Radio Curious

What is prayer, how is it done, and what good does it do?  The ability to mourn and grieve is one of the many things that distinguish humans from other animals, as is the ability to pray, or consciously not pray.  When life is good, people often pray less than when times are tough and tough times occasionally visit all of us, with or without prayer.  Our guest is Rabbi Naomi Levy is the author of “To Begin Again, the Journey Toward Comfort Strength and Faith in Difficult Times.”

Rabbi Naomi Levy recommends “The God of Small Things,” by Arandati Roy.

This program was originally broadcast in 1999.

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Songs of a political nature are not surprising given the similarities and parallel community structures of politics and religions with each community promoting the behaviors and concepts it supports as being the most appropriate.  The art of Political Song which has been crafted and heard world wide since time immemorial is the topic of this edition of Radio Curious.

In this program we visit with singer–songwriter David Rovics, a veritable troubadour and folk musician of our time.  He visited the studios of Radio Curious on December 9, 2012, and began our conversation when he described his work, his songs, and how he creates them.

The following is his biography taken from his website:  ”David Rovics grew up in a family of classical musicians in Wilton, Connecticut, and became a fan of populist regimes early on. By the early 90′s he was a full-time busker in the Boston subways and by the mid-90′s he was traveling the world as a professional flat-picking rabble-rouser. These days David lives in Portland, Oregon and tours regularly on four continents, playing for audiences large and small at cafes, pubs, universities, churches, union halls and protest rallies. He has shared the stage with a veritable who’s who of the left in two dozen countries, and has had his music featured on Democracy Now!, BBC, Al-Jazeera and other networks. His essays are published regularly on CounterPunch and elsewhere, and the 200+ songs he makes available for free on the web have been downloaded more than a million times. Most importantly, he’s really good. He will make you laugh, he will make you cry, he will make the revolution irresistible.”

Based in Portland, Oregon, David Rovics spends most of his time on tour.  The book he recommends is “Raising Our Children, Raising Ourselves,” by Naomi Aldort.

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Is the concept of  “mother blame” a method to control women?  Is motherhood really a fearsome job?  Will a mother’s mistake or inattention damage a child?  Radio Curious discusses these questions and more with Janna Malamud Smith, clinical psychotherapist and author of “A Potent Spell:  Mother Love and the Power of Fear.”

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Blessed with a sense of absurdity, journalist and satirist Paul Krassner was characterized by the FBI as “a raving, unconfined nut.” He liked that and incorporated those words into the title of his revised auto-biography, “Confessions of a Raving, Unconfined Nut:  Misadventures in the Counterculture.” Krassner wrote a lot about his personal philosophy, so when we spoke by phone on November 24, 2012, from his home near Palm Springs, California, we began when I asked him to tell us about his philosophy, what it is, and how it came to be.

The book Paul Krassner recommends is “Johnny Got His Gun” by Dalton Trumbo.

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What does that word mean?  Why don’t you hear it on this radio station?  Can you use it in Scrabble?  Do you want some answers?   If so, don’t touch your radio dial even if your radio doesn’t have one.

Our guest in this edition of Radio Curious is the Steven R, Kleinedler, the Supervising Editor of the 5^th Edition of the American Heritage English Language Dictionary.

Curious as I sometimes am, I wanted to know where all the words came from in the 2,084 pages of the American Heritage Dictionary.   So, when Steven Kleinedler and I visited by phone from his home near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on November 16, 2012, we began when I asked to explain the origin of word lists that we now call dictionaries.

The book that Steve Kleinedler recommends is “Cryptonomicon,”  by Neil Stevenson.

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Consumer behavior is the topic of this edition of Radio Curious in a conversation with Geoffrey Miller, professor of evolutionary psychology at the University of New Mexico, and the author of “Spent: Sex, Evolution, and Consumer Behavior”.

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Life, culture and racism is the topic of this edition of Radio Curious, in conversation with attorney/novelist Martha McCabe, author of “Praise at Midnight.”

Martha McCabe worked as a civil rights and criminal trial lawyer in deep east Texas from 1974 to 1985.  Her goal was to pour the raw material from her personal experiences as a lawyer into her story.  It took Martha McCabe ten years to complete “Praise at Midnight,” her first novel.  The deeper level into which she fell during that ten year period was recognizing the importance of consciousness and self awareness in avoiding the projection of one’s own dark side onto other people and then killing them, not only on a local level, but an international level as well.

Martha McCabe and I have been associates, good friends and colleagues since 1969 when we met at the University of Santa Clara where I was a law student.

When I spoke with Martha McCabe from her home in San Antonio, Texas on July 29, 2006, we began with her description of the culture of deep east Texas when she lived there from 1974 to 1985.

The books she recommends are “Reading Lolita in Teheran” by Azar Nafisi and “Caballero: A Historical Novel” by Jovita Gonzalez and Eve Raleigh.

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We continue our conversation with Pulitzer winner Isabel Wilkerson, author of “The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration.”  In the years between 1915 and 1970 almost six million black American citizens from the south migrated to northern and western cities seeking freedom and a better life.

Wilkerson interviewed more than 1,000 people for her book. She is the first black woman to win the Pulitzer Prize and is a recipient of the George Polk Award and a John Simon Guggenheim Fellow. Her parents were part of the great migration, journeying from Georgia and southern Virginia to Washington D.C.

In part 2 of our conversation, recorded from her home near Atlanta, Georgia, on September 28, 2012, Isabel Wilkerson describes the inspiration behind her narrative non-fiction story of the six million African-Americans who migrated from the south between 1915 and 1970.

The books Isabel Wilkerson recommends are “The Ark of Justice,” by Kevin Boyle and “The Optimist’s Daughter,” by Eudora Welty.

Part one of our interview with Isabel Wilkerson is here.

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