We’re going to cover the midterm elections, of course; best way to help out is to jump on the 2006 Elections Wiki and fill in some information about your own state. But more generally — and nudged in part by our own community — we’re wondering how to back off the hard news a little bit, figure out what the larger issue is, and cover that. We’re looking for shows like The Good Death (suggested by community member scarequotes) and The Redemption of Michael Brown, shows that, rather than saying “Well, the bombs are falling pretty fast and furious now, Wolf” actually get at the heart of something, a luxury that Open Source has that not every news show shares. In the office we call these “Chelsea shows,” since those kinds of ideas often come from her desk.
So give us a Chelsea show. And, as always, tell us something from your own community, your own industry. No fair giving us a headline from The New York Times or Morning Edition and saying “Cover this!” We read that stuff, too. Tell us about what we can’t see from here, stuck in front of our computers in Cambridge.
And no, we haven’t forgotten about the August ideas; August wrapup coming soon, courtesy of Greta.
Please consider a show on Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials triology.
Well, if the theme is a reprieve, or alternative, to hard breaking news, why not some shows with philosophers as guests? I know back at “The Connection” Chris did several shows along these lines, with guests like Richard Rorty and Daniel Dennett (I know he was on ROS recently, but not as a full interview) discussing people like W.V. Quine (about as removed from immediate news as you can get). The subject at large could be, say, what place the philosophical mode or mood has in general public life, not just in the academy. Or the topics could be specific to each guest. Here are three I would love to hear on the show:
Stanley Cavell – you could talk about pretty much anything with him. A discussion on film and its repositioning amidst new technologies would be interesting (to me at least – he’s written some of the best stuff on movies around). Plus Chris could get his Emerson/Transcendentalist fix.
Adam Phillips – I’ve suggested him as a guest before, and I’ll keep doing it till my keyboard collapses. He writes in what could be called a philosophical or literate mode of psychoanalytic essay. And Chris could discuss Freud in the modern day, on this his 150th year. You had a birthday show, and didn’t even invite Sigi? Sure, he’s dead, but still, he’s fun to talk to. Mark Solms would also be a good guest for a Freud show.
Stephen A. Erickson – he wrote an essay in 1999 called “The Coming Age of Thresholding: The Renewal of Mystery within Secular Culture” (Philosophy Today, Spring 1999). I’ve been reading and rereading it quite a bit recently. I find it remarkably prophetic. It deals with the need for otherworldliness, and the need for this need to find a place in technology-driven secular culture.
Anyway, there are my airy show suggestions.
Let’s hear from Jason Berry about NO LA politics and jazz. He will be in Boston in october!
Do a show on Iran’s nuke program. The crackdown of EU-USA-UNSC . Ask this crazy guy, Glenn B to participate in your show. Tnx
Is the falling price of oil a Republican conspiracy to take the midterm elections?
This isn’t suggestion but an observation that deserves a public placement. I just did a quick tally of guests on the past 20 shows (not counting the vacation rebroadcasts, and I couldn’t find and don’t recall the guest list for ‘The Long View’), and here’s what I found:
67 guests.
56 men.
11 women.
In a ratio, that’s 84% to 16%.
Compare that, please, with approximately 49% to 51% gender ratio of the global population.
Nudge, nudge…
A suggestion for a show: Frank Rich’s new book, “The Greatest Story Ever Sold”.
In addition to Frank, you could have as guest Ian Buruma who reviewed the book last Sunday (front page of the NYT Book Review).
By the way, in his review, Ian Buruma remarked on the 2002 British memo (I think this must have been the Jack Straw “slim evidence for WMD’s” memo that was leaked.) Is he the only person (beside me, that is) to quote this memo to discredit the Bush/Blair default excuse “Well, we all believed it….the whole world believed it”
No! No! No! Bush-Blair! That is not so! That is not what you believed. The best intelligence you had about Saddam’s alleged WMDs was Jack Straw warning Blair that there was “slim evidence” for them.
That’s not what you believed. That’s what YOU WANTED TO BELIEVE in your attempt to justify the invasion of Iraq.
Rich has been among the very best on the sorry matter of Iraq. (in his previous career as theater critic, Frank has seen them all. He has reviewed over 3000 plays: he knows how good plays and bad plays come out in the end. He can smell a bad plot.)
Malachi McCormick
I would like to suggest the dual themes of my own blog as separate shows: one on cats, different ways they exist in our lives and cultures (preferably trying to avoid the usual cat vs. dog divide); and one on electronic music, focusing on more “experimental” and perhaps intersections of music and social technologies on the web.
‘one on electronic music, focusing on more “experimental‒
Yeah! Give us Toby Marks, the brains behind the usually sublime ‘banco de gaia’: http://www.cduniverse.com/sresult.asp?HT_Search=xartist&HT_Search_Info=Banco+De+Gaia
I will come back to this but one of the finest Christopher Lydon hours I remember was the Love hour, number 4 in the philosophy series at the “Connection.” Martha Nussbaum was the guest and she was soooo down to earth, so real. I return to that hour every so often to feel some love.
I’d like to suggest a show that digs into the oil in Iraq. The US is accused worldwide of invading Iraq for the oil…so, did we? where is it? is it being sold to pay for this war? is it being sold at all? By who to who? Weren’t there supposed to be huge amounts of it? Nobody has even hinted at this topic in the day to day media sources…and I sure haven’t enjoyed to benefits of it at my local gas station…
thanks
George
KUOW last night aired a talk given by physicist Robert Fuller, who has authored two recent books that make him, I am certain, an ideal central guest for an hour of ROS:
All Rise: Somebodies, Nobodies, and the Politics of Dignity http://www.powells.com/biblio/2-1576753859-0
and:
Somebodies and Nobodies: Overcoming the Abuse of Rank
http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/biblio?inkey=17-0865714878-1
Here’s the relevant Wikipedia link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rankism
And the blurb on the KUOW webpage that offers links to Fuller’s website, biography and another appearance on a KUOW talk-show:
(quote)
Racism, sexism, classism and homophobia: According to Robert Fuller, America’s civil rights struggles have all been struggles against ‘rankism.’ That’s the abuse of power that comes with status, and Fuller says it’s the most entrenched obstacle to individual dignity in America. He says stopping it will heal our country’s ‘toxic’ politics. Fuller explains how to create a ‘dignitarian’ society. He also recalls fighting for black students’ dignity as a teacher at Seattle’s Garfield High School in 1967. He spoke on July 11th, 2006 at Seattle’s Town Hall in an event sponsored by the Elliot Bay Book Company and the Town Hall Center for Civic Life.
(unquote)
http://www.kuow.org/programs/speakers_forum.asp?Archive=09-20
The shows in question stream and/or podcast.
I’m game. Been listening to Chris’s show in the Bay Area for a very long time. First, “The Connection” on KALW in the mornings; now “Open Source” on KQED in the middle of the night. It is far and away the most intelligent talk show in the U.S., and I’ve had recent exposure to a lot of them–while on book tour for “All Rise,” which lays out a “politics of dignity.” This is a reframing of western democracy, based not on the preeminence of liberty, equality, or fraternity, but rather on the centrality of dignity. It represents an Emersonian synthesis of progressive and conservative values, and my experience at over 250 events (one of which Old Nick heard) in two dozen states (red and blue) is that it works to draw a sizeable majority (~ 2/3) into its fold. Here is the key idea at op-ed length.
Dignity—A Unifying Value for Americans
Robert W. Fuller
What core value, what slogan, could move us beyond the toxic standoff that paralyzes American politics today? The answer lies in a word—Dignity. The bumper sticker is “Dignity for All.”
The notion of dignity may at first seem too simple to pull together the disparate elements of this divided nation, but it’s not. Dignity is what people want, on the left, on the right, and most importantly, in the vast, non-ideological middle.
Dignity is not negotiable. As Martin Luther King, Jr. showed, people will stand up for their dignity, and once they’re on their feet, they’ll march for justice.
