Show for Nov. 20, 2011. John Brown Reconsidered.
The Pulitzer-winning writer Tony Horwitz has a new book out about anti-slavery crusader John Brown (Midnight Rising: John Brown and the Raid that Sparked the Civil War), and we consider the challenge that Brown still poses for American history. Was Brown right to spill blood fighting slavery? When is violent resistance to manifest inhumanity justified? I talk history and morality with Tony Horwitz, with my friend and John Brown buff Andrea Monroe, and with ethicist Peter Singer.
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. 13, 2011. Joe Sacco: Wide-Eyed In Gaza
Originally broadcast in Jan, 2010: an interview with the prodigious cartoon journalist Joe Sacco. We talked about his career covering conflicts in places like Bosnia and the Palestinian Territories, and his latest book, Footnotes in Gaza. In it, Sacco documents life in Gaza today and investigates an apparent massacre of Palestinians in 1956, when Israel was at war with Egypt.
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. 30, 2011. Cognitive Psychologist Steven Pinker on the Decline of Violence
Steven Pinker, celebrated for his books on language and the workings of the mind, ventures into big history with his latest volume, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined. He presents a truckload of evidence to argue that humans have been getting more peaceful, more cooperative and less murderous, on scales large and small, for quite some time. Among the reasons: civilization really has made us more civil. That might seem a surprising conclusion for a card-carrying evolutionary psychologist, but Pinker hasn’t gone all liberal artsy on us. Historicity has a role to play, he says, but so do biology and game theory.
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. 16, 2011. Remembering Frank Kameny
As mentioned in an earlier post, I was saddened to learn this past week that gay rights pioneer Frank Kameny had died. For today’s show I replayed my 2010 interview with Frank, in which he looked back on his life as an activist. This is a somewhat longer cut of the original 2010 broadcast. In part 2 of the show, more on the subject of political activism and the sacrifices it sometimes calls for: an excerpt from a 2009 interview with former track star John Carlos, who talks about the famous black power salute he and fellow medalist Tommy Smith gave at the 1968 Olympic Games.
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…”)
Frank Kameny, 1925 - 2011
I just got the unwelcome news that Frank Kameny died yesterday. Frank was an early leader of the gay rights movement in the US, an extremely effective activist, and certainly one of the most important civil liberties trailblazers that most Americans have never heard of. Aware that he’d been staging Fourth of July demonstrations for gay equality as far back as the mid-1960s, I interviewed him on my July 4, 2010 show. He was 85 at the time we spoke, feisty and funny and trenchant as ever. I had hoped to speak to him again. Regrettably, I never got the chance. But I’m grateful for the one conversation we did have, which you can hear below. The interview with Frank starts around the 32-minute mark.
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 Aug 28, 2011: After Recession
What happens if and when America recovers from the current economic crisis? Do things go back to normal? Not necessarily, and certainly not for everybody, says Don Peck, features editor of The Atlantic. In his new book, Pinched, he cites voluminous evidence that deep recessions leave lasting scars, and we may never be quite the same again. He says we need to take immediate action to limit the damage, and that the current narrow focus on government debt is wrongheaded. Economist Stephen Rose is less worried about America’s long-term prospects, but he too says government needs to do more to aid recovery.
Click the “play” arrow above to listen to the show, or 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 August 21, 2011. High at Harvard (from Feb. 2010)
Summer rerun season continues. This time it’s my interview from 2010 with Don Lattin, author of The Harvard Psychedelic Club, as well as Harvard alum and club member Paul Lee. More here.
Show for July 3, 2011. Celebrating In(ter)dependence Day
Stories about becoming American: where we come from, how we got here, the connections we make and the connections we keep, at home and abroad. In part 1, KUSP’s Sean Rameswaram joins Team America and swears some oaths. In part 2, filmmaker Alexandra Pelosi attends naturalization ceremonies in all 50 states, meeting new US citizens. In part 3, Mwende Hahesy, also of KUSP, pays a visit to her mother’s homeland and reflects on the relationship of family and nationality.
Citizen Sean, fully naturalized. Mwende in Kenya with her grandmother Esther.
