Radio Curious

Click here to begin listening To create thought around Yom Hashoah, known in English as Holocaust Remembrance Day I offer you an archive interview with Ralph Appelbaum, the designer the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, in Washington D.C., which opened in April 1993, when this interview was recorded. When Ralph Appelbaum and I were Peace […]

Click here to begin listening History remembers poets of past eras as windows into the civilization of their time. A poet’s words reveal life and feelings we would otherwise never know. New England, in the mid-19th century, was the center of a renaissance of American poetry. Emily Dickinson, better known now than she was then, […]

Click here to begin listening The life of Clarina Nichols and her work in the early women’s rights movement in the United States has been greatly overlooked. As one of the country’s first female newspaper editors and stump speakers, Clarina Nichols spoke out for temperance, abolition and women’s rights at a time when doing so […]

Click here to begin listening This is the second of two interviews with civil rights Attorney Barbara Phillips. She is a contributor to the book “Voices of Civil Rights Lawyers: Reflections From the Deep South: 1964-1980,” whose editor Kent Spriggs we interviewed in December 2017. In part one Phillips shared stories and experiences from her […]

Click here to begin listening We continue our series on “Voices of Civil Rights Lawyers,” a book in which our guest Attorney Barbara Phillips is a contributor, and Attorney Kent Spriggs, our guest in December 2017, is the editor.  Now retired, Barbara Phillips first worked as a community organizer in rural Mississippi.  Later, as an […]

Click here to begin listening Children of incarcerated parents is topic of this edition of Radio Curious. The estimated 2.7 million children of prison inmates in the United States are losing their visitation rights . Sylvia A. Harvey, an investigative journalist, is our guest. Her story about the diminishing opportunities for children to visit their […]

Click here to begin listening In this edition we again visit with Dr. Terry Allen Kupers, a forensic psychiatrist and the author of “Solitary: The Inside Story of Supermax Isolation and How We Can Abolish It.” In our first visit, available on line at radiocurious.org, Dr. Kupers describes the abysmal conditions in which an estimated […]

Click here to begin listening An estimated 100,000 people are held in solitary confinement in the United States.  The conditions in which they live are abysmal.  They have little or no contact human contact. Often they are kept in dark, cold, wet cells eight feet by 10 feet in size. Many suffer from mental illness […]

Click here to begin listening Theatre as a commentary on the condition of society is the subject of this edition of Radio Curious. The topic is the relationship of police and black men in America in 2015. Our guest is Michael Gene Sullivan, the resident playwright, director and a principal actor in “2015: Freedomland,” this […]

Click here to begin listening You may remember the Radio Curious interview with Bernard Offen, recorded in May 2005, and re-boradcast the end of May 2017.  In telling the story of his youth in Poland during World War II, being forced into four different concentration camps established and controlled by the Nazis, Bernard Offen characterized […]

Click here to begin listening “The Post,” a movie released January 12, 2018, reveals the story of how the release of the “Pentagon Papers” (https://www.archives.gov/research/pentagon-papers) created a fundamental challenge of the freedom of the press and alleged issues of national security.  Few moments in American history have held the tension of the Vietnam war, as […]

Click here to begin listening To assist in the consideration of the impact of Martin Luther King, Jr. on the United States, I invited my friend Orell Massey to join us again here at Radio Curious.  In February 2014, when Massey first visited us he shared his experiences as the first and, so far, the […]

Click here to begin listening This program is presented in honor of my mother, Lillian Brown Vogel, whose vivacious 39,549 days finally caught up with her on December 29, 2017. She died at her home here in Ukiah, California at the age of 108. Smiling until she closed her eyes for the last time, she […]

Click here to begin listening Radio Curious discusses transracial adoptions with Jaciara Bayer, a 30 year old Brazilian born woman, who is currently studying for a master’s degree in social work at the California State University at Hayward. Jaciara Bayer was adopted and brought to the United States at age 11 months by her single, […]

Click here to begin listening 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.” In the mid 19th century, with […]

Click here to begin listening Is the concept of “mother blame” a method to control women? Is motherhood a really a fearsome job? Will a mother’s mistake or inattention damage a child? Is this different from the fear that fathers have about the safety of their children? These questions are answered by guest Jana Malamud […]

Click here to begin listening How many of us are lonely? What is loneliness and how does it affect us? Approximately 25 years ago, when asked the number of friends in whom we could confide, most people in the United States said “three.” When that question was asked recently most people said “none.” Inquires reveal […]

Click here to begin listening In all successful social and political changes in here in the the United States and elsewhere, civil disobedience plays a significant role. Bus boycotts, sit-ins and marches, coordinated with constitution based legal challenges to blatant racially based restrictions imposed by the white supremacy in the American south, were at the […]

Click here to begin listening This is the second in a two part series on why police in the United States kill more citizens than in any other developed nation.  Our guest is Professor Franklin E. Zimring from the Law School at the University of California at Berkeley.  He is the author of the 2017 […]

Click here to begin listening This program is devoted to some of the reasons why police in the United States kill and who the dead are. Of the 1,100 killings by police in the United States in the year 2015, 85% were a result of a fatal shooting. 95% of those victims were male.  The […]

Click here to begin listening The California coastal redwood trees are some of the oldest living things in the world. Other than cutting the tree down, the best way to determine their age, or the age of any tree is with an incremental borer. That’s a long narrow tube twisted into the tree from the […]

Click here to begin listening Harper’s Ferry National Park is located at the confluence of the Potomac and Shenandoah Rivers in the easternmost corner of what is now West Virginia. This tiny national park, just over a square mile in size, is the location of the 1859 raid led by John Brown, a white abolitionist. […]

Click here to begin listening Whiskey:  Scotch, Irish, Absinthe and Moonshine, among others, are the topics of this edition of Radio Curious.  Our guest is Crispin Cain, an artisan liqueur maker, distiller and co-owner of Greenway Distillers and American Craft Whiskey based in Redwood Valley, California, about 10 miles north of the Radio Curious studios. […]

Click here to begin listening This program is about some of the consequences of that small pocket size electronic device which, as of January, 2017, 95% of adult Americans own and carry. (www.pewinternet.org/fact-sheet/mobile) This device is commonly called a cell phone. In May, 2017, estimates indicate the average American over age 18 spends 2 hours, […]

Click here to begin listening Radio Curious discusses the funeral industry in the United States with the owner of a mortuary in a rural northern California town. As professionals describe their work and philosophy, George Leinen, owner of Empire Mortuary in Ukiah, California since 2000, joins us in this edition of Radio Curious to share […]