Radio Curious

Continuing our series on the funeral industry in the United States we visit with the owner of a mortuary in a rural northern California town.  As professionals describe their work and philosophy, George Leinen, owner of Empire Mortuary in Ukiah, California since 2000,  joins us in this edition of Radio Curious to share his thoughts and experiences.  We discuss funeral industry trade associations, business practices in some sectors of the industry, and how our guest’s philosophy evolved.

In this program, recorded in the studios of Radio Curious on September 21, 2013 we began our visit when I asked George Leinen to describe embalming,  what it is, and why it’s done.

The book George Leinen recommends is “The American Way of Death,” by Jessica Mitford.

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The traditional rights of families to care for their dead is the topic of this, the first of two interviews on the funeral industry in the United States, with Lisa Carlson and Joshua Slocum, co-author’s of “Final Rights: Reclaiming the American Way of Death.”

“Final Rights” tells the story of the loss of control over what to do at the time of a death in the family, the euphemisms regarding death, and the laws and regulations in each of the 50 states and Washington, D.C.  The chapter “Tricks of the Funeral Trade” tells how, when grieving the loss of a loved one, many people fail to compare prices, and become vulnerable to suggestions that their love for the deceased is measured by the amount of money paid for the funeral, the casket and the burial.   

Lisa Carlson directs the Funeral Ethics Organization.  Josh Slocum directs the Funeral Consumers Alliance. 

In our first interview with Lisa Carlson, recorded from her home in Vermont, on August 26, 2013, she describes how the common lore of what to do at the time of death has been lost.

 Lisa Carlson and Josh Slocum are co-authors of “Final Rights: Reclaiming the American Way of Death.” The books website is finalrights.org.  The books she recommends are those written by John Grisham.   

Our interview with Josh Slocum will be posted here soon.  More information on this topic may be found on our website’s law department.

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Agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation have a history of illegal break-ins to homes and offices as well as conducting wiretaps without a search warrant.  In the years when J. Edgar Hoover was the Director of the FBI, these warrantless break-ins came to be known as “black-bag jobs”.

This archive edition of Radio Curious is a December 1995 interview with Wesley Swearingen a former FBI agent and author of “FBI Secrets: An Agent’s Expose.”  This book describes some of the “black-bag” warrantless searches in which he was involved, and his opinion of those activities.  Swearingen concludes his book by saying that the Hoover era will continue to haunt the FBI because Hoover knowingly undermined the United States Constitution. When I spoke with Wesley Swearingen from his home near Tucson, Arizona, in December 1995, I asked him what he meant by that.

The book Wesley Swearingen recommends is “Official and Confidential: The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover,” by Anthony Summers.

Originally Broadcast: December 20, 1995

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In the 1970s and 80s the use of the telephone or credit card, could have been and probably was recorded and saved in an international database called Echelon.

This is the second part of a two part series on international spying, recorded in 1999 with Mike Frost, author of “Spy World: Inside the Canadian and American Intelligence Establishments.” We talked about Echelon, the code name given to the capability to intercept all of the word’s communications all the time. Mike Frost worked for over 30 years as a spy for the American and Canadian Governments. He wrote the book, which describes many of his experiences, because he felt the privacy rights of innocent people were then regularly violated. I spoke with Mike Frost in April 1999, from his home near Ottawa, Canada and I asked him to tell us about Echelon.

Mike Frost recommends the movie “Wag the Dog.”

Part one of our conversation with Mike Frost is here.

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The fact that governments spy on each other is no secret. The fact that they also collect data about lives of millions of innocent citizens, world wide, may be unknown to many people.  Mike Frost, the author of “Spy World: Inside the Canadian and American Intelligence Establishments”, worked as a spy for over 30 years. Mike traveled world wide, setting up devices to intercept what were thought to be secret international communications. Mike Frost has since retired as a spy and has many thoughts and considerations about his former job that he is willing to share with us.  Our discussion led to a two-part series, recorded and originally broadcast in April of 1999.

The movie Mike Frost recommends is “October Sky.”

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Radio Curious revisits a 1994 conversation with Thomas Jefferson, 3rd president of the United States as portrayed by Chautauqua scholar Clay Jenkinson.  

Thomas Jefferson, the third President of the United States of America, stands as one of the lead political theorists of American history.  His ward republican theory required an agrarian population, a government originating in the individual household, and a consistently questioning and rebellious public.My guest in this edition of Radio Curious is Mr. Jefferson, personified by Clay Jenkinson.We discussed what has gone wrong in the US since Mr. Jefferson was President and addressed some of his concepts of what are necessary for a democracy.

The book Thomas Jefferson recommends is “The History of the Peloponnesian War,” by Thuclydides.

The book C. Jenkinson recommends is “In the Absence of the Sacred,” by Jerry Mander.

Originally Broadcast: May 21, 1994

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The film “We Still Live Here,” tells the story of the revival of an indigenous Native American language that was not spoken or written for over 100 years. Our guest in this edition of Radio Curious is Anne Makepeace, the writer and producer of the documentary film.

The Wampanoag people of Southeastern Massachusetts ensured the survival of the Pilgrims in New England, and lived to regret it. After nearly 400 years of forced cultural assimilation the Wampanoags have brought their language home again.

Radio Curious visited with Anne Makepeace from her home in northwestern Connecticut on April 29, 2013, and she began by pronouncing “We Still Live Here” in Wampanoag.

The films Anne Makepeace recommends are “The Beasts of the Southern Wild” and “Dersu Uzala.”

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One of the greatest early conservationists of America was a Scottish immigrant named John Muir who, as a young boy, went first to Wisconsin and then later, as a young man in the 1860s, he moved onward to California. A friend of president Theodore Roosevelt, he successfully sought to preserve the spectacular Yosemite Valley and the Sierra Nevada range, it was joy in his lifetime. Yet the loss of the equally spectacular Hetch Hetch Valley to a dam to provide water for San Francisco was his greatest sorrow. John Muir founded the Sierra Club and is credited with founding the National Park system in the United States.

I visited with John Muir in the person of Lee Stetson in the studios of Radio Curious in October of 1995 and discussed his life and observations.

Originally Broadcast: October 1995.

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Do we really know the people around us? Our children? Our family? Our friends? Or are we strangers in our own community? Mary Catherine Bateson, the author of a book entitled, “Full Circles: Overlapping Lives, Culture and Generation in Transition,” believes that we are strangers. She describes us as immigrants in time, rather than space.In this interview from the archives of Radio Curious, recorded in April 2000, we visit with Mary Catherine Bateson, the daughter of two distinguished anthropologists, Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson.

Originally Broadcast: April 17, 2000.

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