Show for Dec 2, 2012: Yael Kohen on Women in Comedy
Of the many fields in which gender equality has been a long time coming, comedy might not seem as important as, say, high political office or corporate captaincy or astronaut-hood. But it would be a mistake to underestimate the power and centrality of humor in modern-day America. The fact that comedy – especially stand-up – was until recently considered mostly a guy’s game and the speed with which funny women have closed the gap are matters worth pondering. Why the disparity in the first place? What changed, and why does it matter? I spoke to Yael Kohen, author of the recent oral history We Killed: The Rise of Women in American Comedy.
You can download the MP3 here (if using a Mac, control-click the link and choose “Save Link As…” If using a PC, right-click and choose Save Target As…”)
Show for Nov 25, 2012. Your Brain on Music (Rerun).
An old fave makes its return: our 2007 jam with music producer/neuroscientist Dan Levitin.
You can download the MP3 here (if using a Mac, control-click the link and choose “Save Link As…” If using a PC, right-click and choose Save Target As…”)
Show for Nov 18, 2012. Geoffrey Nunberg and Ascent of the A-Word.
Oh sure I could trot out all sorts of cheap double entendres. I could describe the linguist Geoff Nunberg as one of our most penetrating critics. I could say his book Ascent of the A-Word: Assholism, the First Sixty Years opens a rear window on the last century of changing social norms, and that it’s a bravura feat of bottom-up cultural history. But people would think I’m being flip, when the praise is sincere. “The essay is at its best,” Geoff told me, “when you’re noodling over some really trivial thing and in the course of your thinking are led to all sorts of interesting insights.” So: Montaigne on friendship, Thoreau on walking, Chesterton on a piece of chalk, Barthes on steak and french fries, and Nunberg on “asshole.” Geoff and I talked about the word as insult and syndrome (“assholism”), its surprisingly recent emergence, its role in public life and its linkage to American notions of populism, authenticity and therapeutic self-awareness. This is the uncensored version of the original on-air broadcast, which may have set a record for bleepage on public radio.
You can download the MP3 here (if using a Mac, control-click the link and choose “Save Link As…” If using a PC, right-click and choose Save Target As…”)
Show for Nov. 11, 2012: How to Predict an Election—Polling Aggregators Sam Wang and Drew Linzer
Nate Silver isn’t the only forecaster to project the results of last Tuesday’s presidential election with preternatural accuracy. Sam Wang of the Princeton Election Consortium and Drew Linzer of Votamatic both hit the bullseye, too, and they explained to me why it’s not really so preternatural after all (hint: statistics works). We talked about their methods, why so many pundits and political partisans missed the boat, and whether it’s bedtime for bloviators.
Fearless forecasters: Neuroscientist Sam Wang and Political Scientist Drew Linzer
You can download the MP3 here (if using a Mac, control-click the link and choose “Save Link As…” If using a PC, right-click and choose Save Target As…”)
Show for Nov 4, 2011. Don Lattin on East-West Spirituality, Early Psychedelia and the Recovery Movement.
The last time I had journalist and author Don Lattin on the show, we discussed his book The Harvard Psychedelic Club, about Timothy Leary & Co. This time, we talked about a previous generation of consciousness raisers. Don’s new book, Distilled Spirits: Getting Drunk, Then Sober with a Famous Writer, A Forgotten Philosopher and a Hopeless Drunk, tells the intersecting stories of Aldous Huxley, spiritual voyager and Doors of Perception author; his compatriate Gerald Heard, a soi-disant mystic and early acid head; and Bill Wilson, friend of Heard and founder of Alcoholics Anonymous. The book is also a memoir of Don’s own psychedelic experiences, his drug and alcohol addiction and AA-assisted recovery.
Courtesy of Don Lattin, a TV clip of an early acid experiment and rare footage of new age proto-prophet Gerald Heard.
You can download the MP3 here (if using a Mac, control-click the link and choose “Save Link As…” If using a PC, right-click and choose Save Target As…”)
Show for Oct. 28, 2012. From Animals to Us: David Quammen on Zoonotic Disease.
