Jean Feraca's Blog, host of Here On Earth

July 6-10 Programs

2009-07-04T13:21:00.000-07:00

Jean’s Pick of the Week: Bruce Adolphe on Self Comes to Mind: From the first moment I spied the headline in the New York Times: Music as the Evolution of Human Consciousness and read the review of the performance that took place at the Museum of Natural History in New York City the night before (ouch! I missed it by three blocks), I knew I wanted to do a program about it. We didn’t have the benefit of Hanna Damasio’s brain imagery to watch, but we did have the composer himself and his music, plus some of the best moments from the conversation that took place between Bruce, Antonio Damasio and Yo Yo Ma directly following the performance. Not as good as being there, but, all in all, pretty terrific. God bless radio.

Here’s what’s coming up on Here on Earth the first week in July:

Monday: Sex and the City (Beirut, that is): She’s very brave and very beautiful. Poet Joumana Haddad has launched Jasad in Beirut, a quarterly magazine in Arabic featuring sex and the human body that’s breaking all the taboos.

Tuesday: Biomimicry: Forget the notion that technology improves upon nature. Science writer Janine Benyus introduces us to pioneering engineers making technological breakthroughs by uncovering and copying nature's hidden marvels.

Wednesday: Travels Along the Camino De Santiago: An international bestseller, and soon to be released as a major motion picture, I’m Off Then is German comedian Hape Kerkeling’s account of his travails along the Camino De Santiago, Spain’s most traveled pilgrim’s route since the first century AD.

Thursday: President Obama will be giving his next big speech on July 11, this time from Ghana. Although it’s angered a lot of other African nations, the choice of Ghana seems calculated to reinforce the idea of Africa as a place of emergence rather than of despair since Ghana is Africa’s success story in terms of its economy and its democracy. Guest to be announced.

Friday: All about Ice Cream (repeat): Enjoying a cool sweet treat on a hot day is a beloved pastime for people around the world. We explore the history, culture, and flavors of ice cream in America, gelato in Italy, and kulfi in India.

Jean

June 29 - July 3 Programs

2009-06-26T19:56:00.000-07:00

Jean’s Pick of the Week: John Nichols nailed it on Monday’s show about Obama’s response to Iran when he predicted that the President would make a stronger statement before the week’s end. As it turned out, we had only to wait another 24 hours. And the for sheer fun, I really enjoyed Wednesday’s hilarious conversation with Jag Bhalla, author of I’m Not Hanging Noodles on Your Ears, about idioms from around the world. Contributions from callers were every bit as funny as those in his collection, eg: “I’m going to play chess with the Pope.” That’s Icelandic for “I have to go to the WC.”

Here’s what’s ahead on Here on Earth as we lean into the Fourth of July:

Monday: Persian Girls: Having grown up female in Iran just prior to the 1979 Revolution, Nahid Rachlin knows a thing or two about social unrest, Iranian politics and what the experience of both are like for women. Author of the memoir Persian Girls and a professor at the New School University, Nahid Rachlin joins us to provide context and insight into the current Iranian controversy.

Tuesday: Music of Human Consciousness: Musical inspiration can come from a lot of places but Composer Bruce Adolphe found the inspiration for his latest piece in a particularly unusual spot: the research of neuroscientist Antonio Damasio. Self Comes to Mind is the end product of this collaboration between scientist and musician and it was recently performed at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Video imagery and projected texts accompanied Yo-Yo Ma’s performance of the duo’s cello and percussion composition.

Wednesday: Flowers That Kill: Here on Earth listeners will remember UW-Madison anthropologist Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney for her groundbreaking work on Kamikaze Pilots, the ‘cherry blossoms’ of Japan. Emiko has been spending spring semester at the Library of Congress in D.C. where she just gave a lecture on Flowers that Kill comparing the Emperor’s symbolic use of cherry blossoms with the way Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler used roses for a similar purpose.

Thursday: Summer Reading from Words Without Borders: Editor Susan Harris and blogger Bud Parr share selections designed for those who want to know more about what’s going on in Pakistan, China, and Iran, and those who want to escape from them.

Food Friday: It’s strawberry season and French chef Monique Hooker is ready to teach us how to make a red, white, and blue strawberry pie for Fourth of July.

Wow! And I thought we were lightening up!

Have a great weekend and please keep listening!

Jean

2009-06-21T16:06:00.000-07:00

Jean’s Pick of the Week: Wednesday’s show with Margaret Wertheim on the amazing psychedelic Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef Project, a combination of feminine handicraft, non-Euclidean geometry, beauty, science, and social activism. Truly.

Here’s what’s coming up on Here on Earth in the week ahead:

Monday: Back by popular demand, Satish Kumar, Indian sage and editor of Resurgence Magazine, joins us from the UK to talk about his own lifestyle: Elegant Simplicity which is the theme of the current issue of the magazine.

Tuesday: Scientist Leads Institute for the Study of Compassion: James Doty, neurosurgeon turned biotech investor, made a fortune and lost it in the dot-com bubble. Something similar, albeit on a much smaller scale, happened to a lot of us in the recent financial meltdown. James Doty started re-examining his values. Today he’s the director of an institute he founded for the study of compassion.

Wednesday: Global Word Play: Years ago when I was hosting my old morning show, we used to have a fun segment called “They Have a Word For It.” Howard Reingold, who wrote a little book with that title, would listen into our conversation for a while and then come up with whatever word from the book seemed appropriate. The book was a collection words from foreign languages for which there is no English equivalent. So when Carmen Jackson proposed doing a program with the author of the new book, I’m Not Hanging Noodles on Your Ears and Other Intriguing Idioms From Around the World, of course I said yes. Join in with Jag Bhalla. It’ll be fun.

Thursday: The Compelling Moment: Richard Harwood of the Harwood Institute for Innovation has a knack for reading a crisis as an opportunity. He calls this “The Compelling Moment,” citing what’s going on in Tehran, Detroit, and elsewhere in these worst of times/best of times.

Friday: Milkshakes With a Twist!

Have a great weekend and thanks for lending us your ears.

