What happened to the banking industry? We’ll find out how things went so wrong so quickly, and discuss what’s being done to stabilize things with veteran FRONTLINE producer Michael Kirk whose film “Breaking the Bank” airs Tuesday, June 16th at 9pm on KERA 13.
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Is it possible for everyday Americans to change the food culture and conquer hunger by simply growing vegetables and raising livestock in yards and community gardens? We’ll talk this hour with Sharon Astyk, farmer, blogger and co-author of the new book “A Nation of Farmers: Defeating the Food Crisis on American Soil” (New Society Publishers, 2009).
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Is there a better way to run? We’ll explore the world of the Tarahumara this hour with journalist Christopher McDougall, author of the new book “Born To Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, And The Greatest Race The World Has Never Seen” (Knopf, 2009).
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How do immigrant families change as successive generations are born in America and which traditions last in spite of the pressures of assimilation? We’ll talk this hour with Nancy Foner, Distinguished Professor of Sociology at Hunter College and the Graduate Center at the City University of New York and editor of the new collection, “Across Generations: Immigrant Families in America” (NYU Press, 2009).
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How has China changed in the decades since the brutal military crackdown in Tiananmen Square on June 4th, 1989? We’ll talk this hour with someone who was there. Diane Wei Liang shared her story in the 2003 memoir “Lake with No Name: A True Story of Love and Conflict in Modern China (Simon andSchuster, 2009) which is now out in paperback. She’ll speak to the World Affairs Council of Dallas Fort Worth this evening.
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Who murdered sixty-nine-year-old, naturalist and Oscar-nominated wildlife documentarian Joan Root on the shores of Kenya’s Lake Naivasha in 2006? We’ll talk this hour with Vanity Fair contributing editor Mark Seal whose new book is “Wildflower: An Extraordinary Life and Untimely Death in Africa” (Random House, 2009).
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How did the invention of cooking change human beings both mentally and physically? We’ll talk this hour with Richard Wrangham, Ruth Moore Professor of Biological Anthropology and Curator of Primate Behavioral Biology at Harvard University. His new book is “Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human” (Basic Books, 2009).
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Are gender perceptions at work and home changing with the times? We’ll spend this hour with Ellen Galinsky, President and Co-Founder of the Families and Work Institute which has just released the report “Times Are Changing: Gender and Generation at Work and At Home.”
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What basic skills are needed to ensure a financially secure future? We’ll talk with veteran financial journalist Karen Blumenthal whose new book is “The Wall Street Journal. Guide to Starting Your Financial Life” (Random House, 2009).Artist Roger Shimomura will join us for the Art and Seek segment to discuss his bi-cultural explorations of identity, prejudice and irony and his current Crow Collection retrospective “Return of the Yellow Peril: A Survey of the Work of Roger Shimomura, 1969-2007.”
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What happens when a white, middle-class crime reporter finds herself in a rundown black Pentecostal church on an out-of-the-way street? We’ll talk this hour with former Dallas Observer editor-in-chief Julie Lyons, who tells the story in her new book “Holy Roller: Finding Redemption and the Holy Ghost in a Forgotten Texas Church” (Water Brook, 2009).
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Who is the man behind the popular novels “One Hundred Years of Solitude” and “Love in the Time of Cholera” and what experiences led to his incredibly influential body of work? We’ll talk this hour with Gerald Martin, author of the first full and authorized biography of one of the 20th Century’s greatest writers – “Gabriel Garcia Marquez: A Life” (Knopf, 2009).
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Why would someone set out to invent a new language? From 12th Century Lingua Ignota to the chipmunk noise-based Dritok, we’ll explore a few of the almost 900 created tongues with linguist Arika Okrent, author of the new book “In the Land of Invented Languages: Esperanto Rock Stars, Klingon Poets, Loglan Lovers, and the Mad Dreamers Who Tried to Build A Perfect Language” (Spiegel and Grau, 2009).
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