There’s more between humans and our fellow animals than a common ancestry and a common planet. We also share some really gnarly pathogens. Our “infernal, aboriginal connectedness,” as David Quammen puts it, makes humanity a target-rich environment for zoonoses – diseases that spring up in other species and leap to us. In fact, most of our infectious maladies may have gotten their start in animals, and the latest wave of emergent contagions, including HIV, Ebola, SARS, Hantavirus, Lyme disease, avian flu and bovine spongiform encephalopathy (mad cow) all have non-human beginnings.
David has spent the last few years absorbing the latest research, hanging with scientists and Indiana Jonesing his way through jungles and caves (with respirator and hazmat suit in place of fedora and bomber jacket), in pursuit of zoonotic wisdom. His new book, Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic, is simultaneously a serious introduction to the biology and epidemiology of animal-to-human disease, a series of medical adventure stories and a somber warning (he says human actions are responsible for the uptick in spillovers).
Despite the scary cover, David Quammen’s book eschews
the sensational and sticks to the science.
You can download the MP3 here (if using a Mac, control-click the link and choose “Save Link As…” If using a PC, right-click and choose Save Target As…”)
Show for Oct 21, 2012. Ukulele Hero, Mariachi Magic.
Two new movies pay tribute to musical instruments and/or traditions that haven’t always gotten their due in mainstream USA. In part one, Tad Nakamura, director of Jake Shimabukuro: Life on Four Strings. It’s a moving portrait of the musician who’s taken the ukulele—sometimes wrongly dissed as a novelty instrument—to virtuosic heights. In part two, Tom Gustafson, director of Mariachi Gringo, the tale of a young man from the midwest who falls in love with Mexico and devotes himself to mariachi music. Lead actor Shawn Ashmore devoted himself to the music too, going to school on vihuela.
(L) Jake Shimabukuro and Tad Nakamura, director of Jake Shimabukuro: Life on Four Strings;
(R) Mexican diva Lila Downs and Shawn Ashmore (with vihuela) in Mariachi Gringo. Both movies are part of the Pacific Rim Film Festival.
You can download the MP3 here (if using a Mac, control-click the link and choose “Save Link As…” If using a PC, right-click and choose Save Target As…”)
Show for Oct. 14, 2012. Astrophysicist Martin Rees.
Martin Rees isn’t just one of the world’s most respected cosmologists (and Britain’s Astronomer Royal), who’s contributed to some of the field’s biggest advances over the last four decades. He’s also an ecumenical thinker with a broad view of the sciences and their limits, our historical moment and the long-range prospects for earth and its inhabitants. We talked about cosmology past and present, the politics of science in the US and Europe, science vs. religion, climate change and the human (or post-human) future.
You can download the MP3 here (if using a Mac, control-click the link and choose “Save Link As…” If using a PC, right-click and choose Save Target As…”)
Show for Oct. 7, 2012. Steven Pinker on the Decline of Violence (rebroadcast).
I was on hiatus last week, so I replayed this interview from last year: cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker discussing his latest book, The Better Angels of Our Nature. Pinker argues that, modern mayhem notwithstanding, human violence has been trending downward for centuries. We discussed whether, how and why people have been getting more peacable.
You can download the MP3 here (if using a Mac, control-click the link and choose “Save Link As…” If using a PC, right-click and choose Save Target As…”)
Show for Sept. 30, 2012. Global comedian Shazia Mirza.
British comic Shazia Mirza has been taking her act to places where stand-up comedy is virtually unknown, and the spectacle of a woman cracking jokes on stage is almost revolutionary. Some audiences are ready for it, and some aren’t. We talked about the sometimes surprising reactions she’s gotten in Pakistan, India and back home in England.
Click the Play arrow at the top of this post to listen to the show, or you can download the MP3 here (if using a Mac, control-click the link and choose “Save Link As…” If using a PC, right-click and choose Save Target As…”)
Show for Sept 23, 2012. Jazz & Soul Singer-Songwriter Gregory Porter.
