Radio Curious

How to get below the radar of your mind and what to do once you’re there is the topic of this edition of Radio Curious.  One goal is to reach the quantum of personal leaning in the sub-conscious mind and bring that experiential knowledge to the conscious mind of daily life.  A trusted guide is often beneficial.

Our guest is Dr. Jeffrey Zeig, in another conversation about the Ericksonian approach to psychotherapy.  He is the founder and director of the Milton Erickson Foundation and a clinical psychologist based in Phoenix, Arizona.  Dr. Zeig has directed multiple conferences on the evolution of psychotherapy including the 11^th Milton Erickson Psychotherapy Conference where he and I met in December 2011, in Phoenix, Arizona.

We began our conversation when I asked him about the history of psychotherapy.

The books he recommends are “The Little Prince” by Antoine de Saint-Exupery as well as the books written by Leo Tolstoy.

Jeff Zeig’s website is www.jeffzeig.com.  The Milton Erickson Foundation website is www.erickson-foundation.org.

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Imagine Darya, a twelve year old girl in a remote village of Afghanistan.  Her father forces her to marry a drug lord as part payment for an opium drug trade.  Her father is not home and she is about to be taken from her family.  Desperately, her hands trembling, she implores you, a complete stranger:  “Please don’t let him take me.”

In this edition of Radio Curious we visit Fariba Nawa, author of “Opium Nation: Child Brides, Drug Lords and One Woman’s Journey Through Afghanistan.”  Fariba Nawa was ten years old when her family fled Afghanistan shortly before the Soviet invasion in 1979.  Eighteen years later Fariba Nawa met twelve year old Darya when she returned to her native Afghanistan as an Afghan-American investigative journalist.  Her book tells Darya’s story, and reveals what the Afghan opium drug trade is doing to her native land in the midst of war.

Fariba Nawa and I visited by phone from her home near San Francisco, California on January 23, 2012. We began with her description of coming to the United States and flight from Afghanistan.

Fariba Nawa’s website is www.faribanawa.com. The book she recommends is “Day of Honey: A Memoir of Food, Love and War,” by Annia Ciezaldo.

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One man’s personal experience in recognizing his homosexuality, is the subject of this program.  Until the mid 1970s homosexuality was considered by many people to be a mental disorder and/or a crime, as it still is in some personal and political belief systems.  Homosexual people sometimes were housed in mental institutions, given medication and suffered an array of treatment methods, including shock therapy and other forms of behavior modification.

Professor Robert Dole, our guest in this edition of Radio Curious, was one of many individuals subjected to behavior modification of that period in time. In his book, “How to Make a Success of Your Schizophrenia,” he explains how the “treatment” he endured as an attempt to alter his homosexual preference made him schizophrenic.  His personal memoir describes his experiences growing up in the 1960s as a gay man, his institutionalization at the McLean Hospital in Massachusetts, the schizophrenia that consumed him as a result of his treatment, his self-led recovery, partially based on a spiritual experience, and his subsequent extraordinary life in academia.

Professor Dole, who is fluent in seven languages, teaches English as a Foreign Language at the University of Chicoutimi in rural Quebec, Canada, where he has lived for 30 plus years.  He and I visited by phone from his office at the University of Chicoutimi on November 4, 2011 and began our conversation when I asked to describe the schizophrenia he experienced.

The books Professor Robert Dole recommends are: “The Death of Ivan Ilych,” by Leo Tolstoy and any book from Stefan Zweig.

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Racial Politics in America is the topic of this edition of Radio Curious, in our third visit with author and Harvard Law School Professor Randall Kennedy, whose latest book is “The Persistence of the Color Line:  Racial Politics and the Obama Presidency.”  Kennedy is also the author of  “Nigger:  The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word,” and “Interracial Intimacies:  Sex, Marriage, Identity, and Adoption.”  We visited by phone from his home in Massachusetts on October 28, 2011, and began our conversation when I asked him to describe the current role of race in American politics.

The book Randall Kennedy recommends is “Body and Soul: The Black Panther Party and the Fight Against Medical Discrimination,” by Alondra Nelson.

The interview with Professor Kennedy about his book “Nigger:  The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word,” may be heard here and the interview about his book, “Interracial Intimacies: Sex, Marriage, Identity, and Adoption,” may be heard here.

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One of the things I learned in law school about bankruptcy was that if you have to borrow money to take a trip and then go bankrupt, the judge can’t take the trip away from you. In this edition we have a travel report from Christina Aanestad the Associate Producer for Radio Curious. Christina recently returned from a 6 week exploratory, journalist visit from Ecuador, a favorite country of mine.

We visited at the Radio Curious studios on August 29, 2011, to discuss her adventures and what she learned about oil drilling, gold mining and dam construction, as well as what motivated her to take this trip.