Jean

June 15-19 Programs

2009-06-13T09:45:00.000-07:00

Picks of the Week: My husband and I happened to be in Cordoba, Spain, on 9/11, and there we were again, this time in Barcelona, when Obama gave his speech from Cairo. So it was quite the thrill to be able to talk about the impact of that amazing speech on my first day back at work. I also thoroughly enjoyed exploring the Darwinian dimensions of art with philosopher Denis Dutton, author of The Art Instinct, on Tuesday – there were so many interesting callers that day. And Wednesday’s Bead for Life program with Torkin Wakefield, the American psychologist who is transforming the lives of so many impoverished war widows in Uganda through, of all things, a paper bead exchange, was truly inspiring and very Here on Earth.

Here’s what’s happening on Here on Earth in the week ahead:

Monday: Out of Poverty: The new issue of Dispatches Magazine puts itself among the poor: the traditional underclass and the newly impotent – in America, in Africa, in India, and in Europe. We talk with Dispatches editor and former Milwaukee native Mort Rosenblum.

Tuesday: The Blue Sweater: Can you imagine the shock of giving an outgrown sweater to Goodwill and then finding it eleven years later on the back of some poor kid in Rwanda? That’s what happened to Jacqueline Novogratz who subsequently left a career in international banking to found Acumen Fund, an organization dedicated to tackling global poverty.

Wednesday: Saving the Coral Reefs One Stitch at a Time: Join us for a woolly celebration of the intersection of higher geometry and feminine handicraft. Margaret Wertheim, co-director of the Institute for Figuring, is joined by a bevy of women who are in the process of creating a stitched coral reef as a testimony to the disappearing wonders of the marine world.

Thursday: Well Blow Me Shivers!: Were you surprised when stories of pirates on the high seas began appearing in daily headlines? Had you thought that the days of pirates were long past? The history of piracy is a long one, and there are certain similarities that link the pirates of centuries past with those working off the coast of Somalia today.

Friday: Urban/Suburban Permaculture: People in cities and suburbs are learning how to produce their own fruit, vegetables, herbs, honey, and more using Permaculture design strategies that reduce work and increase success. Live from Stevens Point, we’ll talk with Bill Wilson from Midwest Permaculture who’s giving introductory workshops at this year’s Energy Fair.

I’m traveling to Green Lake today to give a presentation on Evolutionary Theology to members of the United Church of Christ.

Have a terrific weekend!

Jean

June 8-12 Programs

2009-06-06T14:15:00.000-07:00

Jean is coming back on Monday! Here's the line-up for her:

Monday: Reaching Out to the Muslim World (part 2): Since his days on the campaign trail, President Obama promised a speech to the Muslim World to define US policy and change perceptions of America. Did his speech in Cairo succeed? We will analyze Obama's speech and look at the international reaction as we talk with Prof. Uli Schamiloglu, Director of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Tuesday: The Art Instinct: Can you imagine what our cave people ancestors were thinking as they relaxed by the side of a fire and enjoyed a beautiful sunset? If you think that we’ve only learned to appreciate beauty more recently, think again. We’re celebrating Darwin’s bicentennial year with author Dennis Dutton and his book The Art Instinct: Beauty, Pleasure, and Human Evolution which explores the evolutionary role of aesthetic appreciation.

Wednesday: Bead for Life: Bead for Life is a non-profit organization dedicated to overcoming extreme poverty in Uganda through the support of an international grassroots movement rather than aid. Through the work of Bead for Life, women in Uganda make and sell paper beads to people around the world. Join us and Bead for Life’s Torkin Wakefield as we explore how feminine handicraft becomes the base for eradicating extreme poverty.

Thursday: Travel as a Political Act: They say the world is shrinking, so what can we do to feel more comfortable with our neighbors? Travel! Acclaimed travel writer Rick Steve’s new book argues that we can’t understand our world without experiencing it. Travel as a Political Act will teach us all what it means to travel with our place in the world in mind.

Friday: We're still working to find a food program for this hour. Any suggestions?

Thanks for listening,

Here on Earth team

June 1-5 Programs

2009-05-31T11:02:00.000-07:00

Jean is still away this week. Veronica Rueckert will bring you the following programs.

Monday: Guerrilla Gardening: What do you get when you cross a desire to go green and the nerve to takeover land owed by someone else? It's called Guerrilla Gardening, and while it was first practiced in 17th century Britain, it's become a movement in places like New York City, where abandoned lots are turned into lush gardens by local "Green Guerrillas." Join us and Richard Reynolds, author of On Guerrilla Gardening: A Handbook for Gardening Without Boundaries, as we explore the history of activist gardening.

Tuesday: The Book of Dead Philosophers: What can you tell about a person from the way they die? In The Book of Dead Philosophers, Simon Critchley, Professor of Philosophy at the New School in New York, explores death, our last taboo, from a most unusual perspective. He recounts the demise of famous philosophers, revealing how their variously tragic, amusing, and bizarre ends can help us lead richer lives.

Wednesday: Iceland's Story: Iceland is the site of an aluminum smelting industry, it's been at the forefront of renewable energy development, and, most recently, it's seen what is perhaps the most spectacular fall of any nation during the global economic crisis. Andri Magnason's book Dreamland and the recent film made from it takes us on a journey through Iceland's struggle to recover a sustainable identity for itself but its story has something to teach us all about what it means to honor what's valuable about a nation.

Thursday: Take Back Your Time: TAKE BACK YOUR TIME is a major U.S./Canadian initiative to challenge the epidemic of overwork, over-scheduling and time famine that now threatens our health, our families and relationships, our communities and our environment. Join us to explore work and workers around the world.

Friday: Catching Fire: How Cooking Made us Human: Have you ever seen an otter fry a fish? Maybe you haven't thought too much about how cooking is a strictly human activity, but Richard Wrangham has. In his latest book, Catching Fire: How Cooking Made us Human, Richard Wrangham, renowned primatologist, argues that humanity itself began when we started cooking our food. This food Friday we go deep into our human ancestry to discover how cooking itself may be responsible for our biological and sociological evolution into what we are today.

