Writers Voice with Francesca Rheannon » Podcast

Podcast 70: Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet. Bush’s Law.

Francesca Rheannon — Tue, 06 May 2008 15:05:39 +0000

The news today about a possible war impending between Georgia and Russia is prefigured in our first interview: host Francesca Rheannon talks with energy security expert Michael Klare about the dangerous new global order of energy politics — winners and losers, flashpoints of conflict, and what it means for democracy and the environment. His book is RISING POWERS, SHRINKING PLANET: The New Geopolitics of Energy. In our conversation Klare notes that Georgia could the the flashpoint not only of war between Russia and Georgia–but between Russia and the United States.

Also, New York Times reporter Eric Lichtblau broke the story on warrantless domestic spying. His book is BUSH’S LAW: The Remaking of American Justice.

Podcast 69: Nicholson Baker’s HUMAN SMOKE and more…

Francesca Rheannon — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 23:06:46 +0000

Host Francesca Rheannon talks with Nicholson Baker about his acclaimed new book, HUMAN SMOKE: The Beginnings of World War II; The End of Civilization.
In a departure from his usual genre, fiction, Baker turns his eye for telling detail to an examination of the cavalier disregard for the human consequences of war by leaders on all sides of the conflict. We hear about how Churchill’s warmongering and Roosevelt’s anti-Semitism exacerbated the war’s civilian toll. We also hear of the courage of a few who dared to speak against the headlong rush to battle.

Also, we air an excerpt from our 2006 interview with Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, Maxine Kumin.

Podcast 68: Poetry From the Grassroots

Francesca Rheannon — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 01:04:44 +0000

Hip-hop, poetry slams, and more: it’s the SPOKEN WORD REVOLUTION REDUX. We talk with editor Mark Eleveld about poetry in performance and hear cuts off the CD accompanying the book.

Also, on Writer’s Voice we’ve featured some of the most famous poets in the English language. They occupy the heights of what many think is a rarified domain not relevant to the average person. But the poets of Florence Poets Society in Northampton, Massachusetts disagree. They declare that “poetry is part of everyone of us”. We speak with three of the Society’s poets: Tom Clark, Carl Russo and Jim Cahillane. Clark, a firefighter, and Carl Russo, a lawyer, started the Society five years ago.

Podcast 67: AGE OF AMERICAN UNREASON and AGAINST THE MACHINE

Francesca Rheannon — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 15:32:10 +0000

Our theme is cultural decline and what to do about it. We talk with cultural critic Susan Jacoby about THE AGE OF AMERICAN UNREASON. And former New Republic editor and author Lee Siegel talks about the unintended consequences of the digital age. His book is AGAINST THE MACHINE: Being Human in the Age of the Electronic Mob.

My guests this hour both point to technology as culprits in the decline of critical thinking and cultural literacy. Susan Jacoby says America has long had a tradition of anti-intellectualism vying with the Enlightenment rationalism of the founding fathers. But she argues the advent of television and now visual media in general has accelerated the process, overwhelming reasoned discourse and threatening democracy itself.

Lee Siegel got into trouble with the blogosphere in 2006 when he was editor of the New Republic’s online culture blog. When confronted with the electronic thuggery that Web anonymity allows, he responded first with direct comments under his own name — and then thought he’d try to give the culprits some of their own medicine. He posed as a reader himself under the moniker “Sprezzatura” and went on the attack. It caused a scandal that got him temporarily suspended from his job and subjected him to ridicule from the digiterati of the blogosphere. But it also spurred him to write AGAINST THE MACHINE: Being Human in the Age of the Electronic Mob. It’s a critique of the ugly underbelly of the Internet and what it’s doing to our culture.

Podcast 66: Philip Fradkin and Rutherford Platt

Francesca Rheannon — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 15:01:36 +0000

We talk with biographer Philip Fradkin about the life of Wallace Stegner, writer and environmentalist extraordinaire. His book is WALLACE STEGNER AND THE AMERICAN WEST.

