Radio Curious

The exodus of approximately six million black people from the American South between 1915 and 1970 had a significant role in setting the stage of the civil rights movement of the early 1960s. Many of the children of those who left the south participated in desegregation efforts which included the Freedom Rides and lunch counter sit-ins. The Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965 which attempted to resolve employment discrimination and define voting rights, only changed the law. Many young blacks however did not see changes in their everyday life.

The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense was born out of this disillusionment. Although infiltrated and feared by the F.B.I., the Black Panther Party pioneered social and community programs, including free medical clinics, free meals, and educational programs.

Our guest in this edition of Radio Curious is Columbia University Sociology and Gender Studies Professor Alondra Nelson, author of “Body and Soul: The Black Panther Party and the Fight Against Medical Discrimination.”

We visited by phone from her Office in New York City, on February 13, 2012 and began our conversation when I asked her to describe the Black Panther Party.

The book she recommends is “Crave Radiance: New and Selected Poems,” by Elizabeth Alexander.

Professor Nelson’s website is http://www.alondranelson.com.

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One man’s personal experience in recognizing his homosexuality, is the subject of this program.  Until the mid 1970s homosexuality was considered by many people to be a mental disorder and/or a crime, as it still is in some personal and political belief systems.  Homosexual people sometimes were housed in mental institutions, given medication and suffered an array of treatment methods, including shock therapy and other forms of behavior modification.

Professor Robert Dole, our guest in this edition of Radio Curious, was one of many individuals subjected to behavior modification of that period in time. In his book, “How to Make a Success of Your Schizophrenia,” he explains how the “treatment” he endured as an attempt to alter his homosexual preference made him schizophrenic.  His personal memoir describes his experiences growing up in the 1960s as a gay man, his institutionalization at the McLean Hospital in Massachusetts, the schizophrenia that consumed him as a result of his treatment, his self-led recovery, partially based on a spiritual experience, and his subsequent extraordinary life in academia.

Professor Dole, who is fluent in seven languages, teaches English as a Foreign Language at the University of Chicoutimi in rural Quebec, Canada, where he has lived for 30 plus years.  He and I visited by phone from his office at the University of Chicoutimi on November 4, 2011 and began our conversation when I asked to describe the schizophrenia he experienced.

The books Professor Robert Dole recommends are: “The Death of Ivan Ilych,” by Leo Tolstoy and any book from Stefan Zweig.

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Radio Curious host Barry Vogel visits with his law school friend and Peace Corps cohort, Sam Farr, Congressman from Santa Cruz and Monterey Counties, California.  They discuss the political climate the new Tea Party members in Congress since the current session began in January 2011.  They also discuss the Peace Corps and the burgeoning war debt, and the House leadership’s move to eliminate the recycling program and prohibit education about climate change and energy conservation from public schools.

This conversation with Rep. Sam Farr was recorded in his Washington D.C. office September 29, 2011.

The book Rep. Sam Farr recommends is, “Home Grown Democrat: A Few Plain Thoughts From the Heart of America,” by Garrison Keillor.

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Buzzy Martin began teaching music to at risk kids in Juvenile Hall.  He then taught guitar in San Quentin Prison for three and a half years, where he gained a unique “insiders” perspective about prison life, prisoners, and the guards.  His book, “Don’t Shoot!  I’m the Guitar Man,” chronicles his experiences teaching prison inmates, including rapists, child molesters and murderers how to play the guitar.  Martin shares his experiences with incarcerated youth, to teach them that prison is not a “badge of honor,” and he reveals how music can be a universal language to open the hearts of people who may think they don’t have one.

Buzzy Martin’s memoir will be made into a movie.  His website is http://buzzymartin.com/

The interview with Buzzy Martin was recorded on October 11th, 2010.  The book he recommends is, “The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom, A Toltec Wisdom Book,” by don Miguel Ruiz.

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Carnism is the invisible belief system, or ideology, that conditions people to eat certain animals. It is the opposite of vegetarianism or veganism; “carn” means “flesh” or “of the flesh” and “ism” denotes a belief system. Most people view eating animals as a given, rather than a choice; in meat-eating cultures around the world people typically don’t think about why they find the meat of some animals disgusting and the meat of other animals appetizing, or why they eat any animals at all.  This is the topic of a conversation with Melanie Joy, Ph.D., author of , “Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs and Wear Cows, an Introduction to Carnism.”

The interview with Melanie Joy, Ph.D. was recorded in Ukiah, California on November 29, 2010.  Joy’s website is www.carnism.com The book she recommends is, “Food Revolution: How your diet can save your life and our world,” by John Robbins.

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As part of our ongoing series of community radio around the world, Radio Curious speaks with Maca Munoz, an organizer with Palabra Radio.  Radio Curious host and producer Barry Vogel and Maca Munoz both attended the 10th international congress of Community Radio Broadcasters in La Plata, Argentina, along with approximately 500 other community radio delegates from 86 countries who gathered to discuss community radio around the world.

Palabra Radio is an organization that facilitates low power radio station projects in the America’s, from immigrant communities in the United States to rural indigenous communities in Latin America.  Palabra Radio provides training, technical support and other assistance to communities, collectives and social organizations that want to operate a low-power community radio station.  Their website is www.palabraradio.org

The interview with Maca Munoz was recorded on November 12, 2010 in La Plata, Argentina.  The book Maca Munoz recommends is, “Open Veins of Latin America,” by Eduardo Galeano.

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Radio Curious host and producer Barry Vogel and associate producer Janet Mendell attended the 10th international congress of the World Association of Community Broadcasters, known as AMARC.  AMARC is a network of more than 4,000 community radio stations, in more than 100 countries.

Founded in 1983, its goal is to democratize the media sector. AMARC advocates for the right to communicate at the international, national, local and neighborhood levels. It defends and promotes the interests of the community radio movement through global solidarity, networking and cooperation. The 10th AMARC congress was held near Buenos Aires, Argentina the second week of November 2010, with 500 delegates from 86 countries present.

In addition to presenting a workshop on interviewing skills, Radio Curious interviewed conference delegates from several different countries. In this edition of Radio Curious, the first in a series about local community radio around the world, we visit with Fadi Abuzada, a community radio activist in Palestine and AHM Bazlur Rahman, the CEO of the Bangladesh NGO’s Network for Radio and Communication.

The interviews were recorded in November 2010, in La Plata, Argentina.

Fadi Abuzada recommends the movie, The Little Town of Bethlehem.

AHM Bazlur Rahman recommends visiting his organizations website, www.bnnrc.net, instead of reading a book.

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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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