Best,

Here on Earth team

May 25-29 Programs

2009-05-24T08:30:00.000-07:00

Jean’s Pick of the Week: Taqwacores: A New Way to be Muslim in the West. For anyone who has ever grappled with doctrinal religion, Michael Muhammad Knight’s very American, very punk rock take on Islam is really refreshing. His novel, The Taqwacores, about a group of punk rock Muslims who live together in a house in Buffalo, New York, really does read a lot like Catcher in the Rye. We didn’t talk much about sex, drugs, and rock and roll, but we did talk quite a bit about idolatry, the problems with organized religion, and how to relate directly with the Divine. Interestingly enough, callers connected not as punk rockers, but as seekers.

Monday, Memorial Day: An Ecology of Music: You’ll enjoy listening again, if you haven’t heard it before, to this program with John Luther Adams, one of our most original composers. It was one of my favorite programs of 2008. John Luther Adams lives in Alaska where he immerses himself in the primal, grandiose soundscapes of the arctic out of which he makes music that will make your hair stand on end.

Tuesday: What can you tell about a person from the way they die? In The Book of Dead Philosophers, Simon Critchley, Professor of Philosophy at the New School in New York, explores death, our last taboo, from a most unusual perspective. He recounts the demise of famous philosophers, revealing how their variously tragic, amusing, and bizarre ends can help us lead richer lives.

Wednesday: “Fugee” Soccer (as in Refugee) When New York Times journalist Warren St. John wrote about a soccer team in Georgia made up of child refugees from all over the world, Universal Studios jumped on the film-rights. Warren St. John’s new book about the team, Outcasts United: A Refugee Team, An American Town, chronicles the hard work and heroic journeys of the players and sheds light on what it takes to build a community when we seem to have little in common.

Thursday: Samuel Charters, one of the very first musicologists to study Afro-American music, has summed up his life's work in A Language of Song, which details his journey to Africa and to find Africa-influenced music in the United States, Brazil, and the Carribean.

Friday: Sex, Death, and Oysters: When food writer Robb Walsh discovered that the local Galveston Bay oysters were being passed off as Blue Points and Chincoteagues in other parts of the country, he decided to look into the matter. His new book, Sex, Death and Oysters: A Half-Shell Lover's World Tour, documents a five-year adventure that docks everywhere from oyster reefs to oyster bars and from corporate boardrooms to hotel bedrooms in a quest for the truth about the world’s most profitable aphrodisiac.

I’m going to be gone for a couple of weeks. Veronica Rueckert will be hosting Here on Earth until my return on June 8.

Have a great Memorial Day weekend!

Jean

May 18-22 Programs

2009-05-15T15:13:00.000-07:00

Jean’s Pick of the Week: (I’ve reverted to referring to myself in the third person): Certainly Reza Aslan, very slick, very smart, very articulate and, I venture to say, one of our most trusted interpreters of Muslims and Islam. But, scholar of religions though he may be, he really goofed right at the end of Wednesday’s show when he misquoted Jesus in that much misunderstood line, “I come not to bring peace but a sword.” Jesus was a reformer, not a militant. Almost everything he said was intended as a spiritual message. The Christian gospel was spread not by the sword but by the blood of the early Christian martyrs, the “the seed of the Church.”

Monday: Going Back to Cuba: For decades, Cuba has been a place we were only allowed to imagine, but now, with small cracks in the formidable barrier between us, we find ourselves with a lot of catching up to do. So did journalist Carlos Frias, the American-born son of Cuban parents who went to Cuba for the first time in 2006 and wrote about his impressions in the memoir, Take Me With You.

Tuesday: Memoir as An American Art Form: I went to hear Natalie Goldberg read from her latest book about memoir writing, Old Friend From Long Ago, when she was at Border’s in Madison a short time ago. Natalie used to be a regular on my old show. When she talked about memoir as an American cultural phenomenon I knew I just had to bring her on Here on Earth. She’s my old friend from long ago, and once you hear her, she’ll be yours too.

Wednesday: Evicted From Eternity: Have you ever lived in a place you loved and thought you knew, and then gone back years later only to find it completely changed? That’s what happened to me when I revisited Trantevere, the oldest neighborhood in Rome where I lived for a year in 1968 when the little boys were still playing marbles and peeing in the street, just as they had been doing for thousands of years. How could it change? Harvard historian Michael Herzfeld wrote about the people of Monti, another Roman neighborhood that has undergone the same gentrification in his book with the soulful title, Evicted From Eternity: The Restructuring of Modern Rome.

Thursday: Taqwacores: Muslim Punk Rock: Michael Muhammad Knight is known as a provocateur, a rebel, and a heretic among many American Muslims for his book, The Taqwacores, which describes a group of Muslim punk-rockers living a religious yet fiercely individualistic lifestyle. The book gained notoriety as it went viral and inspired a movement. We’ll talk with the man himself, a convert to Islam who grew up as an Irish Catholic.

Friday: In Praise of Fat: People who have been listening to me for a long time know my iconoclastic streak. So when I heard that there’s a new James Beard Prize winning cookbook by Jennifer McLagan called Fat: An Appreciation of a Misunderstood Ingredient, With Recipes, I jumped. It has a picture of one of the fattiest lambchops I’ve ever seen on the cover.

Jean

May 11-15 Programs

2009-05-10T10:24:00.000-07:00

My Pick of the Week: Rag and Bone. I can’t help it, even as a lapsed Catholic, I do love my relics. I’ve seen a good number of some of the best specimens too: Catherine of Siena’s blackened and shriveled head raised above an altar in her favorite church; St. John the Baptist’s baptizing finger on display at Topkapi Museum in Istanbul; frayed pieces of St. Frances of Paola’s robe and portions of his feet in Calabria. But I had an early start. When my dear Aunt Tootsie, my mother’s only sister, was dying, my mother took me on many pilgrimages all over New York City in search of healing relics and holy oils. Most impressive was the body of Mother Cabrini laid out in a glass coffin in her motherhouse, an image which later served me as the prototype for my Women of Spirit series. When Mother Cabrini was officially canonized, her body was dismembered, the head sent to Rome and other parts made into relics. Even I was appalled to learn about that.

Here’s what’s coming next week:

Monday: Bar Culture in Congo: If you were to major in French literature these days, you would undoubtedly come across the work of Alain Mabanckou, a Francophone writer from Congo Brazzaville who has been sweeping all the most prestigious French awards. His latest book to be translated into English is Broken Glass, a witty novel set in a bar called Credit Gone Away owned by the Stubborn Snail.

