Why, in America in the 20th and 21st Centuries, are books still being banned? We’ll discuss some of the books that have been described as subversive this hour with Judith Krug, the founder of Banned Books Week and the Director of the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom.
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What is your definition of justice? Morris Dees, Founder and Chief Counsel for the Southern Poverty Law Center, will deliver the lecture “With Justice For All” at the First Unitarian Church of Dallas this Friday. He’ll join us to discuss the Center’s work and preview his talk this hour.
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How does science relate to the gathering of evidence and prosecution of a crime? We’ll spend this hour with Dr. Katherine Ramsland, Assistant Professor of Forensic Psychology at DeSales University and author of the new book “Beating the Devil’s Game: A History of Forensic Science and Criminal Investigation” (Berkeley Publishing Group, 2007).
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Cheese heroin is big news because it’s a big problem in North Texas. In conjunction with KERA Producer Sujata Dand’s series on the cheese epidemic, we’ll talk this hour with Michelle Hemm, Program Director at the Phoenix House Academy in Dallas.
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Fall is officially here and soon, we’ll all see pumpkins in the stores and on our neighbor’s porches. But look over the back fence and you might be surprised at the size of the pumpkins they’re growing in the backyard next door. We’ll spend this hour with Susan Warren, deputy bureau chief for the Wall Street Journal in Dallas and author of “Backyard Giants: The Passionate, Heartbreaking, and Glorious Quest to Grow the Biggest Pumpkin Ever” (Bloomsbury, 2007). Warren’s largest pumpkin to date weighed 240 pounds.
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Love baseball? With the regular season winding down and the playoffs just around the corner, there’s no better time to discuss baseball’s influence on American culture. We’ll spend this hour with Ted Spencer, VP and Chief Curator at the Baseball Hall of Fame and Hall of Fame player Jim Palmer. They’re both in town to celebrate the opening of the “Baseball As America” exhibit at the Museum of Nature and Science in Dallas.
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How have borders influenced the American West? The Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture will hold a day-long symposium “The American West: Border and Frontier,” on Saturday, September 29th. We’ll explore the influence of the borderlands this hour with professor, writer, and dual-culture blogger Luis Alberto Urrea. He’s one of many speakers scheduled for Saturday.
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Millions of European Jews did not survive the Holocaust, but some did. We’ll spend this hour with two of those survivors, William and Rosalie Schiff. We’ll also be joined by Craig Hanley, the journalist who has helped bring their story to the fore. Their manuscript won last year’s UNT Mayborn Literary Competition and has been recently published as “William and Rosalie: A Holocaust Testimony” (UNT Press, 2007).
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What happened when six young Yemeni-Americans from Western New York traveled to Afghanistan in the spring of 2001? Regardless of the reason for their trip, after the 9/11 attacks they were under suspicion. We’ll look back at the story this hour with NPR’s FBI Correspondent Dina Temple-Raston, author of the new book “The Jihad Next Door: The Lackawanna Six and Rough Justice in the Age of Terror” (Public Affairs, 2007).
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StoryCorps, the revolutionary project to record American stories, is visiting North Texas and we want you to participate. We’ll spend this hour with StoryCorps founder and MacArthur Fellow, Dave Isay. We’ll also hear a few of the remarkable stories the project has collected since its inception in 2003.
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What are you reading right now and, more importantly, why are you reading it? It’s a question that every writer, bookseller, and publisher would love to answer. We’ll discuss why some books flop and others fly off the shelves with Lisa Adams, co-author of “Why We Read What We Read: A Delightfully Opinionated Journey Through Contemporary Bestsellers” (Source Books, 2007).
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We’ll get some perspective on the creative process this evening with Michael Auping, Chief Curator at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. His new book “30 Years: Interviews and Outtakes” compiles 34 of the hundreds of interviews that he has conducted with artists from the time when he was a graduate art history student to today.Fort Worth Star-Telegram Pop Culture Critic Cary Darling will join us during the Scene segment to discuss the current crop of Hollywood’s Iraq War movies and whether people will flock to see them. His piece runs in the Sunday edition of the paper.
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