Radio Curious

“Sex and Punishment: Four Thousand Years of Judging Desire” is a story of the struggle to regulate the most powerful engine of human behavior. This engine that drives the human species is substantially different in us than in other mammals. In our million years of evolution, physically and socially we have developed the ability to communicate ideas and the expected, if not “required” behaviors of women and men and children regarding sexual thought, expression and procreation. The history of these ever changing definitions and controls of this fundamental aspect of our lives are visited in this two part series of conversations with Eric Berkowitz, recorded in the Radio Curious studios on December 29, 2012.

Part One discusses the effect the topic of sex has on other people; the development of laws dealing with adultery and women as property; enjoyment of sex; and the way humans dress compared to other animals.

Part Two discusses the issues of young women having sexual relationships with considerably older men; the intention and effect of religion in relationship to sex; prostitution; and same sex intimacy.

The books Eric Berkowitz recommends are “Nemisis,” by Philip Roth, and “Love and Exile: An Autobiographical Trilogy,” by Issac Bashevis Singer.

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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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There are two kinds of Holocaust survivors:  Those who didn’t die yet could no longer experience pleasure and those who yearned to feel alive and were able to create anew.

In this edition of Radio Curious we visit with Maya Finkel Schwartz, born in France in 1932 to Jewish parents from Poland.  After being separated from her father at the beginning of World War Two, her mother had the foresight to introduce then seven year old Maya to as many social workers and nuns as her mother could locate.  It was these people who Maya credits with saving her life as they sheltered her in barns and convents.  She never saw her parents after the war.  As an older teen-ager she arrived in Los Angeles, California where she still lives after a decades long career teaching high-school, and later as a singer, as we shall hear.

The story of Maya Finkel Schwartz is one of 52 childhood accounts of the horrors perpetrated by Nazi Germany documented in the book “How We Survived:  52 Personal Stories by Child Survivors of the Holocaust.”  More information about this book is available at childsurvivorsla.org.

Maya Schwartz visited the studios of Radio Curious on April 20, 2012.  Maya shared her story and a song, accompanied by her son Michael Charnas.

Her theme is the “joy of life,” which is where we began our conversation.

The story of Maya Finkel Schwartz is found in the book she recommends.  She wrote one of 52 childhood accounts of the horrors perpetrated by Nazi Germany documented in the book “How We Survived:  52 Personal Stories by Child Survivors of the Holocaust.”

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As we all know every action has an equal and opposite reaction.  The reaction, however is not necessarily equal in time or unity.  It’s often spread over time with serial impacts.

In this edition of Radio Curious we focus on the treatment of workers in the automobile industry in the United States beginning in the early years of the 20^th century.  The story is portrayed in “Brothers on the Line,” a film about Walter, Ray and Victor Reuther, three brothers from West Virginia who organized the United Auto Workers Union beginning in the 1920s.  With access to the National Archives, the Wayne State University Labor History Library and family records, Sasha Reuther, Victor’s grandson, directed the film.  It chronicles the working conditions and the successful strikes at the big three auto plants in Michigan; the political power of the United Auto Workers Union, and its involvement in the civil rights movement.  It also explains why Detroit, Michigan became the richest city in the United States in the 1950s.

“Brothers On The Line” will be shown June 3, 2012 at the Mendocino Film Festival, in Mendocino, California.

Sasha Reuther and I visited by phone from his office in New York City on May 7, 2012.  We began when I asked him what happened once the automobile became a useful, if not necessary tool of life.

The book that Sasha Reuther recommends is “U.A.W. and the Heyday of American Liberalism, 1945 -1968,” by Kevin Boyle.

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Imagine Darya, a twelve year old girl in a remote village of Afghanistan.  Her father forces her to marry a drug lord as part payment for an opium drug trade.  Her father is not home and she is about to be taken from her family.  Desperately, her hands trembling, she implores you, a complete stranger:  “Please don’t let him take me.”

In this edition of Radio Curious we visit Fariba Nawa, author of “Opium Nation: Child Brides, Drug Lords and One Woman’s Journey Through Afghanistan.”  Fariba Nawa was ten years old when her family fled Afghanistan shortly before the Soviet invasion in 1979.  Eighteen years later Fariba Nawa met twelve year old Darya when she returned to her native Afghanistan as an Afghan-American investigative journalist.  Her book tells Darya’s story, and reveals what the Afghan opium drug trade is doing to her native land in the midst of war.