Also, urban geographer Rutherford Platt tells us about how to make cities that are sustainable and a pleasure to live in. Editor of the THE HUMANE METROPOLIS, he’s the founder of the Ecological Cities
Project at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

Podcast : Poetry Speaks Expanded and Beyond Genocide

Francesca Rheannon — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 01:55:59 +0000

April is Poetry Month and we enter it by talking with editor Rebekah Presson Mosby about a new edition of a much-hailed anthology from Sourcebooks Press. It’s called POETRY SPEAKS EXPANDED.
Also, artist Amy Fagin and filmmaker David Edwards who will be showing their work at the Pioneer Valley Jewish Film Festival on Tuesday, April 1.
Fagin’s illuminated book project, BEYOND GENOCIDE, honors peoples who have been genocide’s victims, past and present. Edwards’ film, Kabul Transit, gives a sensitive portrait of Afghanistan under occupation.

Podcast 64: Greg Palast on Spitzer and the Bank Bailout; also, Field Report on Narrative Journalism

Francesca Rheannon — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 14:43:25 +0000

Greg Palast, investigative reporter for the BBC, tells us why he thinks the Eliot Spitzer scandal broke when it did — and what federal prosecutors were trying to keep hidden from the public about the bank bailout by taking Spitzer down.

Then we go to the Nieman Foundation’s Conference on Narrative Journalism. We talk with broadcast and print journalist John Hockenberry about interactive media, BU journalism department chair Louis Ureneck about memoir, and Nieman narrative program director Connie Hale about what “narrative journalism” is all about.

Podcast 63: The Open-Focus Brain and Surviving Depression

Francesca Rheannon — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 16:19:50 +0000

We talk with biofeedback pioneer Les Fehmi about how to focus the mind and improve productivity and mood. His book is THE OPEN FOCUS BRAIN: Harnessing the Power of Attention to Heal Mind and Body. The book comes with an instructional CD to put the method into practice.

Also, what are the societal roots of depression? How can we use community-building to overcome the disease? We hear from psychiatrist Bruce Levine about SURVIVING AMERICA’S DEPRESSION EPIDEMIC: How to Find Morale, Energy, and Community in a World Gone Crazy.

Podcast 62: Eric Weitz’s WEIMAR GERMANY

Francesca Rheannon — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 12:50:32 +0000

We talk with historian Eric Weitz about WEIMAR GERMANY: Promise and Tragedy. On the one side, there was Bauhaus, Expressionism, Magnus Hirschfeld and new freedom for gays and women, a vital and experimental theater–in short, an explosion of intellectual and artistic creativity. On the other: hyperinflation, economic depression, and bullies of the left and right rampaging in the streets, setting the stage for the Nazi seizure of power in 1933. We explore both sides of Weimar Germany and what lessons it may hold for us today.

Also, a preview of Spring…we listen to robins and other birds with renowned bird biologist Donald Kroodsma, author of THE SINGING LIFE OF BIRDS.

Podcast 62: Life With Asperger’s

Francesca Rheannon — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 18:30:58 +0000

We talk with John Elder Robison about his memoir, LOOK ME IN THE EYE. Brother to best-selling author Augusten Burroughs (RUNNING WITH SCISSORS), Robison has written a sweet, compelling tale about growing up with Asperger’s Syndrome, a high-functioning form of autism. From the inside, he reveals what it’s like to be a misfit, the savant-like talents he feels Asperger’s gave him, and how he overcame the condition’s deficits and celebrated its gifts. Click here for a Web-only extra.
We also talk with Free Press director Josh Silver about new developments in the fight to preserve net neutrality.