Tuesday: Harold Varmus, the Nobel Prize-winning cancer biologist who also serves as science advisor to President Obama is the author of the new book, The Art and Politics of Science. He’s coming to the UW-Madison to give a lecture and a reading at Borders. We get a sneak preview.

Wednesday: Reza Aslan, author of the bestseller No God But God, has become one of our most trusted defenders of Islam. His new book, How to Win a Cosmic War, recommends that we strip the religious rhetoric out of our “war on terror” and pay more attention to the war that can be won: the battle for the minds and hearts of young Muslim men.

Thursday: Not Now, Voyager: Lynne Sharon Schwartz’s memoir of her years as a reluctant traveler.

Friday: Forager’s Harvest: Gardens aren’t the only place where you can pick your own food. The trained eye can find all sorts of edibles in woods and backyards, from dandelions to mushrooms.

Happy Mothers’ Day from an old cowhand!

Jean

May 4-8 Programs

2009-05-01T14:38:00.000-07:00

My Pick of the Week: Martin Espada, Poet of Conscience. He says that he writes poetry “to make the invisible visible,” and told us early in the program that his grandmother was a spirit medium, so he comes by it honestly. But who can calculate the personal cost of putting one’s own psyche at the service of those Chileans who were interrogated, tortured, and executed during Pinochet’s reign of terror? Or to dare to speak for those 453 immigrant restaurant workers who lost their lives in the World Trade Center on 9/11? What a way to ring out National Poetry Month.

Monday: Rags and Bone: Okay, I admit it, you probably have to have a taste for the macabre, or at the very least have been raised Roman Catholic to appreciate the cult of relics; but Peter Manseau (Killing the Buddha) insists that he undertook his “journey among the world’s holy dead” to be reminded of how much he loves life.

Tuesday: Wings of Defeat: A new documentary reveals some startling insights into the make-up of Kamekaze pilots: many of them weren’t really all that keen about killing themselves in the name of their country, and some went out of their way to minimize the damage they caused.

Wednesday: Tune in to find out if our One Day Lalapalooza Pledge Drive will succeed. In between marathon pitches, I’ll be talking with John Nichols about international responses to President Obama’s 100 Days.

Thursday: Do American feminists tend to revert to old world values when they become mothers? We’ll ask Maria Laurino, author of the memoir, Old World Daughter, New World Mother.

Friday: Measuring it out by the teaspoonful, how many of us happen to know that vanilla actually comes from the bean pod of an orchid? Journalist Tim Ecott follows the history of vanilla from its cultivation by the Aztecs to the burgeoning of a multi-million dollar industry. It’s everything but vanilla.

Have a great weekend and here’s hoping it doesn’t rain.

Jean

April 27 - May 1 Programs

2009-04-24T15:39:00.000-07:00

Hi Everybody,

We’re still working on the line-up for next week’s shows, but it’s all fast falling into place:

Monday: With two thirds of Americans supporting investigations into the Bush administration’s use of torture, and 40 percent supporting criminal prosecutions, pressure on President Obama is mounting. The Center for Constitutional Rights is calling for the Attorney General to Appoint a Special Prosecutor. We’ll talk with CCR director Michael Ratner.

Tuesday: Well, it’s debt and evil bankers in Dickens’ Little Dorritt. Check your local listing for updates!

Wednesday: Gamorrah – Roberto Saviano’s expose of the Neopolitan Mafia, the book that shocked the Italian psyche and caused Saviano to go into hiding is now a feature film playing at the Orpheum in Madison. We’ll talk with a husband and wife team who know the scene in Naples firsthand.

Thursday: Prize-winning poet Martín Espada has sometimes been referred to as "the Pablo Neruda of North American authors." As a poet of justice, an advocate for those who remain unheard, Espada's work touches on the unrest of South America and the postcolonial conflict of Puerto Rico, the land of his ancestors.

Friday: If you haven’t yet discovered Vom Fass, (it means “From the Tap”) the German import store that features tastings of oils, vinegars, and now scotch right out of the barrel, you’re in for a treat.

That’s all Folks!

Jean

April 20-24 Programs

2009-04-17T15:44:00.000-07:00

Jean is sick in the past few days, but we producers are proud to say that all shows are booked for next week.

Monday: Eco-Trip: Ever wonder how that gold ring got to your finger? Eco-adventurer David de Rothschild traveled the world to find the answer for this and other questions on his new TV show, Eco-Trip. It premiers next Tuesday on the Sundance Channel but you can talk with David and Jean Feraca about the true impact of our lifestyle.

Tuesday: Playing For Change: Mark Johnson and his film crew travelled to four continents to capture the music you’re hearing right now. Musicians from South Africa, New Orleans, Barcelona, India and elsewhere all singing the same song in the film and CD Playing for Change. We posted a link to a moving video clip of "Stand by Me" performed by musicians around the world.

Wednesday: The Greenwashing of Hollywood: Disney’s new movie Earth hits theaters Wednesday. It hopes to follow other nature films like March of the Penguins to box office gold. But are Americans ready to actually save the polar bear, or do we just like watching them on the big screen?

Thursday: Reggaeton: First it took Latin America, then the U.S., and now the world. It’s reggaeton, a music that meets at the crossroads of hip-hop and reggae. Jean Feraca talks to Raquel Rivera who co-edited a book on the subject, and she’ll take us to sweaty Puerto Rican clubs that gave birth to reggaeton.

Friday: Searching for Perfect Pizza: Peter Reinhart, a master bread baker, follows the trail from Italy to the States searching for the perfect pizzas and stories behind them.

Enjoy the spring. See you next week.

Lisa Bu
Web producer

April 13-17 Programs

2009-04-10T15:08:00.000-07:00

My Pick of the Week (why have I been referring to myself in the third person?): Noam Chomsky. At eighty, surrounded by adoring sycophantic twenty year olds, this guy is the Tony Bennett of intellectuals. He was pretty hard on Obama, and, as it turned out, hadn’t had the time to read his speech from the Turkish parliament, but I really liked the answer he gave to my question, “Who are your mentors? How did Noam Chomsky become Noam Chomsky?”

Next Week on Here on Earth:

Monday: Planet Forward: Take web-savvy pioneers, viewer-driven television and eco-friendly innovations and you have Planet Forward, a new series premiering on PBS next week. I'll talk with Emmy-winning host Frank Sesno about future green ideas and their genesis on web.