Two hundred years of bloody world history suggest that there is no direct path from Liberty to Justice. But if we interpose a steppingstone, we can build a bridge to justice. The name of that stone is not “Equality.†It’s name is “Dignity.” By establishing the right to dignity, and then enacting legislation that protects everyone’s dignity, we can give concrete meaning to Thomas Jefferson’s evocative claim that “All men are created equal.â€
A “dignitarian society” pulls together what’s best from the three ideological traditions encapsulated in the French revolutionary slogan—Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity. The polarizing stranglehold these ideals exert on the contemporary imagination, when any one is prioritized over the others, is a major source of the incivility that infects our politics today.
Conservatives see themselves as liberty’s defenders; progressives pride themselves as the champions of equality. Both parties promise fraternity, but neither delivers it.
Dignity is more encompassing than liberty, equality, or fraternity. A dignitarian—as contrasted with an egalitarian—society can deliver on America’s founding promise of “liberty and justice for all.â€
The politics of dignity puts the “We†back in “We the People.†It spans the conservative-liberal divide. It closes the ideological fissures that separate libertarian, egalitarian, and fraternitarian ideologies and breaks the stalemate that has stalled the advance of justice since the 1960s.
A dignitarian society does not tolerate indignity—towards anyone. When this principle is translated into social policy, it rules out acceptance of a permanent underclass. It disallows prejudice and discrimination toward all the groups that have rallied around the various flags of identity politics. It transforms the stalemate over abortion and gay marriage into a civil discussion of whose rights to dignity are being abridged. It proclaims everyone’s right to a sustainable environment.
Like liberty and justice, dignity is most easily defined in the negative. As a precursor to banishment or exploitation, we’re all attuned to detect the slightest hint of indignity.
What causes people to experience indignity? The precise and universal cause of indignity is the abuse of power. Make a list of the most distressing issues of recent years: corporate corruption, the lobbying scandals, Katrina neglect, sexual abuse by clergy, Abu Ghraib, domestic spying, etc. Every one of them can be traced to an abuse of power by individuals of rank. Often the abuses had the blessing of officials of even higher rank.
To effectively oppose the full range of abuses of power vested in rank, we need a word that identifies them collectively. Abuse and discrimination based on color and gender are called “racism†and “sexism,†respectively, and absent these labels, it’s hard to imagine the gains we’ve made against them. By analogy, abuse and discrimination based on the power inherent in rank is “rankism.†This coinage provides a vitalizing link between the methods of identity politics and the moral values of democratic governance. Having a generic name for abuses of power makes them much easier to target, and targeting them is precisely what’s called for if democracy is to resume its evolution.
However principled the cause, no party can present itself as a champion of dignity so long as its members reserve the right to indulge in rankism. This includes treating political opponents with indignity. Humiliation and condescension—toward domestic opponents or foreign enemies—are inherently rankist postures, and as such they have no place in dignitarian politics.
How would a society that makes dignity its watchword differ from ones shaped by ideologies that accentuate liberty, equality, or fraternity? The difference is one of nuance, not opposition, for a dignitarian society combines the strengths of all three.
Dignitarian politics promotes individual economic freedom and respects the free market as an inherently anti-rankist economic mechanism, what Adam Smith called a “system of natural liberty.†But market forces are restrained by institutions of social responsibility that insure that concentrations of financial power are not turned to monopolistic exploitation or used to gain unmerited educational or political advantages. You shouldn’t have to be rich to attend quality schools, or command a fortune to stand for office.
A dignitarian society provides genuine equality of opportunity. In a dignitarian society, loss of social mobility, let alone division into impermeable classes, is unacceptable. There’s a way out of poverty within a generation in a dignitarian society. Everyone earns a living wage and has access to quality health care.
The politics of dignity sees democracy as a work in progress. Democracy’s next step—one that will enlarge liberty, extend justice, and foster fraternity—is to overcome rankism and build a dignitarian society.
Robert W. Fuller
Tel: (510) 841-0964
Email: bfuller@igc.org
Website: breakingranks.net
You guys started an in-house thread on a pblic radio conference you attended and how public radio could better take advantage of the internet.
I thought that was a fascinating topic and made several postings to it, and then it just disappeared.
Given that this show is called “open source” and that the Internet is changing EVERYTHING, and that traditional media (print and broadcast) is in a crisis, I would expect that would be a fascinating and very relevant topic.
I don’t watch TV but I listen to LOTS of radio!! I listen to radio while I work, drive, cook, go for walks, paint, work in the garden or do chores. But I hardly EVER listen to radio on the air. Almost all of it is MP3 (podcasts or captured streams), time-shifted and playlisted. The result is that WHYY, WPR or Australia’s Radio National are just as “local” to me as WGBH in Boston, even though I live near Lowell. Lots of other people do the same thing, so what are the implications of this?
Cool! Open Source has a wiki for the 2006 midterms. It is interesting to see how wikis are creeping into politics. For instance, Pete Ashdown who is running against Utah’s Senate Orrin Hatch has employed a wiki to help form his platform – as has Senate candidate Kevin Zeese in Maryland. Even Jimmy Wales, the guy behind Wikipedia, launched Campaigns Wikia this summer to provide a forum for people to discuss, collaborate, and solve political problems. How about doing a show involving these three men to talk about the potential of wikis in politics?
Another angle is citizen involvement and transparency, the Sunlight Foundation is calling for greater transparency in congress and is spearheading a project that involves normal citizens to track congressional earmarks. Its founder Ellen Miller contributed an excellent commentary on Marketplace about the foundation’s mission a couple of weeks ago. Pete Ashdown has pushed such transparency through various methods, including a public calendar of all of his activities. Why not invite Miller along with the others I have mentioned above about the importance of transparency and citizen involvement in politics?
Oh please oh please oh please:
Jump, with both feet and even your hands, onto the CIA terrorism assessment leaked into the Sunday NYT.
So what if Diane Rhem and Warren Olney will cover it too?
You folks will handle the story at least as well as they will – and probably even better.
Please.
Pretty please.
When was the last time we dealt with the EVIL, the
The troglodyte contigent’s perspective comes down to this: “Just like the fringe left chose its side 40 years ago against the US, so too has the fringe left chosen to hitch its wagon with the Islamists.”
WTF? Who the fandango is this “fringe left” that hates the US, that sides with the Islamists? Do they exist?
Also there’s some sense that we in the “mainstream” haven’t truly realized the evil that is the Soviet Union, the evil that is Iran, the evil that is “terrorism” etc. Really? What should we do as a reaction?
I guess we really can use a show on evil…
You’ve done a show about the art of conversation. And I’m thinking about the quality of dialogue required to have a real conversation. One very interesting group that is going deep into the concept of dialogue is the Generative Dialogue Project.
http://www.generativedialogue.org/about/index.html
I think it would be good to do a series over time on how to have creative dialogue. Breaking through the barriers of us/them, good/evil, right/wrong to get toward connecting to one another and generating positive change in the world.
I’m very close to one of the founders of this group and he could probably tell us which person or people involved would make for good radio, if you’re interested.
Is it possible to do a show concerning the guilts and responsibilities of nations over generations? When does a nation-state relinquish its ‘collective guilt’ for crimes committed by people mostly or entirely dead? How long is a nation-state responsible to the survivors of peoples it once exploited or tried to annihilate?
Examples for the topic: Germany and the Jews (via German support for Israel), Turks and the Armenians (even though the Ottomans, not the modern Turkish state, perpetrated the genocide), the USA and its citizens descended from African slaves, and the USA and the continent’s original inhabitants.
Can, how, and when do the people descended from the perpetrators win forgiveness from descendants of the victims?
Such a show would hardly be a trivial exercise in history or historiography, but relevant to much of the contemporary world’s perceptions of guilt and responsibility. It might, like last night’s I.F. Stone hour, unearth observations from yesteryear that ring instructively true today.
To give the listeners some perspective on Iraq, how about comparing our current Nation Building project with similar undertakings, like the U.N. projects in Cambodia and Mozambique? Those two efforts are somewhat recent and there are numerous parallels with Iraq.
