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

May 31 - June 4 Programs

Friday, May 28, 2010

Pick of the Week: It's Pig: King of the Southern Table! Lori talks about this week and shares why she chooses Friday's show as her favorite. Check out the video below.



Monday: Wandering Souls: Join us on Memorial Day for an encore broadcast of our memorable Veterans Day program, “Wandering Souls.” Writer and Vietnam War veteran Wayne Karlin publishes stories about Vietnam from vets on both sides. His recent book, Wandering Souls, tells the story of Homer Steedly, one veteran who returned to Vietnam to meet the family of a man he killed.

Tuesday: Female Nomad and Friends: In 1987, Rita Golden Gelman set out to live her dream. She sold all her possessions and became a nomad. She wrote a book about her ongoing journey and, in 2001, insisted on putting her personal e-mail address in the last chapter—against all advice. She presents some of the stories her readers sent to her in the anthology Female Nomad and Friends and joins us to talk about the golden rules of breaking free.

Wednesday: New York City: Endangered Language Sanctuary: We’ll talk with linguist Daniel Kaufman, co-director of the Endangered Language Alliance, about finding and preserving the many endangered languages represented in New York City. Some languages, he says, have more speakers living in New York City than in the area of the world they came from!

Thursday: Courage and Light: As a photographer for the National Geographic, Jim Brandenburg took hundreds of pictures every day – until he burnt out. In an effort to rediscover his passion for photography, he set out to take just one picture a day for 90 days. He joins us with Parker Palmer to talk about their Courage & Light Project, aimed at helping people to rediscover their passion and creativity at work.

Friday: Cakewalk: Growing up with capricious and perpetually embattled parents, Kate Moses found refuge in the kitchen, where she taught herself to bake and finally found the one realm where she felt she had control. She joins us to talk about her new memoir-with-recipes, Cakewalk.

May 24 - 28 Programs

Friday, May 21, 2010

Jean’s Pick of the Week: China’s Green People Power: It was heartening in the midst of all the bad news coming out of China to discover that there’s a genuine grassroots environmental movement underway, with courageous leaders such as former journalist Mu Jian leading the charge, accruing lots of successes. Would that it were so here in the U.S.!
P.S.: Jean changed her mind after our Food Friday show and talks about 52 Loaves as her favourite for our Pick of the Week Video!



Monday: It’s an encore presentation of Einstein's God with Minnesota Public Radio’s Krista Tippett. Science and religion are often portrayed as being in conflict, but Tippett’s new book brings together the many scientists she’s interviewed who find spiritual enlightenment on their way to proving scientific truth.

Tuesday: Crying Over Spilt Milk: We'll discuss the fight to protect access to raw or fresh food in this country and beyond.

Wednesday: Pakistan’s Dilemma: With the recent attention to Fajsal Shahzad’s failed terrorist attack in New York City’s Time Square, Pakistan has become the cornerstone of the debate about the war on terrorism. We’ll talk to Hassan Abbas, Quaid-i-Azam Chair Professor at Columbia University and a former government official in Pakistan, and with Tariq Ali, journalist and author of three books about Pakistan’s history and political landscape.

Thursday: Bonobo Handshake: In 2005, Vanessa Woods accepted a marriage proposal from a man she barely knew and agreed to join him on a trip to war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo to study Bonobos, a human relative far less aggressive than our other cousin, the Chimpanzee. In working with Bonobos she learned a few lessons about life and love that all humans can take to heart.

Friday: Pig: King of the Southern Table: If pig is indeed king, then there is trouble at the castle. James Villas, author of 13 cookbooks and winner of two James Beard awards, has stormed the gates and had at him, leaving no sweetbread, shoulder, or chop untasted. We’ll talk with him about his new book: Pig: King of Southern Tables.

I’ll be tromping around the southwest next week, leaving Lori Skelton in the driver’s seat.

Happy Memorial Day a week early!

Jean

Here On Earth in Bayfield!