Tuesday: What a Billion Muslims Really Think: Dalia Mogahed is the Executive Director of the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies. She’s coming to campus as a guest of the Lubar Instittute for Abrahamic Studies to talk about the findings of Gallup’s unprecedented survey of Muslims worldwide.

Wednesday: Slow Money: First there was Slow Food, then came Slow Cities, and now Slow Money. Not surprising, investor Woody Tasch’s controversial book about the nature of slow money includes a forward by Slow Food patriarch Carlo Petrini and carries the sub-title: Investing as if food, farms and fertility mattered. Bottom line? “In soil we trust.”

Thursday: Klezmer Camp: Henry Sapoznik has been on the UW-Madison campus this semester as the 2009 Visiting Scholar on Yiddish and American popular culture. A four-time Grammy nominee, he won a Peabody for the series, the "Yiddish Radio Project". He promises to play klezmer on his banjo when he joins us on Thursday.

Friday: Curries: Are you ready for 660 Indian Curries? Raghavan Iyer, an award-winning teacher of the year, joins us to lead us through the sour, salty, sweet, pungent, bitter gateway to Indian cooking.

Happy Easter, and may you find many hidden treasures besides the eggs.

Jean

April 6-10 Programs

2009-04-03T15:28:00.000-07:00

Jean’s Pick of the Week: Rediscovering the Russian Classics: What could be better than talking for an hour about Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky with two of the world’s best Russian translators?

Here’s what we have planned for you in the first full week of “the cruelest month:”

Monday: Yanamono Medical Clinic: Dr. Linnea Smith took a trip to the Peruvian rainforest 16 years ago and ended up opening a medical clinic on the banks of the Amazon. This year the clinic, which was largely built by Rotarians from Duluth, was in danger of being swallowed up by the Amazon. So the intrepid Rotarians trooped back down to the rainforest and started all over again. Linnea joins us with more harrowing and heroic stories.

Tuesday: “If the Nuremburg laws were applied, then every post World War American president would have been hanged.” Noam Chomsky said that. He’ll be paying Here on Earth a visit during his stay on the UW-Madison campus next week.

Wednesday: The First Paul: Two of the world’s leading Jesus scholars – Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan – expose the church’s attempt to silence Jesus’ most radical disciple – Paul.

Thursday: Being Gay and Muslim: Writer, blogger and director Parvez Sharma is openly gay. He’s also identifies as a Muslim. He attempts to bridge the chasm between the two with his latest documentary, A Jihad for Love, a project which found Sharma talking with gay and lesbian Muslims all over the world.

Friday: Lori Skelton explores Passover Sweets – no easy feat since everything has to be made without flour.

Hope you pulled off your April Fool’s jokes. I tried to convince my husband that I had converted to Islam, but he just turned the joke back on me and said, “Oh good. Now we can both give up sausages!”

Jean

March 30 - April 3 Programs

2009-03-27T15:52:00.000-07:00

Jean’s Pick of the Week: Eco-Islam: Darn it, if we didn’t have bad luck yesterday spoiling what might have been the best program in our Inside Islam series to date. Everything was lined up: a dynamite topic with universal appeal plus three internationally prominent hard-hitters for guests. The first blow came when we got word just before noon that world famous Sufi theologian Sayyed Hossein Nasr, the lead for the show, had been taken ill and would not able to join us; the second blow came when Fazlun Khalid, who had kindly agreed to step up to the plate, got caught in a thunderstorm that knocked out his telephone lines and left us with nothing but his cell phone which crackled and gulped and threatened to drop out through most of the show.

But we soldiered on anyway, because the content was so illuminating. Who knew that the Koran was green? Who knew that the Prophet Mohammed was an environmental visionary? I learned so much from this show that it gave me a whole new appreciation for the Muslim world.

Here’s what’s coming up on Here on Earth this week:

Monday: Football Under Cover: Get a pre-view of this film we’ve chosen from the Inside Islam Film Festival. It features an all female Iranian soccer team (the women play in their headscarves) matched for the first time against a German team.

Tuesday: The Russians Are Coming! If you’re a fan of 19th century Russian novels, and perhaps haven’t cracked the likes of War and Peace in a while, here’s a chance to catch up. We’ll be talking with a husband and wife team whose 21st century translations of the Russian classics are garnering a whole new readership. Guests: Richard Peavar and Larissa Volokhonsky.

Wednesday: Engaging the Muslim World: Can we win the war in Afghanistan? How do we engage with Iran and Pakistan? Western society, according to celebrated blogger Juan Cole, is suffering from Islam Anxiety – a hangover from the Bush years and a product of fearmongering and misinformation. He reveals howwe can repair the damage of the last eight years and forge a path of peace and prosperity with the Middle East. Juan Cole, Professor of History at the University of Michigan, author of Engaging the Muslim World.

Thursday: We’re working on a program about a Warsaw village band.

Friday: Cheese Wars: Taylor Pipes film compares Wisconsin's cheese heritage with its artisan roots to California’s mass production while also debunking the myth of the California "Happy Cow." Filmed in 2008 in locations all around Wisconsin, it premiers at the Wisconsin Film Festival on April 4.

Have a great weekend, Everybody!

And thanks for listening,

Jean

March 23-27 Programs

2009-03-20T14:49:00.000-07:00

Happy Spring!

Here’s what’s coming up on Here on Earth this first week of spring:

Monday: Nashi: The Putin Youth Movement: Ilana Ozernoy left Russia with her refusnik parents in 1988 to settle in the U.S. She went back as a journalist to study the Putin Youth Movement and discovered after living for a week in Summer Camp with a deeply disaffected group of young people, a whole new way of understanding Russian society.

Tuesday: Traveling Disabled: Craig Grimes was paralyzed by a fall twelve years ago. Since then he has traveled to thirteen countries, started the first online booking engine for disabled travelers, and founded Access Barcelona and Access Nicaragua, websites that provide invaluable information disabled travelers.

Wednesday: Living with the Tribe: Oliver Steeds spent over a year living with indigenous tribes in Papua New Guinea and Peru. He’s filmed documentaries about the people of Burma, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Scandinavia, and has just returned from making a film about North Korean refugees on the China-North Korea border.

