among Muslims, Qur'anic recitation is a highly advanced art form intended to move, inspire, engage, and transport all those who listen. What is the purpose of Qur’anic recitation? How does it relate to life in the 21st century? What’s your personal experience of hearing the Qur'an recited? Anna Gade did a great job with this program.


Wednesday: Islamic Feminism: A Sister-Wide Global Movement : There are a lot of live wires and firebrands in the Islamic Feminist Movement and they’re determined to do things their way, as you will see from this wide-reaching exploration of what Islamic women really want and how they are going about getting it, using the teachings on gender equality in the Qur’an and the social innovations of The Prophet Mohammed to secure their rights and overcome misogyny.

Thursday: Why Mohammed Matters: Who was the Prophet Muhammed and how do Muslims remember him today: as a mystic, a revolutionary, or a military leader? This is my favorite program so far in this year’s series. Safi was very calm, and dispelled a lot of myths.


Food Friday: Ramadan: The Feast and the Fast: Since Ramadan begins on August 11 this year, which represents a particular hardship for American Muslims, we thought you might enjoy learning about how different the experience of Ramadan can be depending on where you happen to find yourself. Compare fasting here in America in the heat of long summer days to countries like Syria where everyone sleeps all day and feasts all night. , Ramadan there are special programs where Muslims work all day, and young athletes go into training Why is fasting common to almost all faiths? Why do Muslims the world over look forward with joy to a month of fasting? What are the special challenges that American Muslims face? And what are the Ramadan specials that Arab Muslims are watching on satellite TV?

July 19 - 23 Programs

Before anything else, I want to put in a plug for the Day of Retreat I'm leading at Holy Wisdom Monastery in Middleton next Saturday. More than a dozen years ago I spent a formative summer at St. Ben’s, as it was called in those days, which I wrote about in my memoir in a chapter called "Get Thee to a Winery." I was at a critical juncture in my life – contemplating a possible third marriage to a Jewish atheist scientist as I reflected on the mistakes of the past. The answers I received during those weeks couldn’t have come from a truer or a more surprising source. The Benedictines hold hospitality in its widest meaning at the center of their spiritual life. My experience of that hospitality – being welcomed and received in all my brokenness – was not only deeply healing, but led directly to the work I do now as the "host" of the program you know as Here on Earth. I am looking forward to telling you "the rest of the story" next Saturday. To register or for more information, contact Jerrianne at (608) 836-1631, ext. 158 or jbland@benedictinewomen.org.

Jean's Pick of the Week: Again I surprise myself in choosing this week’s program Cars of the Future, about the Automotive X Prize since I know very little about cars, and happen to enjoy driving a 1998 Buick Le Sabre I call Delilah – hardly a car of the future. But having visited Chris Beebe’s garage and seen for myself a wizard at work, and hearing from the mavericks who called into the show with their own accounts of having converted or designed their own electric cars, I was inspired all over again by the spirit of ingenuity that is propelling us forward.



Monday: Pearl Buck in China: Pearl Buck was the first author to open American audiences to everyday life in rural China, and the first American woman to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1938. Today, she is read but not admired in America, and admired but not read in China. We rediscover her fascinating bicultural life story with biographer Hilary Spurling, author of Pearl Buck in China: Journey to the Good Earth.

Tuesday: The Fate of an Iranian Woman Sentenced to Be Stoned: Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, a 43-year-old mother of two who was convicted of adultery, was sentenced to 99 lashes for committing adultery by a court in May 2006. Four months later, another court sentenced her to death by stoning. Her fate remains uncertain. We'll talk with Norma Claire Moruzzi, director of International Studies at University of Illinois in Chicago, an expert on women's issues in Iran, and Cyrus Nowrasteh, director of The Stoning of Soraya M.

Wednesday: Turkey's Tomorrow: Things have mostly cooled down, but the recent attack on an aid flotilla carrying Turkish activists off the coast of Gaza has widened a painful rift in Turkish/Israeli relations. Turkish Jewish philosopher Seyla Benhabib has just returned from a trip to both countries and joins us to talk about what went wrong, what’s going on inside Turkey today, and what the future looks like for this secular Muslim nation that has linked Europe and the Middle East for centuries.

Thursday: Gay in Argentina: Argentina has just passed a law making gay marriage legal. Jean and her guest will discuss this gay rights breakthrough and what it means for the global movement.

Friday: Breaking Bread with Immigrants: (To Be Confirmed)Chef and teacher Lynne Anderson has gone into immigrant kitchens and discovered that, for those who have left much behind, food holds the power to recover a lost world.

I'm off to a concert with my husband.