Fariba Nawa and I visited by phone from her home near San Francisco, California on January 23, 2012. We began with her description of coming to the United States and flight from Afghanistan.

Fariba Nawa’s website is www.faribanawa.com. The book she recommends is “Day of Honey: A Memoir of Food, Love and War,” by Annia Ciezaldo.

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Not such a long time ago, time was an arbitrary measure decided by each community without consideration of other localities.

In this edition of Radio Curious, we visit with Clark Blaise, author of “Time Lord:  Sir Sandford Fleming and the Creation of Standard Time.”  Although this program was recorded a long time ago, we are airing it for the first time in the last week of 2011.

In the mid 19th century, with the advent of continent-spanning railroads and transatlantic steamers, the myriad of local times became a mind-boggling obstacle and the rational ordering of time to some became an urgent priority for transportation and commerce.  Standard Time was established in 1884, leading to an international uniformity for telling time.  Arguably, the uniformity of time was a “crowning achievement” of Victorian progressiveness, one of the few innovations of that time to have survived unchanged into the 21st century.

Under the leadership of Sir Sandford Fleming, amid political rancor of delegates from industrializing nations, an agreement was reached to establish the Greenwich Prime Meridian passing through Greenwich, England and the International Date Line that wanders it way through the Pacific Ocean.  The 1884 agreement resulted in a uniform system of world-wide time zones that exists today.

I had a good time visiting with Clark Blaise in the spring of 2001 as we discussed how our current notion of time was established.  We began when I asked him to explain what standard time is.

This interview with Clark Blaise, author of “Time Lord: Sir Sandford Fleming and the Creation of Standard Time,” was recorded in the spring of 2001 and first broadcast in the last week of 2011.

The book Clark Blaise recommends is “Time of Our Singing,” by Richard Powers.

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Socrates’ Way: Seven Masterkeys to Using Your Mind to the Utmost

Socrates of Athens, who lived before the Common Era, is respected as one of the greatest independent thinkers of all time. Socrates himself refused to be recognized as a teacher. Instead, Plato, his well-known student and reporter of Socrates’ dialogues, tells us he asked to be seen as a “midwife of ideas.” Socrates’ passion to achieve self-understanding, and the proper ways to live, continues to be studied and emulated to this day.

Socrates recommends “The Trojan Women,” by Euripides. Ron Gross recommends “The Clouds,” by Aristophanes.

Originally Broadcast: January 13, 2003

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Biological warfare is the use of weapons that cause death by disease. The largest and most sophisticated biological weapons program in the world, which cultivated and stockpiled anthrax virus, brucellosis, the plague and genetically altered strains of small pox, employed more than 6000 people at over 100 facilities in the former Soviet Union. For 15 years, ending in 1992, Dr. Ken Alibek, a doctor of medicine and a Ph.D. in microbiology, was the scientific leader of Bio-Preparat, the civilian branch of that secret biological weapons program, masquerading as a pharmaceutical company. In 1992, Dr. Alibek defected to the United States. Several years later, he wrote “Bio-Hazard,” a book detailing the development of biological weapons, the horrors of his former life and why he chose to defect. This is a two-part program with Dr. Ken Alibek, recorded in 1999.

In part two, Dr. Ken Alibek discusses the morality of biological warfare.

Dr. Ken Alibek recommends “Prevent,” by Richard Preston & “Vector,” by Robin Cook.

Originally Broadcast: May 11, 1999 & May 18, 1999

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Another little publicized war, involving the indiscriminate killing and torture of people in the Nuba Mountains of southern Sudan, in northeast Africa, is our topic in this edition of Radio Curious.

Our guest is Professor Samuel Totten, a genocide scholar based at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville. He was last in the Nuba Mountains in January, 2011 conducting research for a new book, “Genocidal Actions Against the Nuba Mountains People: Interviews with Survivors of Mass Starvation and Other Atrocities.”  He served as one of the 24 investigators with the U.S. Atrocities Documentation Project in eastern Chad.  His most recent book is “An Oral and Documentary History of the Darfur Genocide.”

This interview with Dr. Totten was recorded from his home in Fayetteville, Arkansas, on June 10, 2011.  We began when I asked him to describe the situation in the Nuba Mountains of Sudan.

The book he recommends is one that he wrote and was just published entitled “We Cannot Forget:  Interviews with Survivors of Genocide in Rwanda.”

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