Radio Curious

Click here to begin listening Love Invents Us Amy Bloom is a Connecticut-based author and psychotherapist and the author of a novel entitled “Love Invents Us.” This book, the enactment of psychological theory about human behavior, also traces the intimate details in the life of Elizabeth Howe from her childhood to middle age. I spoke […]

Click here to begin listening Newspapers were the primary means of mass communication in 19th Century America. They not only told the news, but they pervaded social and political ideas of the times. Horace Greeley was one of the most colorful and outspoken newspapermen of his day. “Read and judge yourself,” was a slogan of […]

Click here to begin listening Chaim Potok, the author of “The Chosen,” “The Gift of Asher Lev,”Davida’s Heart,” and many other novels, chronicled the life of a Russian Jewish family in the non-fictions story, “The Gates of November.” This true story of the Slapeck family, Solomon Slapek, his son Valodya, and daughter-in-law Masha, spans 100 […]

Click here to begin listening A generally accepted theory about human migration tells us that people crossed the landmass that once connected Siberia to Alaska. Some of those people continued walking south and many generations later settled on the western edge of the Amazon Basin in South America in what is now eastern Peru. One […]

Click here to begin listening Every year on the 25th day of the Hebrew month of Kislev, which falls four days before the new moon closest to the winter solstice, the eight day holiday of Chanukah, celebrated worldwide, begins. Before the days of radio and television a person called a magid traveled from town to […]

Click here to begin listening The Greening of America & Opposing the System The market economy often seems to have many inherent problems. Indeed, a Marxist historical view presupposes that the fundamental contradictions of capitalism will inevitably lead to socialism. Far from this extreme, Charles Reich, author of “The Greening of America” and, more recently, […]

Click here to begin listening There is strong historical and anthropological evidence that dogs came across the Bering land bridge with people migrating from Siberia to Alaska. These dogs worked hard to maintain their keep; they werent pets. Instead, they chased and ran down polar bears and located seals hiding beneath the Bering ice. One […]

Click here to begin listening Some of the most studied glaciers in the world are found in Glacier Bay National Park located in southeastern Alaska. These expansive ice sheets cover approximately ten percent of the earth’s surface and hold eighty percent of the world’s fresh water, ninety-nine percent of which can be found in Greenland […]

Click here to begin listening Democracy in America In 1831, a 25 year-old Frenchman, Alexis de Tocqueville, trained as a lawyer, and preoccupied with democracy, came to the US to study this new political scheme. Alexis de Tocqueville and his traveling companion, Gustave de Beaumont, arrived at Newport, RI, in an America comprised, then, of […]

Click here to begin listening PT Barnum, sometimes known as the Prince of Humbug, was born in Connecticut in 1810. In many ways, he personified the American character that Frenchman Alexis De Tocqueville described in his book, “Democracy in America.” Barnum delighted in making money and telling the truth, as he saw it. Some truths […]

Click here to begin listening Domingo Sarmiento, a teacher and later President of the Republic of Argentina, spent several years traveling in Europe and the United States in the mid-19th Century. He spent six weeks in the US in the fall of 1847 and later published his account of this visit, selectively interpreting what he […]

Click here to begin listening The Virus of the Mind The developing field of science called the science of memetics is based on evolution, studies memes: how they interact, replicate, and evolve. The biological definition of a meme is a basic unit of cultural transmission. The psychological definition of a meme is a unit of […]

Click here to begin listening People who crave space, freedom, adventure, and opportunities have long been attracted to Alaska. In June of 1996 I spoke with Niilo Kopanan, the son of Finnish immigrants who grew up in New York City and moved to a mountain ridge near Fairbanks, Alaska in 1952. At that time, land […]

Click here to begin listening FBI Secrets: An Agent’s Expose Agents at the Federal Bureau of Investigation have a history of illegal break-ins to homes and offices and conducting wiretaps without a search warrant. In the years when J. Edgar Hoover was the Director of the F.B.I., these warrantless break-ins came to be known as […]

Click here to begin listening A Civil Action Woburn, MA, is a small, blue-collar community just north and west of Boston. In the 1970s, some children in Woburn, MA, became sick and died from childhood leukemia. Some adults in that town developed rare forms of cancer. All of these people live very close to each […]

Click here to begin listening Genetically engineered food products are an issue that concerns many. In more recent years, Mendocino County has gone so far as to pass a resolution legally prohibiting their growth in the county. My guest in this program, recorded in the late summer of 1995, is Ron Epstein, a philosophy professor […]

Click here to begin listening On the eastern slope of the Continental Divide, about an hour’s drive east of San Jose, Costa Rica, is the Rain Forest Aerial Tram, a tramway that travels through, above and below the rain forest canopy. The rain forest canopy is home to more diverse forms of flora and fauna […]

Click here to begin listening Life Above the Jungle Floor In the middle of the Costa Rican rain forest, about an hour west of San Jose, Costa Rica, on the east side of the continental divide, you can find the Rain Forest Aerial Tram located on a private rain forest reserve. It’s a series of […]

Click here to begin listening Until the mid-1990s, the Redwood Industry dominated much of North Coast economy. In the mid-1990s, due to a number of circumstances particularly involving Pacific Lumber Company and Charles Hurwitz, industry advocates collided with environmentalists in a final hurrah. Few figures among the environmentalists carry as much name-recognition and power as […]

Click here to begin listening The Autobiography of a Face Lucy Grealy, a victim of Ewing’s Sarcoma, beginning when was nine years old suffered from a cancer of the jaw that is 90% fatal in the first few years. In Lucy’s case, it was not fatal. Rather it brought about many intense and emotional experiences […]

Click here to begin listening Understanding Comics, A Rather Colorful Display: The Invisible Art Comics have come to hold quite an important place in contemporary society. Satire, particularly political commentary, is perhaps closest to its essence when expressed in the visual comic. However, it also can be argued that comics have played a far greater […]

Click here to begin listening Thomas Jefferson, the third President of the United States of America, stands as one of the lead political theorists of American history.  His ward republican theory required an agrarian population, a government originating in the individual household, and a consistently questioning and rebellious public. My guest in this edition of Radio […]

Click here to begin listening Prejudices exist in almost every human context, but how do we overcome them and act without stereotypes? This program’s guest is Dr. Jim Cole, who lives in Ellingsburg, Washington and is a psychologist. We discussed diversity training – the process of becoming more aware of the prejudices we have. This […]

Click here to begin listening My guest in this program was Dr. David Kiersey, the author of a book called “Presidential Temperament.” Dr. Kiersey took the Meyers-Briggs Temperament inventories and developed what has come to be known as the Kiersey Temperament Sorter. In so doing, he has established and identified several different types of character […]

Click here to begin listening Don Davis, a story-teller from Okracoke, North Carolina and joins us in this archive edition first broadcast in July 1993, when Radio Curious was called Government, Politics and Ideas. In our conversation, we discuss the role of story-telling in our modern technological society, the art and dance of story-telling in […]