Have a great weekend!

Jean

July 12 - 16 Programs

Thursday, July 8, 2010

Jean’s Pick of the Week: World Cup 2010: Community-building and Soccer: Diego in Rome said it best in his Facebook message, “I would never believe that NPR would devote an entire program to the World Cup.” Actually, yesterday’s program was the second time we’ve talked about South Africa’s World Cup, and I am equally astonished to report that this was my Pick of the Week. It was so much fun gathering messages and perspectives from all over the world. It really felt like we had come another step closer to achieving The Dream of Radio’s Great Global Radio Conversation that we imagined when Here on Earth went on the air seven years ago. Thanks to all!



Monday: Dracula’s Guest: Vampires are all the rage these days with the recent Twilight blockbusters. But who knew about the grueling real life circumstances that made people believe in vampires in the first place? And what do vampires look like in Africa and Asia? We’ll talk with Michael Sims, editor of the anthology Dracula’s Guest: A Connoisseurs Collection of Victorian Vampire Stories.

Tuesday: Green cars, on your marks! Every ten years, the X Prize Foundation challenges teams of thinkers and doers around the world to make the impossible become real. Challenge 2010 is to build a car that goes 100 miles per hour and gets 100 miles per gallon. We’ll talk with Chris Beebe, a team leader based right here in Madison, WI, about the new ideas inspired by the competition and what he thinks it will take to revolutionize transportation for the 21st century.

Wednesday: The Party: While China’s economic successes are gaining a lot of attention in the Western media, the central role of the Chinese Communist Party often remains overlooked. How does the Party keep the balance between firm communist control and liberal economic expansion? We’ll get a glimpse into the world largest political organization with Richard McGregor, author of The Party: The Secret World of China’s Communist Rulers.

Thursday: International Spookdom: With the recent outing of eleven Russian spies in the United States, we’ve all begun looking over our shoulders. But is the undercover agent really the model of espionage in the 21st century? We’ll talk with intelligence experts about the growing role of cyber, corporate and government espionage around the world, and about why we love to romanticize their world of secrets.

Friday: Mastering the Art of the Wok: Chinese-American chef and cookbook author Grace Young joins us with tips on the economical, simple, and ancient method of Chinese cooking — the stir-fry. She’ll explain what to use if you don’t have a wok and open flame, the basics of the traditional Chinese stir-fry, and the many Chinese fusion variations from South Africa, Jamaica, Libya, and beyond!

I’ll be in North Carolina at a family wedding this weekend. Y’all come back now, hear?

Jean

July 5 - 9 Programs

Thursday, July 1, 2010

Jean’s Pick of the Week: Fifty Years of To Kill a Mockingbird: What’s more fun than a really great conversation about an All-American Book that is more popular in the UK than the Bible!

Monday: Paul Robeson: An American Master: We’ve chosen one of our favorite programs from the Here on Earth archives to celebrate our national holiday. Our program on Paul Robeson was originally broadcast on the Fourth of July, 2004.

Tuesday: Milestones for a Spiritual Jihad: Muslim women can stand side by side their male counterparts at Mecca, the holiest city in the Muslim world, to pray, but once they’re back home, they’re most likely to find themselves crowded into a small, dark room at the back of a mosque. Asra Nomani, former Wall Street Journal correspondent and a visiting scholar at Georgetown University thought she needed to take a stand against the unwritten rule of the mosque. We will talk with Nomani and her journey to her spiritual jihad.

Wednesday: The Political Power of Soccer: With the final matches of the 2010 World Cup coming up this weekend, all eyes are on soccer. We are working on a program on the political power of soccer in Africa and around the world.

Thursday: The Interfaith Amigos: Three clergymen from the three Abrahamic faiths used friendship to create a dialogue: Rabbi Ted Falcon, Sheikh Jamal Rahman and Pastor Don Mackenzie met every week for nine years after 9/11 in search of common ground. They sum up their collective discoveries in the book, Getting to the Heart of Interfaith: The Eye-Opening Hope-Filled Friendship of a Pastor, a Rabbi and a Sheikh.

Friday: A Garlic Geek: A whole program about garlic? How about a whole lifetime? Allium scientist Eric Block has spent his career studying garlic, onions and leeks, and their many cousins. He’s a garlic geek! He’ll walk us through the compounds in onions that make us cry, the different-flavored compounds found in garlic, and how their flavors change when you chop them up and cook them.

I’ll be celebrating this Fourth of July big time, with fireworks, cheesecake, and my son and his Turkish fiancée in the Twin Cities. Viva L’America!

Jean

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

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

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

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