Click the “play” arrow above to listen to the show, or 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 June 19, 2011. Historian Peter Kenez.
Peter Kenez has written about some of the watershed events of the 20th century in books such as A History of the Soviet Union from the Beginning to the End. He’s also witnessed some of that history first-hand. We sat down to talk about his very interesting life. Though Peter in his self-effacing way tends to downplay the drama, the story is plenty compelling: growing up Jewish in Nazi- and then Soviet-controlled Hungary, fleeing Hungary after the abortive revolution of 1956 and starting a new life in the U.S. We also discussed his book-in-progress on the Holocaust.
Click the “play” arrow above to listen to the show, or 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 May 29, 2011. Brooke Gladstone and The Influencing Machine
Yes, there’s a lot to loathe in today’s often sloppy, tawdry, woefully compromised news coverage, but who’s to blame? Brooke Gladstone has been keeping tabs on the media for the past decade and a half, first as NPR’s media reporter and now as co-host of WNYC’s On The Media. Her new illustrated history book traces the evolution of modern journalism, its failings and achievements and society’s role therein.
Click the “play” arrow above to listen to the interview, or download the MP3 here.
The Influencing Machine: Brooke Gladstone on the Media from WW Norton on Vimeo.
Show for May 15, 2011. Committed to Memory: Trimpin and the Gurs Zyklus
The Gurs prison camp in southern France didn’t rank with the most notorious Nazi concentration camps. There were no gas chambers or ovens. But conditions were bad enough for the thousands of Jews interned there, and the lack of a fitting memorial has long troubled the German-born sound artist Trimpin. His latest work, the Gurs Zyklus (the Gurs Cycle), commemorates this little-known chapter of the Holocaust with an elaborate stage performance, featuring some of Trimpin’s fanciful musical inventions. I talked to participants on the eve of the piece’s premier at Stanford University. Included are interviews with Trimpin, director/performer Rinde Eckert, Gurs survivor Manfred Wildman, and Victor Rosenberg, whose grandparents and uncle were imprisoned at Gurs. Also included: some of the sounds of the Gurs Cycle, such as the fire organ, shown here:
Click the “play” arrow above to listen to the show, or download the MP3 here.
Show for April 3, 2011. The View From the Cockpit: Combat Pilot Jason Armagost
Lieutenant Colonel Jason Armagost of the US Air Force fired some of the opening shots of the Iraq War as he piloted a B2 bomber over Baghdad. He’s also a writer and serious reader, who carried a small library of classic fiction, essays and poetry with him on that flight. He talks with us about his experiences, about his role in the war and how literature helps him make sense of it all.
Click the “play” arrow above to listen to the interview, or download the MP3 here.
Read Jason Armagost’s essay Things to Pack When You’re Bound for Baghdad (pdf)
Show for March 13, 2011. Jasmin Darznik: The Good Daughter.
Jasmin Darznik emigrated to the US from Iran when she was three and grew up knowing little about her Iranian family history. After her father’s death, her mother began to open up. She dictated a series of cassette tapes for Jasmin, illuminating her own extraordinary life and the lives of many Iranian women over the last half-century. We discuss Jasmin’s book The Good Daughter: A Memoir of My Mother’s Hidden Life.
Click the “play” arrow above to listen to the interview, or download the MP3 here.
Show for Feb. 20, 2011. The Past Isn’t Even Past: Kinan and Luis Valdez
Luis Valdez, playwright and founder of El Teatro Campesino, and his son Kinan, also a writer, actor and theater director, discuss Luis’s play Mummified Deer. The play is currently being directed by Kinan for the Theater Arts Department at U.C. Santa Cruz. It’s a story of family secrets, the return of the repressed—including a bloody and little-known chapter of Mexican history—and the complexities of identity. Luis and Kinan also talk about their own family history, their lives in the theater and Luis’s aesthetic of rascuachismo (listen to the interview for the translation).
Click the “play” arrow above to listen to the interview, or download the MP3 here.
More on Mummified Deer performances at UC Santa Cruz.
Visit El Teatro Campesino’s website.
Bonus info: during the interview, Kinan Valdez mentioned the influence of the carpa tradition. Read about it here.