Thursday: Eco-Islam: The Greening of the Muslim World: Muslim theologians and clerics are fast developing an environmental ethic based on ancient Islamic principles and practices drawn from the Qu’ran and the people of the Arabian desert. Guests: Sufi theologian Sayyed Hossein Nasr; Saleem Ali, Associate Professor of Environmental Studies at the University of Vermont; visiting fellow at the Brookings Research Center in Doha, Qatar; author of Islam and Education: Conflict and Conformity in Pakistan’s Madrassahs.

Friday: Maple Syrup: When the sap starts running in the Upper Midwest, spring has truly arrived. The tradition comes down to us from Native Americans and the early colonists, and in many parts of Wisconsin, is still being collected the same way. Guests: Derek Duane, DNR, manager of the MacKenzie Center, and Ruth Ann Lee, lead educator for the Wisconsin Wild Life Federation, who co-manages the Center.

Here’s to a New Day - Happy Nowruz!

Jean

March 16-20 Programs

2009-03-13T15:50:00.000-07:00

Jean’s Pick of the Week: Aroma-therapy: I never thought I would ever get to repeat on the radio what Napoleon allegedly said to Josephine: "I’m coming home in two weeks – don’t bathe." But, sure enough, the occasion presented itself in Wednesday’s program about the psychology and biology of smell with Brown University professor Rachel Herz, author of The Scent of Desire. Phew! What a hoot! I only regret we didn’t invite Diane Ackerman, who wrote A Natural History of the Senses.

Monday: Aereality: William Fox has climbed mountains, ridden in hot air balloons and flown airplanes, all with one purpose: to see the world from above. Nature Magazine says, “Fox gives us an enthralling guided tour of the human mind’s attempt to make space into place, and land into landscape.”

Tuesday: Michael Henderson hasn’t just written one book about forgiveness, he’s written nine of them! As a member of an Anglo-Irish Protestant family involved in reconciliation efforts with Irish Catholics, I guess he has a lot to forgive. His latest, No Enemy to Conquer, deals with the geopolitics of mercy and is chock full of examples of the best that people are capable of under the worst circumstances.

Wednesday: Philosopher Peter Singer, the animal rights advocate, has written a new book about charitable giving and makes his case for why you should give even in hard times in The Life You Can Save.

Thursday: Molly Peacock and I have decided to feature the poetry of Wisconsin poet Lorine Niedecker for this very last Here on Earth Spring Equinox Poetry Circle of the Air. Lorine spent most of her pared-down life writing extraordinarily spare poems while living in the flood plain on Black Hawk Island. Check our website for "My Life by Water," and other Niedecker poems and come join the circle with some soggy spring poems of your own choosing.

Friday: Hard Cider: Gary Nabhan, the founder of RAFT (Renewing America’s Food Traditions), is heading into Madison to lead a public workshop on heirloom fruits and heritage apple orchard restoration. And if you’re wondering, with all the emphasis on seasonal eating, why apples, his answer is “The old timers used to drink their apples at this time of year!” *If you would like more information about RAFT visit http://www.slowfoodusa.org/index.php/programs/details/raft/

On a personal note, today is my son Dominick’s birthday. He was born on Friday the 13th at 13 minutes before midnight, just two and a half hours after I was plucked from Master Control during my evening shift at WGUC in Cincinnatti.

Thanks for listening!

Jean

March 9-13 Programs

2009-03-06T15:29:00.000-08:00

Jean’s Pick of the Week: Daniyal Mueeenuddin. If you love a well-written story and you want to know about the real Pakistan, get yourself a copy of In Other Rooms, Other Wonders, and you’re in for a treat. I loved having the chance to talk with Daniyal directly, but there was so much more to say about the book and the topic. I really wish the conversation could have continued and would encourage any of you who know Daniyal’s work – he’s published in The New Yorker, Zoetrope, and Granta – to tell us what you think of it by going to www.insideislam.wisc.edu or calling our hotline: 1-877-GLOBE07.

Monday: Europe is From Venus: I just had a very interesting conversation with Geert Mak, the Dutch author who traveled all around Europe visiting key historic landmarks and talking to survivors and eye-witnesses in order to write his bestseller, In Europe, a living history. “Never walk backwards into the future,” he says, “Never become a victim of the past, but history is a continuity – there are ghosts all around us - pay attention to the patterns that repeat.”

Tuesday: The Population Bomb: The global population is increasing by a billion about every 15 years, but because practically all that growth is in poorer countries there’s a certain taboo that makes it difficult to talk about. Population Media Center is one organization that has come up with some ingenious ways to break the taboo. We’ll talk with director Bill Ryerson.

Wednesday: The Smelly Show: Rachel Hertz, a researcher and the author of The Scent of Desire sheds light on how and why smell affects our emotions, preferences, memories, health, sexuality, relationships, and even food cravings.

Thursday: Despite appeals from Rome and the personal intercession of Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Dominique Green, the subject of Tom Cahill’s latest book, A Saint on Death Row, was executed by lethal injection in Huntsville, Texas on Oct. 26, 2004. What was it about this young man’s life that caused Cahill to change his mind about the death penalty and turn him into a crusader for racial justice?

Friday: Chili: The All-American Comfort Food: What makes people passionate about chili? Where did it come from? Is there an orthodox way to make it or just a hundred heresies?

Looking Ahead: Molly Peacock joins us for our very last Spring Equinox Poetry Circle of the Air on March 19. After ten years of faithful service to poetry and to WPR, Molly’s decided all good things must come to an end. We’ll miss her, but don’t miss her swan song.

Enjoy the lovely spring weather!

Jean

March 2-6 Programs

2009-02-27T15:50:00.000-08:00

Jean’s Pick of the Week: Mardi Gras! We managed to bring both the dark and the light side of Mardi Gras into the conversation – perfectly in keeping with the real essence of Fat Tuesday. I especially appreciated the wonderful callers from New Orleans and Mobile who added such a rich dimension to the show.

Pledge Report: We’re actually ahead of where we expected to be thus far into the drive, thanks to your incredibly generous support. The drive ends at 1:00pm on Monday, so here’s what’s coming up on Here on Earth in the week ahead:

Monday: Canadian Physicist Searches for the Next Einstein in Africa: Neil Turok is a TED prize winner who founded the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences in Cape Town. He’s working to promote math and science education in Africa so that the world’s next Einstein may be African.