Perhaps this is defeatist and premature (better left until November) but maybe not – As I hear pundits on both sides now say that firming Republican support and years of Republican gerrymandering make it increasingly likely that Democratic vote gains will not be sufficient to change control of either legislative chamber, I find myself wondering about what’s next for the disaffected. What about the substantial percentage of the electorate who strongly oppose the policies of the Bush Administration? Feelings of frustration, fury and futility will be widespread after yet another election is lost. Where will this large unhappy group turn? Will they give up? Will they start a third party? Will they start a campaign of civil disobedience? Can the Democrats keep them in the fold and focus them on 2008? Is there a leader who can give this group hope and focus their energy? In sum, what’s next for the not-quite-large-enough Loyal Opposition?
Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of _______?
If we were all told to fill in the blank with a word other then happiness, what would we write? Security? Pleasure? Dignity? Contentment? Knowledge? Joy? Spirituality? Laughter? No one would say the word “money†but a lot of us live that way.
It occurs to me that a common denominator of fundamentalism everywhere, is an aversion to this idea of pursuing happiness; hedonism must be lurking, right?
I’m curious, do Americans aspire to Jefferson’s great sentence in their every day lives and if so, in what ways?
What did Jefferson have in mind when he wrote it?
PBS had three documentary photographers do a series on the idea of “the pursuit of happiness.†They also had a contest of amateur photos. It’s great:
http://www.pbs.org/jefferson/frame4.htm
A dream guest to explore this sentence would be a literary historian like David McCullough, but I would like to hear from a wide range of people.
I’m trying to think of Chelsea shows
How about a program on Deep Ecology.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_ecology
http://www.deepecology.org/deepplatform.html
http://home.clara.net/heureka/gaia/deep-eco.htm
In light of the documentary Why We Fight broadcasted on BBC & around the world, how about doing a show on the Military Industrial Complex that president Eisenhower warned us about? And can you please have Chalmers Johnson and/or Gore Vidal as guest to shed light on the subject?
To watch the entire documentary: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article8494.htm
Trailers: http://www.sonyclassics.com/whywefight/
*keeping fingers crossed*.
Inspired by Chris’s comment about yesterday’s show that the Bush/Rove top-bottom template beat the bottom-up Dr. Dean one and that of Kerry in the political game, I would like to re-suggest a show examining whether fair and accountable elections are still possible in the good ‘ol USA. Actually Kerry did win BUT BUSH/CHENEY/ROVE CHEATED RUTHLESSLY AND UNREPENTINGLY.
Fundamentally it is not a question of templates or styles, it is the Bush/Cheney/Rove business as usual is win at all costs, and a contempt for democratic procedure.
The strange and tragic reality is that you don’t need to be a rocket scientist to get what went on. Recently many reports have come out about how quick and easy it is to fix the programs of Diebold voting machines. In Ohio, partisan poll workers routinely had ‘sleep-overs’ with precinct voting machines the night before the election. This was not for kinky sex. All under the supervision of Ohio secretary of state Ken Blackwell.
And on it goes… The dems are either brain dead or lack a spine or both. Now Ken Blackwell is running for governor and might well win because he’s still in charge of the rules of the voting game in Ohio and because the dems haven’t taken his gloating, sociopathic born again a… to task.
Well here you have it. The big story. And a sad and sickening one to boot.
What about a program specifically devoted to Port Security (focusing on Long Beach/Los Angeles, CA; Houston, TX; and New York/New Jersey — the biggest on each of America’s three coasts). I cannot be the only one who drives past our port idly day-dreaming, ‘If I were a terrorist, how would I target this transportation hub?’ And also, ‘If I were in charge of port security, what could I do to protect this sprawling complex?’ How much disruption would a closure of a port cause? What would it take to secure it before re-opening it again? And the big question: With RPGs, mortars, car bombs, and shoulder guided missiles so freely floating around the world — and so easily hidden — why haven’t these facilities already come under attack?
Same questions as above but specifically devoted to the vulnerabilities of gasoline refineries. (News flash: Cars do not run on oil; they run on refined gasoline!)
Beyond Outrage:
Prof Erwin Chemerinsky wrote an article for Wapo today “Legislating Violations of the Constitution” which brings to mind the current bill about treatment of detained persons ( and could be the part of a show covering this borader topic) but the article is not about that but about this:
“With little public attention or even notice, the House of Representatives has passed a bill that undermines enforcement of the First Amendment’s separation of church and state. The Public Expression of Religion Act – H.R. 2679 – provides that attorneys who successfully challenge government actions as violating the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment shall not be entitled to recover attorneys fees. The bill has only one purpose: to prevent suits challenging unconstitutional government actions advancing religion.”
This is “an insidious bill to try and limit enforcement of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, by denying attorneys fees to lawyers who successfully challenge government actions as violating this key constitutional provision.”
“Such a bill could have only one motive: to protect unconstitutional government actions advancing religion. The religious right, which has been trying for years to use government to advance their religious views, wants to reduce the likelihood that their efforts will be declared unconstitutional. Since they cannot change the law of the Establishment Clause by statute, they have turned their attention to trying to prevent its enforcement by eliminating the possibility for recovery of attorneys’ fees.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/29/AR2006092901055.html
Religious Tolerance and Peace, with special consideration for issues related to secularism, atheism and agnosticism.
The recent buzz around atheism and morality can serve as a hook.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rj-eskow/the-sad-state-of-atheism-_b_29749.html
http://www.cbc.ca/news/viewpoint/vp_mallick/20060923.html
http://the-brights.net/
Some Brights have already been guests on the show. Discussing their views could be a good way to link episodes to one another.
Just a reminder, there’s a significant proportion of “agnostic,” “nonreligious,” or “atheist” people in the United States.
http://www.gc.cuny.edu/faculty/research_briefs/aris/aris_index.htm
(In other parts of the world, the proportion is quite possibly much larger.)
[The October SaS isn't up yet but the August one kept going until September 19... http://www.radioopensource.org/suggest-a-show-august/ ]
Here’s a program I’m waiting for: What do we need psychologically to sustain ourselves in this “War on Terror”?
Like it or not, we’re in for a long slog. The roots of the conflict may go back a ways (with plenty of blame to be shared), but right now our coping skills are infantine. We are flailing militarily and we are stunned psychologically. You don’t have to be a fan of W. to understand we’re dealing with some very scary stuff.
Putting aside what we – the non-fundamentalist world – are to do, how are we to think? Courage, humor, greater understanding – surely these are all important. But I believe we’ve barely begun to get our thoughts in order.
Here are some leads to explore: 1) look closely at the response in Germany to the cancellation of Mozart’s Idomeneo; 2) put the Borat phenomenon in a larger perspective. Sasha Baron Cohen’s character is only in part a spoof of Kazakhstan. Funny and immensely popular, this British comic taps into a post-9/11 zeitgeist; 3) what wisdom has S. Rushdie come away with looking back and ahead from his peculiar vantage point?
I think there’s a lot here, Chris. I’d like to hear you and others bring the threads together.
Brian Mann was the guest today on KUOW’s The Conversation, discussing his new book, Welcome to the Homeland: A Journey to the Rural Heart of America’s Conservative Revolution.
(quote)
Mann believes urbanites are too dismissive of the millions of white rural Americans who hold a disproportionate share of national political power. For example, he says it’s a myth that progressives lost rural America because small-town folks are bigots. Mann explains why homelanders wield power far beyond their numbers. And he’ll tell us why he thinks their grip on national politics will fade in coming years.