Many of us trooped over to Wild Rice Restaurant in Bayfield after our live broadcast of Here on Earth last Friday, where I gave a reading and signed copies of my memoir, I Hear Voices. It was a spectacular setting at the end of a perfect spring day, looking out over Lake Superior and the Northwoods in bloom. Since I spotted so many people in the audience holding wine glasses, I decided to read an excerpt from the chapter in the book entitled “Get Thee to a Winery.” It wasn’t until later that I discovered that people in the back rows had a hard time hearing me. Al Chechik, who owns Artesian House, complained that the only words he heard were “purple bikini.” I left him a book with the inscription, “Going beyond purple bikini.”

May 17 - 21 Programs

Friday, May 14, 2010

Jean's Pick of the Week: Why The Prophet Muhammad Matters. See our video below!



Monday: Haiti's Artisans: The Comité Artisanal Haitien has been supporting the artisans behind Haitian handicrafts since 1973. Today, the CAH is hoping to rebuild the workshops that were destroyed by the January earthquake and to offer new artisanal products, placing Haitian art at the center of Haiti's recovery. Gisèle Fleurant, CAH Director since 1980, joins us, as does Cheryl Musch, director of international development for SERRV, one of CAH's partner organizations.

Tuesday: Growing Chinese Environmentalism: China’s hunger for energy to power its runaway industrialization has dammed every major river in the country — almost. The Chinese Government has put a moratorium on damming the Nu, or Angry, River after an uproar from China’s burgeoning environmental movement. We’ll talk about what we can and can’t expect from a growing Chinese environmentalism.

Wednesday: Care of the Soul in Medicine: Few experiences throw a person into crisis as illness does, affecting not only the body but the spirit and soul. Yet the current health care system is not structured around these considerations. We'll talk to Thomas Moore, author of Care of the Soul in Medicine, about his vision for improving health care.

Thursday: Through African Eyes: For centuries, Westerners have created mostly negative images of the African continent and its inhabitants. But we rarely seem to be aware that during all that time, Africans have been looking back at us, producing their own depictions of Europeans. We'll talk to Nii Quarcoopome, curator of the Detroit Institute of Art's current exhibition, Through African Eyes: The European in African Art, 1500 to Present.

Friday: 52 Loaves: How far would you travel for the perfect load of bread? William Alexander tracked the aroma of freshly baked bread from Morocco and France to yeast factories and the New York State Fair, even going so far as to grow his own wheat, all on a quest for the perfect loaf.

We were live in Bayfield, WI today for our Food Friday show - it was a lot of fun!

Jean

The Hidden Lives of Vermont's Mexican Immigrants

Being a third-generation immigrant from an Italian-American family, and raised with a strong ethnic identity, I find myself in sympathy with all new immigrants, but especially those Mexicans who risk their lives and shoulder their losses all because they’re desperate for work. And work is what America has always been about. The jobs the migrant workers do, as we have heard over and over again, are the jobs Americans shun – sixteen hour days mucking out the barns on dairy farms, or picking crops under a blazing sun. My grandfather arrived with a pick and a shovel and became one of the immigrant builders of the great city of New York. B. Amore’s grandfather helped excavate the foundations of Harvard University. They were prepared to make great personal sacrifices for the benefit of their children and future generations of new Americans. Why do we deny the same right and privilege to those who follow in their footsteps?

B. Amore in front of one or her pieces

May 10 - 14 Programs

Friday, May 7, 2010

Jean’s Pick of the Week: Two Photographers: I loved exploring the fascinating, if not so obvious, connections between two photographers who are pushing the boundaries of portraiture: Alan Luft, the German American whose Berlin Portfolio reveals the otherwise overlooked lives of the city’s newest immigrants, and Paul Baker Prindle, whose series Mementi Mori, honors the lives of gay men by photographing the otherwise banal American landscapes where they were murdered.



Monday: The Hidden Lives of Vermont’s Mexican Immigrants: Italian-American artist B. Amore, whose involvement in immigration issues has been life-long, coaxed her Mexican neighbors to tell their hidden stories in the form of dioramas.

Tuesday: Muck Raking the Meat Industry: If you didn’t catch Michael Moss’s extensive report in the New York Times back in October detailing the systemic problem of E. coli contamination rampant within the beef processing industry, you won’t want to miss today’s show. His report just won a Pulitzer Prize and Michael Moss will join us to discuss the changes it has already brought about.