Tuesday: Daughters of Shame: Jasvinder Sanghera, founder of Karma Nirvana, author of Shame and Daughters of Shame, helps women escape from forced marriages and honor-based violence.

Wednesday: Nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Film, Waltz with Bashir is an animated documentary film written and directed by Israeli veteran Ari Folman. It tells the director’s own story of his attempt to piece together the lost memory of a massacre in which he participated during the 1982 Lebanon War. Folman himself joins us from Israel.

Thursday: Inside Pakistan: Real People; Real Lives: You may have noticed the buzz about Daniyal Mueenuddin’s collection of linked stories: In Other Rooms, Other Wonders and that’s because it’s a really terrific book that provides a window into a remote world rarely captured in fiction. Plus, the guy’s story is amazing – he grew up in Lahore, Pakistan and Elroy, Wisconsin!

Friday: Can anybody be a food critic? Maybe so, but not like Moira Hodgson, the daughter of a British foreign service officer, who discovered American food in Saigon, ate wild boar and snails in Berlin, and learned how to make potatoes 57 different ways from her Irish grandma. She serves it all up in her memoir, It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time: My Adventures in Life and Food.

Again, thanks so much for all your support this week. Your reward will be in heaven and so long as you keep listening to WPR!

Jean

Feb 23-27 Programs

2009-02-20T14:40:00.000-08:00

Our Winter Membership Drive just started today and we’ve put a lot of thought into a special line-up of topics and guests – and prizes! – designed to keep you tuned in:

Monday: Everybody gets a chance to win a state-of-the-art Ipod pre-loaded with some of our best programs when John Nichols joins us to talk about the Israeli elections and help us raise money! Nobody does it quite like John. He turns into a carny barker during Pledge.

Fat Tuesday: Nothin’ like a Mardi Gras party to shake those low down Winter Blues.

Wednesday: MAN ON WIRE! MAN ON WIRE! MAN ON WIRE! Here’s your chance to connect with world famous tightrope walker Philippe Petit who pulled off one of the greatest feats of all time when he walked a tightrope between the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center. He tells the whole riveting story in the DVD which can be yours for a pledge of support to Here on Earth. I’ve waited a long time for this one.

Thursday: Honeymoon in Tehran: Time magazine correspondent Azadeh Moaveni tells her tale of love and anguish in the Islamic Republic.

Friday: We’re wearing sackcloth and ashes this first food Friday in Lent, looking for a monk who can ladle out some simple wholesome tasty monastery food. Any ideas? Lean fare, but definitely not slim pickings.

I saved a little love leftover from Valentine’s Day – just for you!

Do help us meet those pledge goals and thank you, thank you, always, for all you do!

Jean

Feb 16-20 Programs

2009-02-13T15:40:00.000-08:00

Jean’s Pick of the Week: It’s been a long time since I’ve had quite the mental workout that James Moore (Darwin’s Sacred Cause) and Sean Carroll (Remarkable Creatures) gave me in our program Darwin’s Tree of Life last Wednesday. Altogether a fascinating exercise in blending biology-history-anthropology that left me with a whole new understanding of Darwin and an appetite for more. Turns out Darwin, Huxley, Dickens, Lincoln, and even Walt Whitman, (whose Leaves of Grass was published just four years before On the Origin of Species) were all contemporaries who, in Sean Carroll’s words, “threw off the shackles of the old order.” Now that’s something worth pursuing.

I also greatly enjoyed talking with Ellen Kuras on Tuesday about her beautiful and poignant film, The Betrayal, which follows the epic story of a Laotian family forced into exile as a result of the undeclared war the US waged in Laos during the Vietnam War.

NB: Our next program in the Inside Islam series on Love and Dating in the Muslim World which was originally scheduled for Feb. 12 has been re-scheduled for this coming Wednesday, Feb. 18.

Here’s what’s coming up this week:

Monday: I’ll be hosting an Open Line, asking for feedback on our recent programming, including our Inside Islam series, and suggestions about upcoming shows.

Tuesday: Under the Blue Flag: My Mission to Kosovo: Philip Kearney, A restless DA in San Francisco leaves a comfortable career to take to the lawless streets of Pristina, Kosovo, in an attempt to bring some very deadly criminals to justice just two years after a NATO bombing campaign had brought a halt to the conflict between Kosovo and Serbia.

Wednesday: Love and Dating in the Muslim World: True Stories of Finding Love: I have to say we’ve had a lot of fun gathering these stories from Muslims in the Madison community: newlyweds, seasoned couples, young men, and new converts. They’ll be edited for broadcast in the live program, but you can listen to the unedited version on our blog: www.insideislam.wisc.edu.

Thursday: The February pledge drive starts today, but Here on Earth won’t be actively soliciting your support until Friday, “Bread Day.” During World War II, European Jews were commonly portrayed as sheep led to the slaughter. Some groups, however, managed to defy certain death. Nechama Tec is the author of Defiance, the book on which the movie is based. It tells the story of hundreds of partisans who survived the war by finding temporary refuge in the forest and resisting the people who wanted to kill them.

Friday: Give Us Bread!: our web producer Lisa Bu found Peter Reinhart on TED: Peter is a master breadmaker and a theologian (they so often go together); co-founder of the award-winning Brother Juniper’s Bakery in Sonoma, California, author of five books on bread baking including the latest: Whole Grain Breads: New Techniques, Extraordinary Flavor. It’s a big, gorgeous book, our gift to you for a pledge of support of $175.

And to keep you tuned in throughout the drive: you won’t want to miss John Nichols on Monday, Feb. 23, and Philippe Petit, star of Man on Wire, the mad Frenchman who walked a tightrope between the World Trade Center Towers, Wednesday, Feb. 25.

Happy Valentine’s Day, Lovers All!