(unquote)
http://www.kuow.org/programs/theconversation.asp
I can easily imagine an insightful ROS hour with Mann, especially if the hour’s other guests include, perhaps:
Jon Moe (who Chris and David probably met at KUOW in Seattle): http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/artsentertainment/2003285612_johnmoe03.html
http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-0060854014-0
…and Becky Garrison:
http://www.powells.com/biblio/2-0787983136-1
Along the lines of the Open Source that aired today (Oct. 4, 2006), which talked about how the public is perhaps being manipulated by marketing, etc., I’d like to suggest a topic that I’ve heard far too little about:
The Bush Administration has someone working for them — a woman who was in charge of marketing for Uncle Ben’s — who has, from what I’ve heard (and we’ve all seen!!) made the entire administration into a big marketing machine. They’re always “on message” with their “talking points,” etc. And it’s my take on things that they’re supremely trying to manipulate the American public (and the world — though they’re less successful at that one).
Sadly, it seems they’ve been largely successful at finding the pressure points and manipulating the public at large, to believe in, and go along with, whatever ideas, etc., they want to push.
I think it fits very much in the category of what was discussed on today’s Open Source. The Bush Administration even has one of the very people who’s one of the slick marketing execs for the very food companies that were being discussed today.
I’m sorry if there’s already been a show on this. It’s just something I always think of, and that I, sadly, rarely hear anything about.
(Is the woman in question’s name Charlotte Beers?)
btw, there are only 549 results on Google when “Bush administration”, “uncle ben’s” is searched. Why are so many people missing this huge issue? The public is being played, and by the people who are supposed to be running our government.
Please consider a show with Michael Pollan discussing all the issues he brings up in his new book: The Omnivore’s Dilemma. This would be a great followup to the “end of free-will” show. Here is a pretty good review of the book: http://www.grist.org/advice/books/2006/04/13/philpott/
The Nation also had its Sept 11th issue dedicated to this issue with several articles: http://www.thenation.com/docprem.mhtml?i=20060911&s=editors2 Any of these writers would be great show guests, especially Winonna LaDuke.
Been away for awhile, much to the relief of my fellow Jews and to “Peggy Sue”; and I really hadn’t listened for awhile until Billmon, whose blog “Whiskey Bar” is on my very short “favorites” menu, mentioned he’d be on the show.
Writer Robert Anton Wilson is very close to overcoming his lifelong struggle with oxygen addiction – something about the after-effects of polio – and I wonder if anyone at The Open Source Cafe-’n'-Schmooze thought he’d merit a show (regardless, actually, of his living/dying status).
Blogosphere heavyweights BoingBoing(dot)net exist due to his influence and are helping him in his final days: http://www.boingboing.net/2006/10/02/robert_anton_wilson_.html
Cheers, and see you all in the gulag – I’ll be the one paraphrasing Sir Thomas More as they lay my head on the guillotine: I’ll sweep ny long hair aside with a flourish and a quivering smirk and say, “This hath not offended The Decider!”
I would be very interested in a show about the topic of this book: Pink Ribbons, Inc. (http://www.powells.com/biblio/0816648980).
Blurb quote: “…Pink Ribbons, Inc. challenges the commercialization of the breast cancer movement, its place in U.S. culture, and its influence on ideas of good citizenship, responsible consumption, and generosity.”
I have not yet read the book but became familiar with the issue reading a piece in Harpers by Barbara Ehrenreich on her experience with breast cancer.
Kate Logan: Check out this show on corn subsidies we did with Michael Pollan.
Here’s some dangerous (perhaps), but rich terrain for your intellectual harrow-
A show on FORGIVENESS.
The U.S government and its officials, increasingly in my opinion, turn to the notion of ‘assuming responsibility’. At some point (some might think the Lewinsky issue and the fallout from its denial), officials learned to seek absolvence for misdirection, misconduct and malfeasance by ‘taking responsibility’ for thier transgressions. Chafee did it when his personal and professional lives collided at the same instant his Mustang struck a highway barrier. Powell did it regarding the fictions he presented to the United Nations. Rumsfeld did it regarding Abu Gharib. Now its Foley and Hastert. And lets not forget that the President himself invoked the same mechanism in relation to the miserable reaction (certainly a better word than ‘response’) to Katrina. This drole tool is inovked with such frequency it seems pathetic and ridiculous to me.
However, we have also been witness a true grace breathed into reality by the Amish community’s response to violence interjecting itself into their world. They offer forgiveness and the media characterizes it as ‘stunning’ and ‘unbelievable’.
At stake here are the different ways in which forgiveness plays in our culture, among those asking for it, and those that offer it. It also brings the idea of principled response and petty pandering into sharp relief. Ought we to forgive professional incompetencies among or representatives in the body politik? Ought we to offer forgiveness in the face of grave injustice and true evil? Is the Amish response– being underplayed- that they aren’t rushing to adopt stricter laws and more rigorous partitioning of their communities from the rest of us – the measures some were contemplating for our schools prior tothe PA event, that they aren’t seeking to gate their communities as many of those on the outside gate theirs?
In today’s New York Times Magazine there is a disturbing, not to say heart-breaking, article on what the author describes as the “collapse of elephant culture,” a collapse born of human predation and environmental destruction that has led to a sharp rise in elephant attacks on humans, from Africa to South-east Asia. And not only that: young male elephants are now raping and killing rhinoceroses…Levi-Strauss once wrote that “animals are how we think.” What are we thinking? Or, as Marvin Gaye put it, what’s going on? I saw a documentary on the subject about a year ago that featured an engaging fellow with a lovely voice named Mark Shand (brother, I found out later, of Camilla Parker-Bowles). I suspect he would make a wonderful guest. This is a big story, have a look for yourselves:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/08/magazine/08elephant.html?pagewanted=all
There are reasonable options to the oil shortage. Using hydrogen as an augmentation to gasoline or diesel based or hybrid electric solutions.
http://www.savefuel.ca/oxy-hydrogen/ Read this link regarding using the electrical system of the automobile to generate hydrogen in real-time and use it as the car is driven. This eliminates the hydrogen fuel cell storage challenges and increases the efficiency of the gasoline by about 30%. I learned of this through a person in Salt Lake City that has built multiple generations of the product and sells in very low volumes the units. For less than about $150 of parts he had added the unit to multiple vehicles of his own to achieve significant improvement in quietness of the engine, less pollutants, and a higher octane.
Here’s another link : http://www.wired.com/news/autotech/0,2554,69529,00.html
I have no financial interest in this just the interest of changing the landscape of big oil, big pollution, and big wars due to oil.
The problem is the vested interests have the power the money and the market and want no change to displace them.
Follow some of these links and the concepts are very basic. I have no background in chemistry, physics, engineering, or any other area other than computer software and this makes plenty of sense to me. In some of the links the concepts are documented on government websites.
Please follow-up on this.
Thanks
Utahtransplant.
Sorry to insist on beliefs and peace, but the issue really seems to be picking up some steam. A possible angle could be that war is often linked to dogmatism.
A few relevant links:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1541466,00.html
http://time.blogs.com/daily_dish/
http://conversationattheedge.com/2006/10/05/when-not-seeing-is-believing/
http://off-the-map.org/atheist/2006/09/29/video-sam-harris-interview/
http://paulmayers.blogs.com/my_weblog/2006/10/blessed_are_the.html
http://conversationattheedge.com/2006/10/06/what-as-christians-are-we-so-scared-of/
It certainly ties into a thread on tolerance in recent shows and blog entries.
I’ve been reading Kant’s “Perpetual Peace†about his vision of peace among nations. In it he makes the case for a “federation of states†something that sounds akin to the UN we have today. “It compels our species at last to discover some law of counterbalance to the principle of antagonism between nations, and in order to give effect to this law to introduce a federation of states (or police) – corresponding to that municipal security which arises out of internal police.â€
Our American forefathers established checks and balances in order to save our nation from our own nature, and as an autonomous nation we followed this principle and prospered. Yet, the new paradigm of globalization has dissolved the old borders and made us a citizen of a larger nation – a world nation, and we haven’t yet brought our founding principles to the party. Has the idea of “American Exceptionalism†taken hold, are we simply too big for our britches, to the point we will never let another entity “check†us. Oh, please let this not the case, because if a “check†to our hegemony does not come from a UN resolution, it may come in the form of a “mushroom cloud.â€
Can we spend an hour dissecting the UN? Can the current UN ever act as a check and balance? Can our current UN be the “federation of states†that Kant believes is our only chance for peace among nations? If we so holeheatedly buy into the preamble of the US constitution why can’t we buy into the preamble of the US charter, of which the first words read: “WE THE PEOPLES OF THE UNITED NATIONS DETERMINED to save succeeding generations from the scourge of warâ€
http://www.un.org/aboutun/charter/
P.S. Madeleine Albright would make a great guest.