Wednesday: Why The Prophet Muhammad Matters: We’ve found the perfect guest to round out our Inside Islam series this semester: he is Omid Safi, a professor of Islamic Studies at UNC whose highly readable biography of Muhammad treats him in all his aspects, as a mystic, a political leader, and a cultural revolutionary, and explains why Muslims today look to the Prophet primarily as a hero and a nation builder.

Thursday: While I’m on the road to Bayfield, we’ve chosen to repeat one of our most popular shows: Crime Literature, Scandinavian Style. The film, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, based on the first part of Stieg Larsson's widely successful crime trilogy, is playing in U.S theaters now.

Friday: Bayfield in Bloom: Larry Meillor and I will be broadcasting live from the Bayfield Lakeside Pavilion. I’ll be talking with Bayfield notables: Jerry Phillips, proprietor of The Old Rittenhouse Inn, and Jim Webster, chef at the famed Wild Rice Restaurant, about the way they create exquisite regional cuisine.

I’ll be reading from my memoir, I Hear Voices, and signing books at Wild Rice starting at 5:00pm on Friday. Hope to see you there!

And all you moms - Happy Mother’s Day!

Jean

May 3 - 7 Programs

Thursday, April 29, 2010

Jean’s Pick of the Week: We couldn’t have found two more perceptive, well-informed, or articulate guests to talk about the gritty topic of Securing the Bomb than Pulitzer Prize winner David Hoffman (The Dead Hand – check it out. If you’ve lived through the Cold War you’ll want to know what was really going on while we were watching Lassie) and Matthew Bunn (Securing the Bomb). It’s particularly wonderful when great guests know each other and respect each other’s work, as these two obviously did.



Monday: The Secret World of Doing Nothing: Waiting, daydreaming and doing nothing might seem like empty spaces in our busy daily lives, but they are actually full of meaning. We talk to Orvar Löfgren, co-author of The Secret World of Doing Nothing, and find out why taking a close look at doing nothing can be enlightening.

Tuesday: The Shanghai Expo: To many Americans, the World Fair is a spectacle gone the way of the dodo, but to the rest of the world — which knows them as “Expos” — they are still a regular and awe-inspiring event, and Expo 2010-Shanghai, opening this weekend, will be no exception. It’s set to become the largest, best-attended, and highest-tech Expo in world history.

One-Day Pledge Drive on Wednesday: John Nichols on International News: Nobody does it better than our own Here on Earth Correspondent John Nichols. John weighs in on the top international stories of the year to date.

Thursday: We’re working on a program about endangered languages that still survive in the great ethnic melting pot of New York City.

Friday: The Pasta Cure: If food is love and love heals, does that mean that food heals? After Paula Butturini’s husband John was struck by a single sniper bullet that almost killed him, the couple’s life was turned upside down. John plunged into deep depression. But the restorative powers of Italian meals, shared three times daily, brought the couple back to life.

Catch you later!

Jean

April 26 - 30 Programs

Thursday, Earth Day, April 22, 2010

Jean’s Pick of the Week: Well, how can you not pick Heaven? I was expecting a more secular perspective from a Newsweek editor, but Lisa Miller seemed unapologetic about expressing her Jewish beliefs, even in an area as curious as bodily resurrection. As for my own skepticism about that particular item in the Apostles’ Creed, I’m sorry to have upset a number of you, but, after all, isn’t belief in the spirit of free inquiry part of what public radio stands for?



Monday: The Virgin of Guadalupe in New York: (Oh, God, not another program about religion – actually, this one’s about Mexican immigration ) Almost 500 years ago, the dark-skinned Virgin of Guadalupe is said to have appeared to an indigenous Mexican Indian. In today’s New York City, Mexican immigrants rely on her image to guide them through hardship and help mobilize their fight for their rights.

Tuesday: Being With Animals: Beginning with the cave paintings in France to the Elephant God, Ganesh, to the American Bald Eagle, animals have dominated our psyches thousands of years. But, why? What accounts for their enduring power?

Wednesday: Securing the Bomb: Was President Obama’s Nuclear Security Summit a success? We’ll talk with Harvard scientist and author of the annual report, Securing the Bomb, Matthew Bunn and journalist David E. Hoffman, who just won a Pulitzer for his book on the dangerous legacy of the Cold War about what was accomplished and what remains to be done in securing the world’s nuclear material.