The books that Christina Aanestad recommend are, “Now is the Time to Open Your Heart,” by Alice Walker and “Pronoia is the Antidote to Paranoia: How the Whole World is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings,” by Rob Brezney.

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The “Middle Water People” are a small tribe near Mount Shasta, in Northern California. During World War 2, they were relocated and their homeland was flooded to make the Shasta Dam.  After an 80 year lapse, the tribe has reinvigorated a ceremony there, called the Puberty Ceremony, which honors a girls transition into womanhood.  For 3 days and nights, men sing and dance on one side of a river, while the women, pass on traditions to girls on the other side.

The summer of 2011, the tribe will be holding the puberty ceremony for it’s future chief.  But holding a ceremony on stolen land can be a challenge. The forest service refuses to grant the tribe private access to their ancestral land along the McCloud river, because they are an “unrecognized” tribe.  Their ceremony is held with recreational boaters driving by, and camping as the tribe holds it’s right of passage. Under the guidance of their Chief and Spiritual Leader, Caleen Sisk Franco, the Winnemem-Wintu have sued the federal government to protect their rights and their ancestral land. She describes the puberty ceremony and it’s importance to their way of life.

Radio Curious Associate producer Christina Aanestad spoke with Caleen Sisk Franco, the chief and spiritual leader of the Winnemem Wintu tribe in Northern California in August 2011.

The Book Caleen Sisk Franco recommends is “Winnie the Pooh,”  by A.A. Milne.

For more information on the Winnemem Wintu you can visit their website: www.winnememwintu.us

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This edition of Radio Curious is again about Richard W. Johnson Jr., publisher of a group of newspapers in Mendocino County, California, called Mendocino Country.  He died March 16^th, 2011.  The interview was recorded in June  2008 shortly after voters passed Measure B, a ballot measure that attempted to regulate marijuana growth and production.  The measure repealed an earlier ballot initiative Richard Johnson wrote, Measure G in 2000, that set a limit of 25 plants and 2 pounds of processed marijuana.  Measure B reduced the limits to 6 plants person and 8 ounces of processed marijuana.  Richard Johnson was opposed to Measure B and we began our conversation when I asked him why he took on this issue considering the fact that he did not use marijuana.

Richard W. Johnson said he didn’t have time to read because he was too busy writing.

Originally Broadcast: June 18th, 2008

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Few people in Mendocino County, who are not elected officials, have created as much enmity and as many disruptive relationships as has Richard W. Johnson, Jr., who was the owner, editor and publisher of four local news papers under the banner: Mendocino Country.  Johnson died Wednesday March 16th, 2011, in hospice care.  He was 66 years old and will be remembered by his stalwart stance  activist vigor and irascible nature.

He was an original organizer of California Certified Organic Farmers, the recipient of the Mendocino Environmental Center’s ‘Walking Stick Award’ in 1992 for promoting an ocean sanctuary off the Mendocino Coast, and as an original proponent of Measure G on the Mendocino County ballot in 2000, which legalized marijuana in Mendocino County.  When we visited he said he wanted to discuss the misunderstood and seldom appreciated Richard Johnson, his life and times.  And he does.

The interview was recorded at the studios of Radio Curious in Ukiah, CA on February 19^th , 2008.  Richard Johnson’s papers will continue.  Radio Curious Associate Producer, Christina Aanestad and Annie Esposito are publishing Mendocino Country Independent, Vistas and Confluence.  Augusto “Zezzy” Chirre will publish El Sol.

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In this edition of Radio Curious we visit again with Spencer Wells and discuss his new book, “Pandora’s Seed: The Unforeseen Cost of Civilization,” published n 2010.  Our interview is a follow-up to a 2004 conversation about his book, “The Journey of Man: A Genetic Odyssey,” in which Wells traces our routes as small bands of hunter-gatherers when our ancestors walked out of Africa approximately 60,000 years ago and began populating the world.  Our 2004 interview may be found here.

“Pandora’s Seed” tells the story of what we humans, with our hunter-gatherer biological construct have created in the past 10,000 years. These multiple live style changes have produced what we call “civilization,” with systems and mechanisms that will not allow us to continue the life-styles to are emulated by many people world-wide, and exploited by those who have access to them. In other words we can’t last much longer doing what we are doing without radically reducing the way we all live, if not outright killing our species.

Spencer Well is an Explorer-in-Residence at the National Geographic Society in Washington, D.C., where he leads the Genographic Project, which is collecting and analyzing hundreds of thousands of DNA samples from people around the wold in order to decipher how our ancestors populated the world.   He is also a professor a Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. In this interview with Spencer Wells, recorded on July 19, 2010, we began by describing the changes necessary for our species survival.

The book Spencer Wells recommends is “The Histories,” by Herodotus, the 5th century B.C. Greek historian.

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