Kant’s “Perpetual Peace†1795
http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/kant/kant1.htm
Kant foresaw Globalization, he ends his essay:
“Since the narrower or wider community of the peoples of the earth has developed so far that a violation of rights in one place is felt throughout the world, the idea of a law of world citizenship is no high-flown or exaggerated notion. It is a supplement to the unwritten code of the civil and international law, indispensable for the maintenance of the public human rights and hence also of perpetual peace.:
The End of Intellectual Property As We (Think We) Know It.
http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/1470/125/
Many of us now believe that copyright protection and other procedures related to “Intellectual Property” have become extremely unwieldy, inherently flawed, or inappropriately applied. Absurd outcomes of “Intellectual Property” seem to abound and some might say that current IP models lead to a form of “decadence,” with some of the historical connotations afforded that term.
Possible guests: Michael Geist, Cory Doctorow, Lawrence Lessig, Richard M. Stallman…??
The story is being told in many ways, especially in the “geek” world. For instance, a few links from today’s episode (no. 330 “Who’s A Moron Now?”) of the Buzz Out Loud podcast:
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20061010-7946.html
http://www.boingboing.net/2006/10/10/canadian_music_propo.html
http://news.com.com/2100-1030_3-6124149.html?tag=nl.e777
http://www.boingboing.net/2006/10/10/panicked_chefs_propo.html
On the (celebrity/auteur) chef issue:
http://www.foodandwine.com/articles/new-era-of-the-recipe-burglar
http://www.megnut.com/2006/06/an-evening-at-moto
http://www.megnut.com/2006/06/a-bit-more-information-on-fizzy-fruit
http://www.megnut.com/2006/10/keep-recipes-free
Additional reading material:
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.xhtml
http://www.eff.org/IP/
On music:
http://www.musicandcopyright.org/
http://www.musiccreators.ca/
Searchables:
Fair Use, Digital Rights Management (DRM), Creative Commons, Your Rights Online (YRO), Content Industry
Shameless plugs:
http://blog.criticalworld.net/2006/10/03/new-models-for-music-as-business-brazilian-tecno-brega/116/
http://enkerli.wordpress.com/2006/09/20/disney-getting-the-clue/
http://blog.criticalworld.net/posts/categories/words/rights/
http://enkerli.wordpress.com/tag/intellectual-property
Thank you ROS for your 2006 election shows. Hearing real voices from these states makes me feel more in tune to our democracy. I’m sure your guest list will become more diverse as we move along but I just wanted to throw in my two cents. I did a quick check of the first three shows and I counted 13 white guys (sounded like white guys, could be wrong) + 1 white male host ☺ and 2 women. I’m sure we will be hearing some black and Hispanic voices and maybe even some Asian America and Muslim American as we move along. I KNOW you always try very hard to find interesting voices regardless of thier identity and I appreciate it.
I think you should do a show that would delve into the idea that selfish motives can be a powerful motivator to do good things. for example, Israel might get a tremendous benefit from raising the standard of living in the west bank and gaza since well off, happy neighbors might be less inclined to go to war. If all employers raised wages for low wage earners worldwide, all companies would have more and better consumers to keep their goods and services in demand. The central questions is, is altruism the motivator to be a good citizen of the world, or is profit or self preservation more powerful.
Secondly I don’t know if you have done a show specifically on this, but as an orthopedic surgeon i see daily the effects of obesity. i think a show looking critically at the “diet industry” would be interesting. According to laura fraser “Losing It: False Hopes and Fat Profits in the Diet Industry” this is a 50 billion dollar a year industry. Despite having been aon every diet in america, I have patients all the time that still don’t understand that if you eat more calories per day than you burn you gain weight. When I start to talk to patients about their weight 2 things amaze me, 1) many say that no other doctor has taken the time to speak to them about this problem, and 2) most patients start out by saying “I really don’t eat very much”
this is such a great problem that I have started to write a diet book that I hope to give away for free or putout on line so that people don’t have to pay to get help.
A show on Nation Building sounds intriguing. I for one, know very little on what that entails, and am sure that the philosophies, interpretations, and methods have changed greatly over the years. Considering children now take on meta-level thinking by playing God with a cement machine in Sim City (development, population, and economics are key tools in the game) and the Sims (sociology, crowd theory), maybe it’s time we talk about real society and systems shaping.
Some kind of interview with Dave Winer (Father of RSS and Web Logging) always makes for a good show. I for one loved his appearance on the I, Cringely NerdTV show.
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/nerdtv/transcripts/006.html
“I’m glad to say that we’re gonna be leaving this industry in the hands of people like the guys doing Yahoo! Mail, because they don’t have any pretensions about having the answer. They think the answer is in all of us, and that we’re gonna work together to figure it out, and that works. And that’s where I’m happy. Apple actually does work, okay? It’s the exception to the rule. It is the you sit at his feet and you receive the word of God. Okay. I personally can’t stomach that. I cannot sit in a goddamn room with Steve Jobs doing that. I wanna puke, you know?”
If you ever think about doing more shows about poetry, there is a poet in Ohio, Bruce Weigl, a friend of Franz Wright. They went to school together. Bruce is a Vietnam Vet, now a Buddhist, who teaches at Lorain County Community College, where he first went to school after Vietnam. (He had tenure at Penn State and left.) He wrote a memoir (THE CIRCLE OF HANH) that tells one of the most unlikely stories about a poet in this country. He writes some of the best poetry in the country (and I’m fussy). And, for me, it makes a difference that he grew up with no money, had barely read a book before Vietnam, and has written about 25 books (including translations). Even if you don’t include him in a show, you ought to read him. Try ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE CIRCLE. He’s a down-to-earth, very spiritual person, a working class guy who became a poet.
Someone else — Li-Young Lee. Born in Indonesia. His father had been the personal physician to Mao and became a Presbyterian minister when they came to this country. Li-Young grew up in a little town in Pennsylvania. Extremely nice guy. He said in an interview that he was in a graduate writing program and dropped out, because he thought a group of poets would be a group of “spirits” and that wasn’t so. (I felt grateful for that remark.) Around 1995, there was something I wanted in poetry, in my own writing, that I remembered having when I was a nun and first began to write poetry. One day I went into a large bookstore and felt myself being pulled toward a table of remainders. I swear, I wasn’t even looking at the book when I picked it up. (It was a book of translations by Robert Bly and in it, I read Pablo Neruda for the first time. In that same hour, I found Li-Young Lee. Both of them were an answer to a prayer, I think.) A collection of interviews with Li-Young Lee just came out, BREAKING THE ALABASTER JAR, and in it, he talks freely about poetry and the spirit. He has three books of poems, the last one, BOOK OF MY NIGHTS. I think he works in a warehouse. His address and telephone number are listed online. He lives in Chicago.
Just two items on my wish list. I’ve listened to the Franz Wright show MANY times. Thanks.
Do a show about the online video revolution, along the lines of what you did with your recent flickr show.
The same types of things that you talk about w/Flickr are going on with online video, with additional dimension of time based media.
Where is the Kent State University of today?
I think we should speak with people who participated in those student protests during Vietnam and with current student activists. What is different this time? Where is the outrage and protests we saw during Vietnam? Is it bubbling under the surface? Are potential protests being stifled by school administrators? Are students today simply disengaged or apathetic.
I spoke with three Harvard students at a bar last night and when I brought up Iraq they groaned and kind of threw back their heads. One said “we’re not going to go there are we?†They didn’t even want to talk about it. It’s like their disgust has turned into resignation.
