My guest in this program was Dr. David Kiersey, the author of a book called “Presidential Temperament.” Dr. Kiersey took the Meyers-Briggs Temperament inventories and developed what has come to be known as the Kiersey Temperament Sorter. In so doing, he has established and identified several different types of character and temperament of people. In his book, “Please Understand Me,” the reader may use the Kiersey Temperament Sorter to get an idea of his or her personality and temperament traits. With his history and experience, Kiersey has examined the people who have become a President of the US and set out his analysis in “Presidential Temperaments.” In this program, originally broadcast in November of 1993 when Radio Curious was called Government, Politics and Ideas, we’ll be talking about the book and some of the temperaments of the various Presidents.
Dr. David Kiersey recommends “Killer Angels,” by Michael Shaara & The Hornblower Series, by Horatio Hormblower.
Originally Broadcast: November 19, 1993
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Our guest in this program was Dr. William Fry, a psychiatrist who has done extensive research in the field of humor. We discussed the psychology and genetics of humor. Much of Dr. Fry’s research has concentrated on Cocoa, the gorilla, and we discussed that as well. This program was originally broadcast in March of 1992, when Radio Curious was called Government, Politics and Ideas.
Originally Broadcast: March 2, 1992
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“Listen to the Marriage” is a novel by John Jay Osborn, a retired lawyer and law professor. The story centers a marriage counselor and a recently separated couple with demanding jobs and two small children. All thirty-one short chapters take place in the therapist’s office and reveal the angst, anger, and hidden love that the couple Gretchen and Steve, have for each other. Sandy, the therapist guides the sessions, while keeping her thoughts about her clients to herself. An empty green chair representing their marriage sits between Gretchen and Steve during each visit.
“Listen to the Marriage” is Osborn’s sixth novel, the first one being “The Paper Chase,” published in 1971, a year after he graduated law school. “Listen to the Marriage” is based in part on the experience Osborn and his wife had with a marriage counselor beginning about ten months after they separated in the mid 1980s. They remain happily married.
John Osborn visited the Radio Curious studios by phone from his home in San Francisco, California, on December 14, 2018. We began our conversation with his description of the therapist’s goal: To get the couple to look at the marriage they created as being separate from themselves.
The book John Jay Osborn recommends is “Happy All the Time,” by Laurie Colwin.
The program was recorded on December 14, 2018.
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The economic and cultural changes that have occurred in North American society in the past fifty years have resulted in today’s children looking to their peers, instead of their parents, for direction; for a sense of right and wrong; and for values, identity and codes of behavior. This peer orientation works to undermine family cohesion. It interferes with healthy development and fosters a sexualized youth culture in which children lose their individuality and tend to become conformist, desensitized and alienated.
These concepts—and what to do about them to develop strong families and emotionally healthy children—are explained in the book “Hold on to Your Kids: Why Parents Need to Matter More Than Peers,“ by Gordon Neufeld, Ph.D. and Gabor Mate, M.D.
When I spoke with Dr. Gordon Neufeld from his home in Vancouver, British Columbia, we began our conversation with a discussion of the importance of developing an attachment between the adult caregiver and the child, beginning at infancy.
The book Dr. Neufeld recommends is “The Anatomy of Dependence,” by Takeo Doi. More information about Dr. Neufeld’s work may be found on his website.
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How to Make People Like You in 90 Seconds or Less
Making people like you is a skill that anybody can learn. By reading body language and synchronizing behavior, it is possible to make meaningful connections with almost anybody in almost any circumstance. We appreciate and like people similar to ourselves, people we understand and people who are open. “How to Make People Like You in 90 Seconds or Less” is the title of a book by Nicholas Boothman, a neurolinguistic practitioner who lives in Toronto, Canada.
Nicolas Boothman recommends “Love in the Time of Cholera,” & “One Hundred Years of Solitude,” both by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
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Everybody thinks about love and many people say “I love you”, but how is love defined? The book “How To Love” written by psychiatrist Dr. Gordon Livingston grapples with these and many other questions about love, and how to find a compatible and pleasurable partnership. In this interview, we discuss how to choose more carefully, in matters of love to get what we desire and deserve. The song, “Do You Love Me?” from the musical “Fiddler On The Roof,” is our background music. Dr. Gordon Livingston spoke from his home in Columbia, Maryland on July 13th 2009, where he lives and practices psychiatry. The conversation began when I asked Dr. Livingston to define love.
The book Dr. Gordon Livingston recommends is “All He Ever Wanted,” by Anita Shreve.
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Why do you buy what you buy? What do you hope to gain from it and will it make you a happier, sexier and more successful person? In these days of economic downturn many of us may be questioning whether we really need all this stuff and how it impacts our lives?
In this edition of Radio Curious we meet Geoffrey Miller, a tenured professor of evolutionary psychology at the University of New Mexico, and the author of “Spent: Sex, Evolution and Consumer Behavior.” During our visit we discuss how our purchasing choices are driven by thousands of years of evolution, how marketers can take advantage of this and how we might try to better understand our consumer instincts.
I spoke with Geoffrey Miller from his home in Australia on May 29, 2009 and began by asking him to define his field of evolutionary psychology.
The book Geoffrey Miller recommends is “The Life You Can Save: Acting Now To End World Poverty,” by Peter Singer.
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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 incarcerated parents was published in The Nation magazine on December 14, 2015.
Some of Harvey’s most cherished childhood memories are the times she was able to visit her father while he was an inmate at Soledad State Prison, in California when she was between the ages of 5 and 16.
When Sylvia Harvey and I visited by phone from her home in New York City, on January 18, 2016, we began with her personal experience and how the absence of not being able visit a parent in prison affects 2.7 million children.
Instead of recommending a book, Sylvia Harvey recommends the song “Ain’t Got No,” by Nina Simone.
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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 100,000 incarcerated people, both men and women are held in solitary confinement in the United States. Kept in dark, cold, and often wet cells, more or less eight feet by ten feet in size, they have little or no human contact, sometimes for years on end. Many suffer from mental illness, prior to or as a result of living solitary confinement. This results in significant long term damage to these people as individuals and to our society as a whole.
In this second of our two part series, Dr. Kupers shares stories of prisoners held in solitary confinement and what he believes is necessary to achieve meaningful rehabilitation for people who have committed crimes and sentenced to prison.
When Dr. Terry Kupers and I visit by phone from his home in Oakland, California, on February 14, 2018, we began this second visit when I asked him to describe what he calls a rehabilitative attitude.
The book Dr. Kupers recommends is: Hell Is a Very Small Place: Voices from Solitary Confinement,” edited by Jean Casella, James Ridgeway and Sarah Shourd
This program was recorded on February 14, 2018.
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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 prior to or as a result of solitary confinement. This results in significant long term damage to the individuals and our society as a whole.
Dr. Terry Allen Kupers, a forensic psychiatrist, is the author of “Solitary: The Inside Story of Supermax Isolation and How We can Abolish It.” In this first of a two part series on solitary confinement, Kupers shares interviews with prisoners who have been raped, subdued with immobilizing gas, beaten by prison guards and whose mental and physical health needs have been ignored. He has found that prisoners of color are much more likely to be held in solitary confinement than are white prisoners. Kupers argues that solitary confinement is tantamount to torture, and per se violates the constitutional prohibition of cruel or unusual punishment.
When Dr. Terry Kupers and I visit by phone from his home in Oakland, California on February 11, 2018, we began the first of two conversations when I asked him to define forensic psychiatry, and the background of solitary confinement.
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