Do I have to write a description of this interview? Can I simply say, “just listen”? Since his debut album came out in 2010, Gregory Porter has quickly won a passionate following around the world. It’s easy to see why: there’s so much depth and warmth and poetry in his vocals and compositions. And as our conversation made clear, those qualities come straight from the man himself. So just listen, and don’t miss the end.
Yes, I did ask Gregory Porter about the hat.
Click the Play arrow at the top of this post to listen to the show, or you can download the MP3 here (if using a Mac, control-click the link and choose “Save Link As…” If using a PC, right-click and choose Save Target As…”)
Show for Sept 16, 2012. Errol Morris and A Wilderness of Error
Errol Morris and I have talked about his investigative ardor in our previous conversations, and we’ve touched on his decades-long delvings into the case of Jeffrey MacDonald, the Green Beret doctor serving a life sentence for murdering his wife and children. This time we get into the details, working our way through the evidence and Morris’s contention that MacDonald was railroaded. Morris says the investigation was bungled from the beginning (one forensic expert called it a “colossal clusterfuck”) and that MacDonald was the victim of a peremptory narrative that blinded the police, the courts and the public to many of the facts. Errol’s new book A Wilderness of Error: The Trials of Jeffrey MacDonald isn’t just a meticulous anatomy of a murder case, but a sobering reflection on our sometimes wayward truth-finding apparatus and all-too-corruptible justice system.
Jeffrey MacDonald as a young army doctor and after three decades in prison.
Click the Play arrow at the top of this post to listen to the show, or you can download the MP3 here (if using a Mac, control-click the link and choose “Save Link As…” If using a PC, right-click and choose Save Target As…”)
Show for Sept. 9, 2012. Our Man in Hanoi: Historian Mike Vann.
Down the mean streets of old Hanoi goes Mike Vann, a historian specializing in Vietnam during its nearly 70 years under French rule. Mike has uncovered some wonderfully tawdry tales that reveal a lot about the whole strange business of colonialism, when much of the globe was claimed by a handful of European countries. We discuss sex in the colonial city, the great rat massacre, murder on the Rue Hue, Hanoi in the time of cholera, and some charming French postcards.
L to R: “La Mission Civilisatrice”; French Hanoi; colonial humor; Mike Vann at Angkor Wat.
Click the Play arrow at the top of this post to listen to the show, or you can download the MP3 here (if using a Mac, control-click the link and choose “Save Link As…” If using a PC, right-click and choose Save Target As…”)
Show for Sept 2, 2012. Jim Holt on the Mystery of Existence.
Jim Holt is a rarity: a writer who throws light on some of the most daunting problems in physics, philosophy and math in ways that are impressively knowledgeable, artful and entertaining. He’s outdone himself in his latest book, Why Does the World Exist: An Existential Detective Story, which confronts the enigma of existence itself, considered from the perspectives of physics, metaphysics and theology. As Kathryn Schulz wrote in the New York Times, “the book is deep, absorbing, associative, challenging, and makes you laugh, unexpectedly and a lot” – much like my experience talking to Jim in this interview.
Click the Play arrow at the top of this post to listen to the show, or you can download the MP3 here (if using a Mac, control-click the link and choose “Save Link As…” If using a PC, right-click and choose Save Target As…”)
Today’s topic reminded me of this classic Louis CK routine. The relevant part starts about 1 minute in.
Show for Aug 26, 2012. The New Cosmology.
Originally broadcast in Feb 2011, my conversation with theoretical physicist Anthony Aguirre on the new, more complex picture of the universe that cosmologists have been sketching out in recent years. Anthony gave some of the clearest explanations I’ve heard of eternal inflation, the multiverse and why the Big Bang might not have been the beginning of everything.
Not so simple: The universe may be a lot more complicated than this standard view suggests.
Click the “play” arrow above to listen to the interview, or download the MP3 here.