An eyewitness and victim at Kent State in 1970:
http://alancanfora.com/13.html
Kent State Seeds of Change podcast and magazine
http://dept.kent.edu/stuorg/seedsofchange/
A good place to find progressive voices from campuses:
http://www.campusprogress.org/
On the Kent/Jackson State Killings
Noam Chomsky
Delivered at Kent State, May 4, 2000
http://www.chomsky.info/talks/20000504.htm
Conclusion: “So, yes, policies don’t change, interests don’t change, institutional sources of them don’t change, but conditions do. And the most impotent condition is the domestic population. And that changes…it changes because of dedicated activism, sometimes inspired by terrible tragedies. And I think that’s the message that we ought to be taking away with us from commemoration of these atrocities and many others like them. Thank you.”
With all the attention paid to IRAN and NORTH KOREAn nuclear forces, what about a program about the PAKISTANi and ISRAELi nuclear weapons programs. One often hears people express fears that an Iran armed with a handful of nukes could destroy Israel, but few seem to realize Israel, with its estimated 75 nuclear tipped missiles could do the same to Iran…. If this all seems very familiar, it should. The balance of terror endured between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. for decades and decades. Might not a similar scenario be the future of the Middle East? It’s worth at least DISCUSSING, isn’t it? As far as nuclear proliferation, everyone seems panicked about Iran and North Korea proliferating, but Pakistan’s *history* of doing so seems to rate only a bored ho-hum. Why the disjunct? Why is Pakistan not getting its share of Sturm und Drang?
How about a show labelled music 2.0 – (inspired by your photography 2.0 show)
The reason why this show might be interesting, is because there are paralels (and differences) between “amateur” online music (www.soundclick.com for example) and amateur photography – but there is one striking difference -
The record companies are making a concerted effort to make sure that thier own “signed” artists maintain thier commercial value
There doesnt seem to be an equivalent in photography, but here we really have a competition between the new and the old
a couple of interesting sites/research areas for the 2.0 show
http://www.garageband.com, www,soundclick.com – places where people post thier amateur music
http://www.songjourney.com – a place where wannabe nashville writers (from all over the world) try to write and submit hits into the (formerly very cliquey) nashville system
also the band Wilco, who were pioneers in giving thier music away for free
Music 2.0
another resource or possible interviewee would be from
http://www.homemadehitshow.com
its a guy who runs a radio podcast entirely made of “home recorded” songs (ie songs made in peoples bedrooms etc)
Who ? will history record as the worst US president?
runners up?
Really like the Music 2.0 idea. Thanks, fabkebab!
Haven’t yet listened to the Photography 2.0 show (been busy) but been thinking about amateurs, dilettantes, hobbyists, and non-specialists in music and other fields. Not that it’s exclusively an online phenomenon but the digital world is helping people create a set of new models for music performance, creation, “distribution,” “consumption,” collaboration, etc.
It’s quite telling that “GarageBand” is both the name of a website for mostly independent artists and an application meant to tap the musical creativity of just about anyone. Before the Silicon Valley “garage as first office” model (Apple, HP, Google), the “garage as rehearsal space” was a major factor in both musical and social change.
From my experience in studies of music and culture, I would tend to say that most people in North America and Europe now tend to see music as more of a professional activity than as just a fun activity. As a blanket statement: nobody sings anymore and when they do, it’s something they heard in a recording. A child may “learn music” by getting private lessons on an instrument, but it’s unusual to hear parents and children play music together or by themselves.
There are deep sociological issues, here. This portrait I was trying to draw is fairly close to bourgeoisie of a prior era. Music 2.0 is about the democratization of music. Obviously, the two are linked (individualism, liberalism, free-thinking, aesthetes, freedom, etc.).
The music industry is now more about passive “consumption” music than about selling partitions, instruments, and instructional material. Partitions were among the original drives behind the copyright laws with which we now struggle but recordings have transformed music into something of a “commodity” in some people’s heads. (Commodification is a common concept in certain fields of music analysis now and Steve Feld describes this process as “schizophonia”). Hence the problems with those now-obsolete business models based on a notion of the recording as the main product of music.
I’m probably merging too many issues, here. As an ethnomusicologist, musician and anthropologist, I tend to overthink these issues. This is not to shamelessly plug myself: it really is a subject that touches me personally, professionally, and academically.
In other words: yes, please do a show on Music 2.0!
At the risk of overextending my welcome, a few links to some of my own blog entries on vaguely-related issues:
http://enkerli.wordpress.com/2006/02/17/play-behaviour-and-performance/
http://blog.criticalworld.net/2006/08/31/new-models-for-music-as-business/103/
http://enkerli.wordpress.com/2006/02/16/glocal-craftiness-coffee-beer-music/
http://blog.criticalworld.net/2006/05/08/music-not-a-commodity/93/
http://enkerli.wordpress.com/2006/08/02/effort-vs-talent/
http://blog.criticalworld.net/2006/10/03/new-models-for-music-as-business-brazilian-tecno-brega/116/
More literary shows! The shows on the Hawthornes, R. W. Emerson, and Cervantes are three of my favorites.
A big theme running throughout the show is that of the proto-blogger. Stendhal’s nonfiction has always struck me as being in this vein. He’s the kind of writer who is endearing not because of he creates a seamless narrative, but rather because he leaves all the gaps and rough edges in the manuscript–and then goes on to revel in them. It feels very relevant and very contemporary. His autobiographies have much to teach us in an era where published memoirs are often more fiction than fact. During the Frey scandal Nan Talese commented that memoirs shouldn’t be held to the same standard as other nonfiction works. Perhaps…but she doesn’t really note that James Frey didn’t even bother to make his story emotionally true.
Anyway, you’re more likely to find real honesty in the blogosphere where publishers are not paying writers to create sensationalistic lies.
The film “Running with Scissors” is coming out this fall. Stendhal had a dysfunctional family avant la lettre. He wrote about it in the “Autobiography.” Although Stendhal lived 200 years before Augusten Burroughs, his “Autobiography” feels much less like a period piece. Really.
I have a show in mind, if any one still reads this thread.
Recently at The New Republic there was an intense debate about Language and Politics between Steven Pinke whom Chris know well and George Lakoff who has set himself up as the Democratic party’s political language guru.
Pinker’s side can be read here:
http://www.powells.com/review/2006_10_19
Whose Freedom?: The Battle over America’s Most Important Idea
by George Lakoff
Block That Metaphor!
A Review by Steven Pinker
Lakoof respnded to Pinker’s in depth critique here:
response to Steven Pinker.
Defending Freedom
by George Lakoff
Only at TNR Online | Post date 10.16.06
http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=w061016&s=lakoff101606
(hopefully someone at OSR can access TNR website.
Finally Pinker’s devastating response can be read here:
A response to George Lakoff.
Angels and Demons
by Steven Pinker
Only at TNR Online | Post date 10.19.06
A response to George Lakoff.
Angels and Demons
by Steven Pinker
Only at TNR Online | Post date 10.19.06
There is no more important issue today than the use and abuse of language in politics, while Pinker and Lakoff should make for entertaining guests.
I also believe that the real debate in this country is not between Republicans and Democrats but between different views of liberalism which Lakoff and Pinker represent.
I hope you can set up such a show before the election.
Thanks,
J. Dyer
“More literary shows! The shows on the Hawthornes, R. W. Emerson, and Cervantes are three of my favorites.”
Ditto here Dora.
I would also welcome a shows on contemporary American poetry. I am interested in the debate between those poets who favor an unstructured form and those who favor rigorous even if unorthodox structures.
How about a show on 19th-century jobs in the 21st century?
I was inspired by recent NPR stories on the role of bees in US agriculture. Beekeepers were mentioned in passing, which made me wonder, “What inspires someone to become a professional beekeeper these days?”
There’s no way to Web 2.0-ify beekeeping, or offshore it to India (not directly, at least). And apparently it’s a critical occupation — no bees, not enough food. But it’s not like parents all over the country are urging their kids to study hard so they can keep bees for a living.
