Monthly Archives: October 2015

Podcast

School Reform Wrongs & Rights: Dale Russakoff, The Prize & Kristina Rizga, Mission High

Dale Russakoff talks about her acclaimed new book, The Prize: Who’s in Charge of America’s Schools. It’s about the ambitious plan hatched by Cory Booker, Chris Christie and Mark Zuckerberg to reform Newark’s schools from the top down.

Then, Kristina Rizga tells the inspiring story of an inner city high school that’s changing students’ lives. Her book is Mission High: One School, How Experts Tried to Fail It, and the Students and Teachers Who Made It Triumph. Continue reading

Podcast

Carl Safina, BEYOND WORDS: What Animals Think And Feel

Conservation biologist Carl Safina talks about his acclaimed new book, Beyond Words: What Animals Think And Feel. It’s an eloquent plea based on science and ethics for a major re-set on how humans regard our fellow animals. It’s a game changer. Continue reading

Web Extras

Web Extra: Read an Excerpt & Hear Carl Safina read from BEYOND WORDS

PROLOGUE
Into the Mind Field

Ask now the beasts, and they shall teach thee; and the fowls of the air, and they shall tell thee: Or speak to the earth, and it shall teach thee: and the fishes of the sea shall declare unto thee.
—Job 12:7—8, King James Version

Beyond Words Jacket FINAL.inddAnother big group of dolphins had just surfaced alongside our moving vessel—leaping and splashing and calling mysteriously back and forth in their squeally, whistly way, with many babies swift alongside their mothers. And this time, confined to just the surface of such deep and lovely lives, I was becoming unsatisfied. I wanted to know what they were experiencing, and why to us they feel so compelling and so—close. This time I allowed myself to ask them the question that is forbidden fruit: Who are you? Science usually steers firmly from questions about the inner lives of animals. Surely they have inner lives of some sort. But like a child who is admonished that what they really want to ask is impolite, a young scientist is taught that the animal mind—if there is such—is unknowable. Permissible questions are “it” questions: about where it lives, what it eats, what it does when danger threatens, how it breeds. But always forbidden is the one question that might open the door: Who? Continue reading

Podcast

Joyce Carol Oates, The Lost Landscape & Ann Patchett’s Essays

We talk with Joyce Carol Oates about her wonderful new memoir, The Lost Landscape: A Writer’s Coming of Age (Harper Collins). It tells the story of her coming of age as a writer, from her childhood in rural western New York state until her launching as a celebrated novelist.

Then we re-play an edited version of our 2014 interview with novelist Ann Patchett about her book of essays, This Is The Story of a Happy Marriage. Continue reading

Podcast

Is The World Running Out Of Food? Joel Bourne, THE END OF PLENTY

We spend the hour talking with journalist Joel K. Bourne, Jr. about population, the threat of famine and new ways to prevent it. His book is The End of Plenty: The Race To Feed A Crowded World. Continue reading

Podcast

Juliana Barbassa on Rio on the brink & Ta Nehisi Coates on fathers and sons

We take the pulse of Brazilian society with journalist Juliana Barbassa — the forces holding it back and the people’s push for more democracy. Her book is Dancing with the Devil in the City of God.

Then, Ta-Nehisi Coates just received a MacArthur “genius” fellowship. We re-air our 2008 interview with him about his memoir, The Beautiful Struggle. 

Continue reading