Radio Curious

Until September 11, 2001, The Triangle Shirtwaste Fire on March 25, 1911 was the deadliest workplace disaster in the history of New York City.  David Von Drehle, a political writer for the Washington Post, is the author of “Triangle, the Fire That Changed America.” It’s a detailed examination of how one event changed the course of the 20^th century politics and labor relations.

At the end of his book Von Drehle concludes that the workers who fought the management in 1909 and died in the fire of 1911, where they were locked in the building during the fire, did not die in vain.

This conversation with David Von Drehle, was recorded in September, 2003 from his office in New York.

The book David Von Drehle recommends is, “Plunkitt of Tammany Hall,” by William Riordan.

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When the polar ice caps melt, sea level will rise.  That’s happened earlier in the history of the world, and it appears it will happen again.

In this edition of Radio Curious, we bring you a two part series on global warming and sea level rise, with Peter D. Ward, a paleontologist and professor of biology and earth and space sciences at the University of Washington in Seattle. He is the author of “The Flooded Earth:  Our Future in a World Without Ice Caps,” in which he describes expected condition in 2050, 2300 and 2500.

This series with Professor Peter D. Ward, was recorded on August 2, 2010, from his office in Seattle, Washington.  In part 1, Ward begins with a description of what will happen when the level of the sea rises. In part 2, we begin with a discussion of why, in the face of rather clear evidence, there continues to be a denial of global warming.

The books Peter Ward recommends are, “An Inconvenient Truth,”  by Al Gore and  “Weather Makers,” and any other book by Tim Flannery.

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In this edition of Radio Curious we visit again with Spencer Wells and discuss his new book, “Pandora’s Seed: The Unforeseen Cost of Civilization,” published n 2010.  Our interview is a follow-up to a 2004 conversation about his book, “The Journey of Man: A Genetic Odyssey,” in which Wells traces our routes as small bands of hunter-gatherers when our ancestors walked out of Africa approximately 60,000 years ago and began populating the world.  Our 2004 interview may be found here.

“Pandora’s Seed” tells the story of what we humans, with our hunter-gatherer biological construct have created in the past 10,000 years. These multiple live style changes have produced what we call “civilization,” with systems and mechanisms that will not allow us to continue the life-styles to are emulated by many people world-wide, and exploited by those who have access to them. In other words we can’t last much longer doing what we are doing without radically reducing the way we all live, if not outright killing our species.

Spencer Well is an Explorer-in-Residence at the National Geographic Society in Washington, D.C., where he leads the Genographic Project, which is collecting and analyzing hundreds of thousands of DNA samples from people around the wold in order to decipher how our ancestors populated the world.   He is also a professor a Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. In this interview with Spencer Wells, recorded on July 19, 2010, we began by describing the changes necessary for our species survival.

The book Spencer Wells recommends is “The Histories,” by Herodotus, the 5th century B.C. Greek historian.

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A sports icon of the first half of the 20^th century, Jim Thorpe, was a Native American athlete who rose to athletic stardom at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, winning two gold medals at the 1912 Summer Olympics and continued, despite some controversy, to gain fame in professional baseball and football. In this edition of Radio Curious we visit with Tom Weidlinger, the director and co-writer and co-producer of the movie “Jim Thorpe, The World’s Greatest Athlete.”  Tom Weidlinger spoke from his home in the San Francisco bay area on Sunday, May 30^th 2010.  I began by asking him “Who is Jim Thorpe?”

The book  Tom Weidlinger recommends is “Cutting For Stone” by Abraham Verghese.

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Several weeks ago I had the good fortune of seeing “If Animals Could Talk,” a movie made by Jane Goodall.  A segment was about The MacLaren Youth Correctional Facility in Woodburn, Oregon. The boys incarcerated there have committed serious criminal offenses, some of them are given an opportunity to train dogs, develop relationships with the dogs and in doing so learn  responsibility, patience and respect for other living creatures. There is a zero recidivism rate among the juvenile inmates who spend time training dogs at MacLaren.  Joan Dalton is the founder and executive director of Project Pooch, a non-profit corporation linked with MacLaren.  Joan Dalton and I visited by phone from her home near Portland, Oregon on February 15, 2010. We began our conversation when I asked her to tell us how Project Pooch came about and then about Project Pooch itself.

The books that Joan Dalton recommends are “Children And Animals: Exploring The Roots Of Kindness And Cruelty,” by Frank R. Ascione and “Rescue Ink: How Ten Guys Saved Countless Dogs and Cats, Twelve Horses, Five Pigs, One Duck,and a Few Turtles,” by Rescue Ink and Denise Flaim.  You may visit the Project Pooch website at www.pooch.org.