Podcast 61: Black History Month Special

Francesca Rheannon — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 18:56:54 +0000

Abijah Prince was born into slavery in the early 17th century in Springfield, Massachusetts, but in middle age, he arranged his own freedom and married (and freed) the dynamic and eloquent Lucy Terry of the nearby town of Deerfield. Against incredible odds, the couple became property-owners and respectable members of the largely white community in which they lived. When author Gretchen Holbrook Gerzina began to follow the legend of the Princes, she was astonished to find that her own ancestors were part of the story. As she unraveled fact from fiction, Gerzina began to realize she was uniquely suited to bring the real history of this extraordinary couple to light. Her book is MR. AND MRS. PRINCE: How An Extraordinary Eighteenth-Century Family Moved Out of Slavery and Into Legend.

Also, when we think of slavery in the U.S., most of us think about the South. But as Anne Farrow, Joel Lang, and Jenifer Frank demonstrate in COMPLICITY, the North promoted and profited from that “peculiar institution”. All journalists with the Hartford Courant Farrow, Frank and Lang drew from from long-ignored documents to create a fascinating and sobering work that uncovers this lesser-known aspect of the history of American slavery.

And we hear an excerpt from a longer archived interview with writer Patricia Klindienst, author of THE EARTH KNOWS MY NAME: Food, Culture, and Sustainability in the Gardens of Ethnic America. She tells us about about the traditional gardens brought by African slaves whose descendants became the Gullah people of the South Carolina Sea Islands.

Finally, award-winning poet Lynn Thompson reads “Grenadine”, a poem about her West Indian ancestors from BEG NO PARDON.

Podcast 60: Kevin Patterson and John Hanson Mitchell

Francesca Rheannon — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 03:22:14 +0000

As a physician, Kevin Patterson treats Inuit communities of the Canadian Arctic. As a novelist, he explores the collision between the old and the new in that region. His debut novel CONSUMPTION richly details the life of the Inuit as they transition from traditional nomadic life to settlement in towns built for them by the Canadian government. It tells the story of one family across three generations as its members make this transition, the uneasy peace they make with modern society, and the connections and tensions between them and the Kablunuks– or whites — who come to work in the Arctic. Patterson is also editor of a forthcoming book about his work with refugees in Afghanistan. His Mother Jones article about his work can be found here.

Also, John Hanson Mitchell tells us about his search to solve the mystery surrounding the African American servant of a famous 19th century ornithologist. It’s the subject of his 2005 book, LOOKING FOR MR. GILBERT. When Mitchell found more than two thousand antique glass plate negatives in the attic of an old estate in Massachusetts, he thought at first they had been created by ornithologist William Brewster, a Boston Brahmin of the highest rank. But then, Mitchell began to have questions. They led him on a journey to uncover the history of the man who may very well have been the first major wildlife photographer, a little-known African American named Robert Alexander Gilbert. Mitchell is editor of Sanctuary, the magazine of the Massachusetts Audubon Society .

Podcast 59: novelist Geraldine Brooks and poet laureate Al Young

Francesca Rheannon — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 01:31:33 +0000

Geraldine Brooks tells us about PEOPLE OF THE BOOK, a novel based on the history of the Sarajevo Haggadah. This remarkable novel takes us through time and across Europe to uncover the story of a fourteenth century Jewish book that survived the exile, wanderings and persecution of its owners. One of the most valuable manuscripts in existence today, the Sarajevo Haggadah was rescued twice by its Bosnian Muslim curators — from the Nazis in 1944 and from Serbian shelling of Sarajevo in the early 1990’s. It now rests in the National Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina in Sarajevo.

Also, we talk with California Poet Laureate Al Young about his new book-and-cd set, SOMETHING ABOUT THE BLUES: An Unlikely Collection of Poetry. Young is a celebrated African-American poet, novelist, essayist and musician who connects his poetry with the vibrant music of the Blues. He writes: “Music – with which poetry remains eternally intimate – seems a dead ringer, as it were for life. And while each also seems invisible, I always catch myself asking: What is life but spirit; spirit-thought made hearable, seeable, smellable, touchable, and delectable?”.