Thursday: And Now: From Inside Islam - The Program You’ve All Been Waiting For: Jihad: We’ll talk about its several meanings, how it developed in the Qur’an, in Islamic law, and inside Al Quaeda with scholars who understand its use in both the West and the East (by both Napoleon and Ronald Reagan!), and how terrorists use it to justify operating outside the law.

Friday: A Cooking Tour of Japan: Are you sushi fan? Or do seaweed and tofu turn you off? Sarah Marx Feldner shares her story of how she fell in love with the cuisine while traveling through Japan.

I’m on my way to the Earth Dinner at the Wisconsin State Historical Society.

Happy Earth Day!

Jean

April 19 - 23 Programs

Thursday, April 15 (!), 2010

Jean’s Pick of the Week: Nick Lantz: A Poet’s Way of Knowing and Not Knowing: Everybody seemed to really dig Nick’s poetry. To tell the truth, I had to wrestle with it at first. It's so different from the way I was taught to write with Donald Hall and the Imagist School back in the seventies! Then, too, his subject matter is so dark. I had to really work to find the light that shines through the cracks. But it’s there. And it’s luminous. We didn’t have time for him to complete his reading of “The Year We Blew Up the Whale – Florence, Oregon,” but he waited long enough after the show to allow us to take his picture for our website and record him reading the rest of the poem. Click here to watch the video.



Monday: To Uphold The World: Over 2000 years ago, Afghanistan was part of a peaceful, multi-ethnic and multi-cultural empire ruled by the Indian emperor Ashoka. Ashoka was the first political figure to think of leadership in global terms. Bruce Rich, author of To Uphold the World, argues that Ashoka’s political legacy can help us find the path towards a peaceful 21st century.

Tuesday: Local Identity in the World Market: The idea of an indigenous entrepreneur seemed like an oxymoron until not too long ago. But in South America, some indigenous communities have recently marketed their indigenous identity to be a part of the world market, with success. What are their options and possible limitations in participating in a global economy?

Wednesday: Heaven! Dante and Milton both attempted to describe Paradise, but now, with Newsweek’s religion editor Lisa Miller’s new book, Heaven: Our Enduring Fascination With The Afterlife, we have a journalist’s diverse perspectives on the way we imagine life after death.

Thursday: Earth Day: The Greenest Building in America: Three Benedictine Sisters have quietly built the greenest building in America on a tranquil prairie setting outside Madison, Wisconsin. The new chapel at Holy Wisdom Monastery was not only awarded a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Platinum rating by the US Green Building Council but received 63 out of a possible 69 points – the highest LEED Platinum rating in the country to date.

Friday: Food and Identity: Why do Jews keep kosher and shun pork? What is the purpose of food taboos? Jordon Rosenblum has some interesting explanations.

I’m on my way to my annual retreat at Cedar Valley Center. We’ll talk again on Monday.

Jean

Madison Country Day School - Oxfam Hunger Banquet

Friday, April 16th, 2010

I had a remarkable experience at the Madison Country Day School last January when I was invited to give a little talk at the Oxfam Hunger Banquet the school was hosting. If you haven’t yet experienced an Oxfam Hunger Banquet, I really recommend it. While one group was dining sumptuously by candlelight, I chose to sit on the floor under a tent, Bedouin style, with the group that was offered just a handful of rice served in a banana leaf with a cup of water. In spite of the meager provisions, there was a cozy feeling under that tent, and the rice was cooked to perfection and seemed to me quite delicious even though the whole point of the exercise was to experience solidarity with the millions of poor people on earth who live in extreme poverty. What impressed me most about the event was the quality of the students who presented themselves with real compassion and professionalism and who were also extraordinarily warm and welcoming. I was especially grateful to Sandra Fernandez who helped organize the event and sent me the invitation. What made the evening all the more poignant was the fact that news of the earthquake in Haiti had just broken and the uppermost in my mind was the fact that even before the quake had hit, many Haitian children were subsisting on mud cookies made with water from Port o’ Prince sewers.