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In this edition of Radio Curious we visit with Helen Menasian, director of the Redwood Valley Outdoor Education Project, located north of Ukiah, California. Ukiah is a small town in a long narrow valley that has been occupied by the Pomo People for about 11,000 years. About 150 years ago when Europeans and other foreign settlers arrived  the wilderness of the Ukiah valley was interrupted by pavement, waterworks and mechanical noise.

The book “The Last Child In The Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature Deficit Disorder,” by Richard Louv describes some of the central ethos behind outdoor education for children. The book reminds us that parents have the power to ensure that their son or daughter will not be “the last child in the woods,” and discusses the importance of the nature-child reunion. During this conversation we hear how the Redwood Valley Outdoor Education Project seeks to regain that connection. We began by asking Helen Menasian to explain just what the project does. This interview was recorded in the studios of Radio Curious, Ukiah, California on February 8th 2010.

The book Helen Menasian recommends is “The Last Child In The Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature Deficit Disorder,” by Richard Louv.

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The fundamental human drive to procreate and reproduce our own kind is also a ticking clock. The female biological clock, though varying woman to woman, as we know, more often than not unwittingly controls root emotions and family life. As many women’s choices in life have widened and changed in the past half century their clocks still tick. In this edition of Radio Curious we visit with Jody Gehrman, writer of “The Ticking Clock,” and actress/researcher Deborah Edelman. Their play is based upon material collected in interviews and surveys with over 150 women; mothers, non-mothers, adoptive mothers, surrogates, pregnant teenage women and more, and queries how their clocks have shaped their lives.

This interview was recorded on January 29th 2010 in the studios of Radio Curious in Ukiah, California. I began by asking Jody Gehrman to explain the play and how the interviews were collected.

The book that Jody Gehrman recommends is “Nocturne,” by Diane Armstrong.

The book that Deborah Edelman recommends is “The Omnivore’s Dilema,” by Michael Pollan.

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25 years before the Battle Of The Little Bighorn, 40 years before the Battle Of Wounded Knee, there was the Bloody Island Massacre in the spring of 1850 in Lake County, California, near a community which is now called Kelseyville. The massacre of the Lake County Pomo people, which was an immediate prelude to the massacre of the Mendocino County Pomo people in the Yokayo valley (where the community of Ukiah, the county seat of Mendocino County is now situated), was in retaliation for the Pomo’s murder of Charles Stone and Andrew Kelsey, brought about by the way Stone and Kelsey and other European settlers of that time treated the Pomo people. Ukiah resident Bill Walls has written a play about the events that led up to the massacres – “A Time Before Dogs: A True Tale of Two Executions That Led To The Bloody Island Massacre”. This massacre occurred in 1850, the play however ends in December 1849. Our guests in this edition of Radio Curious are Bill Walls and Denise Kawkeka, they read portions of the play and talk about the issues that led up to the massacre. I visited with Bill Walls and Denise Kawkeka in the studios of Ukiah Valley Community Television and began by asking Bill Walls what drew his attention to the background of this play.

This interview was recorded in the studios of Ukiah Valley Community Television on January 18th 2010.

The book that Denise Kawkeka recommends is “The Mutant Message Down Under,” by Marlo Morgan. Bill Walls recommends “Homer and Langley,” by E.L. Doctorow.

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What is the importance forgetting has played throughout human history? What will be the effects on society, relationships and humanity now that so many aspects of our lives are digitally preserved? Viktor Mayer-Schönberger author of “Delete: The Virtue Of Forgetting In The Digital Age,” and guest on this edition of Radio Curious has some insight into these questions. He argues that the capacity for eternal memory can have unanticipated and often unwanted consequences. The potentially humiliating content on Facebook forever enshrined in cyberspace and Google’s search memory of the content and time of all our on-line searches may in the future reveal portions of our past we have entirely forgotten and would everyone else did too.

In this two part edition of Radio Curious with Viktor Mayer-Schönberger, we explore some of the ways in which our personal information, data, conversations and experiences are forgotten by us as individuals. We also consider the future potential effects on society of digitally preserved information, as well as the consequences of remembering what is sometimes best forgotten.

Viktor Mayer-Schönberger is director of the Information and Innovation Policy Research Centre at the National University of Singapore and author of the book “Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting In The Digital Age.” He spoke with us by phone from his home in Singapore on January 4th 2010. We began by asking what effect the imbalance of remembering and forgetting in the digital age has on our lives.

The search engine mentioned which allows a search history to be deleted is www.ask.com. The website which allows you to share information and attach a set expiration date after which the information will be deleted is www.drop.io

The book Viktor Mayer-Schönberger recommends is “Collected Fictions,” by Jorge Luis Borges. The film he recommends is “The Lives Of Others,” directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck

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