Podcast 58: Russell Banks and Tahmima Anam

Francesca Rheannon — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 23:15:36 +0000

Acclaimed novelist Russell Banks tells Writer’s Voice about his new novel, THE RESERVE. We also talk with Tahmima Anam about her terrific debut novel, A GOLDEN AGE.

Russell Banks’s new novel THE RESERVE is “part love story, part murder mystery”. Taking place in 1936, not long before the World War II, the novel explores questions of class, politics, art, love, and madness. Set in an exclusive wilderness enclave held by families of New York’s highest society as a vacation playground, the novel’s action follows what happens when two intertwined couples violate social conventions and their own morals to follow the dictates of their hearts. Russell Banks is one of America’s best known novelists. He’s the author of many books, including Affliction, Cloudsplitter, and The Sweet Hereafter, which was made into a movie directed by Atom Egoyan. He’s a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and his work has received numerous international prizes and awards. He lives in upstate New York.

When Tahmima Anam went back to her native Bangla Desh to do research for her doctoral thesis in anthroplogy, she gathered testimony from scores of survivors of Bangla Desh’s 1971 War of Independence from Pakistan. The conflict occurred four years before she was born, and she left the country at the age of two, living in Europe and America and eventually attending Mount Holyoke College right here in western Massachusetts. Her novel, A GOLDEN AGE, returns to Bangla Desh’s struggle to become independent to tell the story of one family: a mother and her two children, both on the brink of adulthood. Rehana Haque is drawn by her children into the struggle, partly to pay off a decade old-debt to them. A debt incurred, Rehana feels, when she had to give them up for several years after she was widowed. The novel is a sensitive foray into the bonds of family and patriotism, in the best sense of the word, and how they intersect.

Podcast 57: How Everyday Products Make Us Sick

Francesca Rheannon — Sat, 26 Jan 2008 21:36:27 +0000

We look at the environmental causes of illness and how the truth about them is being distorted and suppressed.
Environmental health expert Dr. Devra Davis tells us about THE SECRET HISTORY OF THE WAR ON CANCER. She says 95% of all cancers are caused by our environment–and that powerful special interests have colluded with government and watchdog organizations like the American Cancer Society to sow doubt on longstanding research proving that. Davis is director of the Center for Environmental Oncology at the University of Pittsburgh, where she also teaches epidemiology.

And click here for a Web-only extra: Debra Davis tells Writers Voice the truth about the sugar substitute aspartame and its link to cancer. She also says that peer-reviewed studies have shown that ritalin and other treatments for ADD may boost the risk of cancer, too.

We also talk with occupational health physician Dr. Paul Blanc. He tells us about HOW EVERYDAY PRODUCTS MAKE PEOPLE SICK: Toxins at Home and in the Workplace.

Writers Voice with Francesca Rheannon » Podcast

Podcast 70: Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet. Bush’s Law.

Related posts

Podcast 69: Nicholson Baker’s HUMAN SMOKE and more…

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Podcast 68: Poetry From the Grassroots

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Podcast 67: AGE OF AMERICAN UNREASON and AGAINST THE MACHINE

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Podcast 66: Philip Fradkin and Rutherford Platt

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Podcast : Poetry Speaks Expanded and Beyond Genocide

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Podcast 64: Greg Palast on Spitzer and the Bank Bailout; also, Field Report on Narrative Journalism

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Podcast 63: The Open-Focus Brain and Surviving Depression

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Podcast 62: Eric Weitz’s WEIMAR GERMANY

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Podcast 62: Life With Asperger’s

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Podcast 61: Black History Month Special

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Podcast 60: Kevin Patterson and John Hanson Mitchell

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Podcast 59: novelist Geraldine Brooks and poet laureate Al Young

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Podcast 58: Russell Banks and Tahmima Anam

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Podcast 57: How Everyday Products Make Us Sick

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