Jean

Feb 9-13 Programs

2009-02-08T10:40:00.000-08:00

Just back from a week in the California desert, to hit the ground running…isn’t it awful how the ever accelerating pace of modern life leaves such precious little time for the little civilities…

Here’s what’s up the Here on Earth sleeve for the coming week:

Monday: Inside North Korea: Kim Jong Ill made headlines last week by threatening to start a war with South Korea. But there’s more to North Korea than its saber-rattling dictator. Join us as we meet the people behind North Korea’s Iron Curtain with Daniel Gordon and Nicholas Bonner, two British documentarians who won access to the world’s most isolated country.

Tuesday: The Betrayal/Nerakhoon: The epic story of a family forced to emigrate from Laos after the chaos of the secret air war waged by the U.S. during the Vietnam War. We’ll talk with Director Ellen Kuras who spent the last 23 years chronicling the family's extraordinary journey in this deeply personal, poetic, and emotional film.

Wednesday: There will be nation-wide events this year in celebration of Darwin Day, February 12. We’re tapping two of the best: acclaimed UW geneticist Sean Carroll, author of Remarkable Creatures, and James Moore, co-author of DARWIN’S SACRED CAUSE: How a Hatred of Slavery Shaped Darwin’s Views on Human Evolution.

Thursday: Do Muslims date? If they don’t date, how do they decide who to marry? Join us for Muslim Love Stories: The Changing Nature of Muslim Courtship: a pre-Valentine’s Day special in our ongoing series, Inside Islam: Dialogues and Debates, and check out www.insideislam.wisc.edu to share your story.

Friday: Taking Stock: Will This Romance Survive a Week in the Kitchen? Second to travel, the best test of a budding romance is to cook together. Lori and Bill, both food lovers, decided to spend their entire vacation tackling complicated recipes like soup stock and French terrines. Points scored? Pounds gained?

Let us know what you think of our programs. Our hotline is ready to record your comments 24/7. Just call 1-877-GLOBE07. And thanks.

Jean

Feb 2-6 Programs

2009-02-01T09:36:00.000-08:00

Here's what's coming up in the first week of February.

Monday: Elegant, heart-filled and mysterious, Mariachi music has travelled a long road from working-class Mexico to concert stages worldwide. Join Veronica Rueckert and her guests to uncover Mariachi's history and celebrate its best recordings.

Tuesday: Roy Bourgeois is a an American priest in the Maryknoll order of the Roman Catholic Church and founder of the human rights group SOA (School of the Americas) who’s facing excommunication by the Vatican for participating in a ceremony it considers illicit and invalid: the ordination of a woman. Meanwhile, the American Church is so short of priests it’s been forced to import them from Africa.

Wednesday: Japan’s Soft Power: Japan is quietly emerging as a global trendsetter in pop culture, as well as in green technology and environmental practices.

Thursday: Hidden Lives: The Women of Kandahar: A photojournalist teams up with an Afghan-American to tell the stories of Afghan women living in compounds behind the doors of the women’s quarters.

Friday: Science in the Kitchen: Join Jean with esteemed author Harold McGee, author of On Food and Cooking, and Herve This, the French founder of a new trend he calls "molecular gastronomy."

Jean

Jan 26-30 Programs

2009-01-23T15:43:00.000-08:00

Jean's Pick of the Week: Reaching Out to the Muslim World. The fourth program in our Inside Islam series, broadcast just two days after Inauguration Day and featuring breaking news from the White House and three Muslim experts on what needs to be done to improve relations with the Muslim world. This program and all three that preceded it will be broadcast as a week-long series special Jan. 26 – 29, while I’m on vacation. We’d love to get your feedback. Does the series make sense as a series? Does it have a signature style and feel? Is it opening your mind and heart to a new way of thinking about Muslims and Islam? Does it make you want to learn more? Are there too many guests? What do you remember and take away from listening? Visit www.insideislam.wisc.edu to find out what’s coming up in future shows and how you can help us shape the programs. You can also leave a comment on our 24/7 hotline: 1-877-GLOBE07. And thanks you!

Jan 19-23 Programs

2009-01-18T10:51:00.000-08:00

Jean’s Pick of the Week: Don’t Sleep, There Are Snakes: Daniel Everett’s experiences with the extraordinary Pirahã people of the Brazilian Amazon who seem to be completely content with their way of life, live entirely in the moment, and lack any real curiosity about the rest of the world (i.e. they have no interest in being like us!) brought back my own experience in the Peruvian Amazon (which, frankly, blew my mind, and which I wrote about at length in my book, I Hear Voices).

Other highlights: Slumdog’s director, Danny Boyle talking about his enthusiasm for Mumbai; and Hannah Pool’s description of meeting her long lost Eritrean family. And although Tuesday’s program about Gaza was overbooked, we’ve had very positive feedback from Jews who appreciated our perspective.

We have a big week ahead of us, with Martin Luther King, Jr. Day and the Inauguration, and another Inside Islam program. Here’s the dope:

Monday: The Business of Modern Slavery: While we celebrate Martin Luther King, Jr. and the American civil rights movement, let’s also remember that slavery has once again reared its ugly head in the form of sex trafficking. For a completely original approach that strikes at the economic heart of prostitution, we’ll talk with Siddharth Kara, a former investment banker and author of Sex Trafficking: Inside the Business of Modern Slavery.

Tuesday: What Obama Means: Now this is a coup: directly following NPR’s live coverage of the Inauguration, Here on Earth gets to talk with (and this means you too!) celebrated cultural critic Jabari Asim, whose book The N Word made such waves. He’s the perfect guest coming at the perfect time on the perfect occasion. Join us!

Wednesday: Green Urbanism Down Under: city gardens in Melbourne; a koala-friendly housing development; solar lights that send electricity back to the city’s power grid – all transportable ideas that may hold a global solution to our environmental headaches. Guests: Timothy Beatley and Peter Newman.

Thursday: Reaching out to the Muslim World: On January 20, Barack Hussein Obama will be sworn in as the 44th president of the United States. What is the state of relations between the United States and the Muslim world? How can the new president alter the course of the Bush administration and reach out to Muslims? What are the chances that dialogue and diplomacy will take precedence over a call to arms? What steps do Muslims think the new president should take to repair damages and rebuild trust?

Friday: Bagels Go Global! Boiled and baked, bagels as we know them originated in Poland, but just like the Jews themselves, you can find them all over the world – even in China where the Chinese break them into pieces and put them in their stir-fries!

I hope you’ll be listening – it should be a great week!

Jean