And that can’t be the only profession like that. We rely on cheap labor for a lot of these jobs — agrarian, blue collar, inescapably physical. Butchers, apple pickers, bakers. What other long-lived jobs are still around, and how do new candidates for those jobs get groomed?
How do we know when a show’s suggestion has been adopted, or is under consideration.
I feel like we are just scribbling on air.
I would like to hear about international soccer’s unpopularity in the US, or a show about the inter-marriages between Muslims and Non-Muslims. In yet another angle, the #1 TV show in Turkey (Yabanci Damat or ‘Foreign Groom’) happens to be about a Turkish girl’s relations with a Greek guy and the ensuing and predictable outcomes with the unpredictable warming of relations between the two nations as a result. This show has a cult following in Greece as well.
Dora: We love literary shows, too, and we aim to do more than we have. Did you hear the hour on Wednesday with Edna O’Brien?
jdyer: We’ve done a couple of shows on language and politics (Who Owns Orwell; and Blogosphere: Dems vs. the G.O.P., with Lakoff). So a good, relevant idea, but probably not one we’ll touch on again soon.
Scarequotes: Don’t know that we’d do this as a talk show, but it sounds like it would make an interesting documentary. You might enjoy this series by Joe Richman of Radio Diaries.
My suggestion would be a show about the future of Lebanon’s christians, there seems to be a wide political division amongst them.
I’m just watching a documentary about “clean elections,” which have been implemented in Maine and Arizona. “Clean elections” is a system for publically funding elections. Candidates are required to gather $5 donations to a specific amount. After that the government kicks in a competitive amount of money to the candidate. Candidates cannot accept large donations. I’ve never heard of this before.
Metin: do you REALLY want to hear a show about soccer’s unpopularity here? I feel like I’ve heard that before — at least every four years! — and it never maintains my interest. As for Muslim intermarriage, what’s your angle? Is it happening more? Does it add something to the conversation about religion and culture, East and West? What would you want us to focus on?
Chicsheik: Have you read anything about the future of Lebanon’s Christians that we should see? Where to begin?
This is a fascinating story: http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2006/10/13/how_gandhi_got_his_mojo_back/ that has been rumbling in India for months now and only recently gaining international mentions.
It is a story about how Gandhi is becoming cool again in India because of one pop film.
David: Several angles. First, the Muslim Refusenik, Irshad Manji and her ‘lesbian’ Muslim angle. Can one be gay and Muslim at the same time. That can be a whole new show.
Second, intermarriage between a Turk and a Greek. Which is viewed as worse for ‘Islam’ interpreters (especially of Turkey – as the bridge between East and West, as well as EU aspirations,) the Muslim-Christian angle or the Greek-Turk angle.
Here in the US (where it is more evident or overt and ‘accepted,’) how are couples making it in inter-faith relationships. What about the kids.
Is Islam more ‘tolerant’ when it comes the other religions of the ‘book?’
Is a ‘non-practicing’ Muslim a better spouse for women in Islam than one who is a ‘practicing’ Christian or Jew? Therefore inter-faith marriage is OK so long as the ‘man’ is Muslim. Isn’t this the opposite requirment in Judaism?
What about ‘conversions’ to Islam (just to make the cultural and family ties stick) of women when marrying a Muslim man. (This is very popular practice in Germany with immigrant Muslim Turks bringing home a German – but ‘Muslim’ bride.)
These women (and men) are then paraded around as popular symbols of the ‘righteousness’ of the religion of Islam over the others, when in fact it was probably more so an act of love (for the spouse.)
I’d like to piggyback on metin’s ideas by referring you to readings I’ve just completed. Both Irshad Manji and Ayaan Hirsi Ali, can comfortably be viewed as a part of the embryonic progressive Islamic movement Sylvia Poggioli profiled here: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6135353 .
The trouble, of course, is that the movement will likely remain ‘embryonic’ so long as it continues to receive the cold shoulder – not from mainstream conservative Muslims – but from the West!
In the words of Ayaan Hirsi Ali:
“Finally there are the progressive Muslims. This group… want(s) … to liberate Muslims in the West…(yet) are being frustrated by vehemently negative reactions from, of all people, secular Westerners.
“Let the Muslim Voltaires of today work in a safe environment on the enlightenment of Islam, which will lead to an international enlightenment, as the power of reason and individual responsibility frees the minds of individual Muslims of the burdens of the hereafter, the constant feelings of guilt, and the temptation of fundamentalism. We would learn to feel responsible for our problems and the areas in which we lag behind. Let us have a Voltaire.
“The present-day attitude of Western cultural relativists, who flinch from criticizing Muhammad out of fear of offending Muslims, allow Western Muslims to hide from reviewing (self-reflection)…(and) also betrays the tiny (minority) of Muslim reformers who desperately require the support—and even the physical protection—of their natural allies in the West.â€
( The Caged Virgin )
And Irshad Manji: “Non-Muslims do the world no favors by pushing the moral mute button as soon as Muslims start speaking. Dare to ruin the moment.
“We’ve got to lay down the shield and accept the birthright of any open society: that we can ask questions of each other. Sometimes pointed questions. Sometimes in public.â€
( The Trouble With Islam Today)
What progressive Muslims need more than anything is exposure – the sort of exposure that an hour of ROS can provide.
I am fully aware that although ROS is non-religious, its staff, as individuals, are friendly to faith. So consider please the good you could do by airing a program that brings the tiny but vital progressive Muslim movement out from the darkness of the closet the fundamentalists are trying to keep it in, and into the global conversation.
Manji (whose sexual orientation should be irrelevant) can be reached at http://www.muslim-refusenik.com. And I’ll bet she can hook you up with Ayaan Hirsi Ali, too.
Be brave. And good luck.
Nice election coverage. However the most telling election is going on in your back yard. I call it “as dirty as it has to be” the Governor’s race in Mass. The dirtier Kerry Healey gets, the higher her numbers go, and the more air time she gets. This is the Healey stradgy to gain popularity. And it’s working! With her pal Mitt probably running for president, this will go National next time around. The mud’s getting wetter. It’s disturbing.
Devanjedi, I loved your Gandhi pitch. There’s a huge and active Indian blogosphere, so lots of places to look for this. Another way to think about this is to compare it to the reaction in France to Sofia Coppola’s “Marie Antoinette.” Boos and hisses at Cannes; how dare Coppola make the decadent girl-queen sympathetic? What’s the difference between how a country owns its own historical figures, and how the world treats them? I’ll pitch this in the story meeting on Tuesday.
Old Nick, we just recently put together a show on moderate Muslims. The limit here is not religion, but our obligation to listeners and stations to keep up a stream of different programming ideas.
Marc McElroy we’re having as much fun watching the mud fly as you are, but how to do an hour on “Politicians Go Dirty?” After that, perhaps “Jazz Drummers: Bad With Money” and then “Navy SEALs: Very Fit?”
Any thoughts on ‘Rumi,’ the great poet and scholar. Maybe this can be a ‘toleration’ of inter-faith based culture point-of-view, most appropriate given this day and age.
I am hearing rumors that a movie based on his life is in the works. Possibly with Al Pacino or De Niro in the lead and with Turkish government’s help for this project by Muzaffar Ali, the famous Indian Director.
Brendan, understood. Although the progressive Islam movement differentiates itself from mainstream Islam, whose voices your show on September 19th gave air-time to.
So, I’ll rewrite my proposal and resubmit it in a few months!
Progressive Islam deserves a persistent advocate – and besides, can you imagine the delicious irony of me, nontheist Old Nick, defending, on a thread, an evolution of religion – any religion?!
dirty politics + uneducated reactionary electoriate = the end of democracy as we know it. Or knew it.
I can see tie ins to your comparisions! As for Jazz drummers, maybe we can call it going “Buddy Rich” on your opponent.
As for Navy Seals, remember OJ learned to use a knife while training with the Navy Seals for a movie, proving a little knowlege can be a dangerous thing.
I think it would be great to hear a show featuring Richard Dawkins (The God Delusion) and Philip Pullman (His Dark Materials), which might be loosely centered on a discussion of God and literature.
Hey ipod, it’s your birthday, you just turned five years old – wow, you seem so mature for your age. Steven Levy has written a new book about the ipod:
“The Perfect Thing: How The Ipod Shuffles Commerce, Culture, And Coolness.â€
Salon’s review of book http://www.salon.com/books/review/2006/10/23/levy/
Here’s an excerpt where they write the pitch for me:
“There are very few consumer products about which you’d want to read a whole book — the Google search engine, the first Mac, the Sony Walkman, the VW Beetle. Levy proves that the iPod, which turns five years old today, belongs to that club: It got so big, so fast, so unexpectedly, penetrating so deep into the culture (both the pope and Dick Cheney have one!), its success begs for probing analysis.â€
On the media blog Beet.TV, the interview Steven Levy: http://www.beet.tv/2006/10/the_future_of_t.html
For one thing I’m fascinated by it’s effect on our moods. Music is about mood and having your whole music collection at you finger tips at all times changes things considerably. Now, if I want to change my mood it only takes spin wheel.
There are still some curmudgeons holding out on the ipod and these people make me giggle. They are like the people holding out on buying a computer; I guess there’re “keeping it real.†I’m sure there was some people eons ago who refused to buy into the invention of the wheel; no, they said, pick it up and carry it like a man.
Here’s a couple of those curmudgeon:
http://www.reason.com/hitandrun/2006/10/antiipod_animus.shtml#016183
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-op-zengotita22oct22,1,2950670.story?coll=la-news-comment
Another book: “The Cult of Ipodâ€: Wired news editor Leander Kahney follows up his bestselling The Cult of Mac with The Cult of iPod, a comprehensive look at how Apple’s hit iPod is changing music, culture, and listening behavior.
The guy who designed it: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/arts/3481599.stm
These guys from Harvard and MIT want to open source your ipod. http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/freeculture/blog/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPod#Sales
67 million sold
absent from the debate in the mainstream media regarding the nuclear programs of north korea and iran is any mention or criticism of the united states’ own nuclear program. i wish this simple fact were covered more.
i second tbrucia’s request that we do a show about the history of nuclear development and proliferation in our own country and our friends’.
Further to jdyer’s suggestion that you do more shows on literary topics, why not a show on Thomas Pynchon, whose latest mega-novel, Against the Day, is due out Nov. 21. Plenty of knowledgeable guests on offer, plenty of interest, I’m sure.
metin, any signs that there’s an active, new, challenging conversation going on that’s rooted in Rumi? The reason that the Gandhi idea works so well is that it’s got a peg. Can you keep us updated if those rumors about the movie solidify?
Marc, I pitched the idea of focusing on the Mass Gov race next at today’s story meeting, and here was the feedback:
-we’re trying to cover races all over the country, and Massachusetts feels too close to Rhode Island.
-we got halfway there on Monday’s show.
In the spirit of helping people craft effective, successful pitches:
bryongw: Goodness, this is what, the seventh or eighth time you’ve pitched a show on Philip Pullman? Clearly you feel strongly about it, but you haven’t really given us the information we need to evaluate why we should do a show about his work right now. (I went back and read all the other seven pitches to see if there was more info there, but even here I’m not hearing it. What, btw, is a “panzerbjorne”?) The angle of “God and literature” is too vague. What about God? What about literature? What about Philip Pullman? Why is he interesting or relevant now? As for the angle of Pullman + Dawkins, that could maybe hold some potential. It sounds like an original pairing that could possibly illuminate interesting things in both men’s work, although we have yet to tease out what that would be, clearly. Given we’ve already done several shows about intelligent design and evolution and god vs. science, there would have to be a new, compelling, and original angle/reason to put Dawkins on now.
hurley: see my suggestions to bryongw above in regards to your Thomas Pynchon pitch. We need more info, an angle, something! Right now this sounds like a generic pitch from a publisher. We need more of a reason than that he has a new book out.
nother: Ipod turns 5. Got it. Don’t know if the idea will have traction, but it’s a solid pitch. I’ll bring it up in the story meeting and see if people are interested.
jordon (and tbrucia): Straight up history shows aren’t usually as compelling as shows that deal with current, pressing conversations. Is there a way to re-think this idea so that it focuses on some specific piece of our present nuclear program or nuclear diplomacy or something? Maybe how that history has shaped our current nuclear policy? Right now it just sounds like you want us to talk about the US’s hypocrisy in dealing with other wannabe nuclear powers, which is a single point rather than an entire show.
Asking for more information about why one should do a show about Pynchon or Pullman is just as inane as asking for information about why one should do a show about Edna O’Brien or Philip Roth. They’re all great writers. Who gives a fuck whether or not their timely or relevant “now,†as you say. You guys are putting way to much emphasis on that nonsense.
Please move the following suggestion to the November suggestion thread when it is up.
In reading Ron Rosenbaum’s “Shakespeare Wars”
http://www.amazon.com/Shakespeare-Wars-Clashing-Scholars-Fiascoes/dp/0375503390/ref=sr_11_1/102-7504022-1156903?ie=UTF8
I thought that it would make for a great discussion hour.
What attracts me to the book is the suggestion that language in Shakespeare’s day was more fluid than it is today. This is mirrored in the variance of word spellings in the original manuscripts of the plays.
The show then can focus on language in Shakespeare’s day with an eye though on the recent re-opening up of language in the age of internet.
However, I’ll leave the details of the show to you.
“Further to jdyer’s suggestion that you do more shows on literary topics, why not a show on Thomas Pynchon, whose latest mega-novel, Against the Day, is due out Nov. 21. Plenty of knowledgeable guests on offer, plenty of interest, I’m sure.”
I am not an avid Pynchon reader, (I always want to spell his name Pyncheon which is how an important character’s name in Hawthrone’s novel “The House of the Seven Gables” is written out. I also love the name Hepzibah Pyncheon another Hawthorne characted in the same novel) however, I did like his novel “Mason & Dixon.”
I’ll have ot read Against the Day before I make up my mind to second or not hurley’s suggestion.
On Pullman and Pynchon:
Anyone notice how easily Pynchon’s description of Against the Day (Hurley’s comment, Oct. 26, 12:10 pm) could be modified into a description of Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials, which bryongw has been pitching?
Here goes:
His Dark Materials moves from an alternative world’s Oxford to Lapland and Svalbard, into a decadent and corrupted world that produces nothing and steals all it has from other worlds, detours to our own England where wealth and prestige can end scientific inquiry or subvert it to serve the whims of those in power, and out again, into a parallel world’s Siberia, devastated by global warming and populated by shamans and pedophiliac priests and Tungusk guides recalling another time long ago when the sky split apart, into the world of the dead where the torment is that nothing ever happens, with a brief stop in a world without strife where resources are shared in common, and back again to two world’s Oxfords.
The cast includes experimental theologians, witches and their consuls, armoured bears, people with externalized souls, gyptians who rule the Fens, Skraelings, Samoyeds, Tartars, an assassin-priest, harpies, a balloon aeronaut, a particle physicist, and two pre-adolescents who are ethically superior to nearly every adult they encounter (and this has landed their story in the children’s books’ ghetto, one of those places world views that depart from the mundane are segregated and patronized).
The depiction of our world, and the world that might have been–if say, the Vineland expedition had meant that what we know as North America were instead New Denmark, the Tartars had prevailed, the British Empire never was—is encyclopedic in scope and depth, ranging from allusions to Paradise Lost, William Blake, von Kleist, the Book of Enoch and other biblical tales, negativity capability, and the I Ching; to discussions of dark matter, the aurora borealis, magic lanterns, zeppelins and hydrogyn balloons, and quantum entanglement as it considers love lost and found between parents and children, and friends and lovers.
This doesn’t advance the argument for (or against) a Pullman show or a Pynchon show one whit, of course, but it is weird how easily Pynchon can morph to Pullman, don’t you think. Or not. Encyclopedic novelists tend to have encyclopedic interests…