Radio Curious

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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Not such a long time ago, time was an arbitrary measure decided by each community without consideration of other localities.

In this edition of Radio Curious, we visit with Clark Blaise, author of “Time Lord:  Sir Sandford Fleming and the Creation of Standard Time.”  Although this program was recorded a long time ago, we are airing it for the first time in the last week of 2011.

In the mid 19th century, with the advent of continent-spanning railroads and transatlantic steamers, the myriad of local times became a mind-boggling obstacle and the rational ordering of time to some became an urgent priority for transportation and commerce.  Standard Time was established in 1884, leading to an international uniformity for telling time.  Arguably, the uniformity of time was a “crowning achievement” of Victorian progressiveness, one of the few innovations of that time to have survived unchanged into the 21st century.

Under the leadership of Sir Sandford Fleming, amid political rancor of delegates from industrializing nations, an agreement was reached to establish the Greenwich Prime Meridian passing through Greenwich, England and the International Date Line that wanders it way through the Pacific Ocean.  The 1884 agreement resulted in a uniform system of world-wide time zones that exists today.

I had a good time visiting with Clark Blaise in the spring of 2001 as we discussed how our current notion of time was established.  We began when I asked him to explain what standard time is.

This interview with Clark Blaise, author of “Time Lord: Sir Sandford Fleming and the Creation of Standard Time,” was recorded in the spring of 2001 and first broadcast in the last week of 2011.

The book Clark Blaise recommends is “Time of Our Singing,” by Richard Powers.

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Socrates’ Way: Seven Masterkeys to Using Your Mind to the Utmost

Socrates of Athens, who lived before the Common Era, is respected as one of the greatest independent thinkers of all time. Socrates himself refused to be recognized as a teacher. Instead, Plato, his well-known student and reporter of Socrates’ dialogues, tells us he asked to be seen as a “midwife of ideas.” Socrates’ passion to achieve self-understanding, and the proper ways to live, continues to be studied and emulated to this day.

Socrates recommends “The Trojan Women,” by Euripides. Ron Gross recommends “The Clouds,” by Aristophanes.

Originally Broadcast: January 13, 2003

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Biological warfare is the use of weapons that cause death by disease. The largest and most sophisticated biological weapons program in the world, which cultivated and stockpiled anthrax virus, brucellosis, the plague and genetically altered strains of small pox, employed more than 6000 people at over 100 facilities in the former Soviet Union. For 15 years, ending in 1992, Dr. Ken Alibek, a doctor of medicine and a Ph.D. in microbiology, was the scientific leader of Bio-Preparat, the civilian branch of that secret biological weapons program, masquerading as a pharmaceutical company. In 1992, Dr. Alibek defected to the United States. Several years later, he wrote “Bio-Hazard,” a book detailing the development of biological weapons, the horrors of his former life and why he chose to defect. This is a two-part program with Dr. Ken Alibek, recorded in 1999.

In part two, Dr. Ken Alibek discusses the morality of biological warfare.

Dr. Ken Alibek recommends “Prevent,” by Richard Preston & “Vector,” by Robin Cook.

Originally Broadcast: May 11, 1999 & May 18, 1999

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Another little publicized war, involving the indiscriminate killing and torture of people in the Nuba Mountains of southern Sudan, in northeast Africa, is our topic in this edition of Radio Curious.

Our guest is Professor Samuel Totten, a genocide scholar based at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville. He was last in the Nuba Mountains in January 2011 conducting research for a new book, “Genocidal Actions Against the Nuba Mountains People: Interviews with Survivors of Mass Starvation and Other Atrocities.”  He served as one of the 24 investigators with the U.S. Atrocities Documentation Project in eastern Chad.  His most recent book is “An Oral and Documentary History of the Darfur Genocide.”

This interview with Dr. Totten was recorded from his home in Fayetteville, Arkansas, on June 13, 2011.  We began when I asked him to describe the situation in the Nuba Mountains of Sudan.

The book he recommends is one that he wrote and was just published entitled “We Cannot Forget:  Interviews with Survirors of Genocide on Rwanda.”

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It is said that in the early part of World War II, it took 500,000 Italian soldiers to occupy Ethiopia, and one Ethiopian soldier to conquer Rome.  19 years later, this one Ethiopian soldier, Abebe Bikila competed barefoot in the 1960 Olympiad marathon foot race in Rome, Italy, leaving all other runners in the dust.  Winning the 42 kms, 195 meter race, Abebe Bikila became the first African to win an Olympic Gold Medal.

Abebe Bikila, a shepherd from the plains of Abyssinia in rural Ethiopia, who had never been away from his family, stunned the world with his extraordinary victory.  He became the hero of Rome Olympiad and for years to come a national hero in Ethiopia.  Four years later he won the Marathon at the Tokyo Olympiad becoming the first person to win two Olympic Marathon Gold Medals.

Beyond igniting East Africa’s dominance in long distance running, Abebe Bikila became a quiet champion of hope for a continent that was in the midst of its struggle for self-determination.  During his career Bikila won 12 of the 15 marathons he entered. Abebe Bikila died of a brain hemorrhage on October 23^rd, 1972, two and a half years after his final race and victory in Norway.  He was 41 years old.

In this edition of Radio Curious we visit by phone with the Davey Frankel, from his home in Berlin, Germany and Rasselas Lakew, from his home in New York City.  They are the writers, directors and producers of the movie “The Athlete,” the story of Abebe Bikila.  Rasselas Lakew portrays Abebe Bikila in the lead role of “The Athlete,” and was born and grew up in Addis Abbaba, Ethiopia.  “The Athlete” which will be shown at the Mendocino Film Festival on Friday evening June 3, tells the powerful and tragic story Abebe Bikila, a quiet man, who in many ways meets the Homer’s description in the Odyssey: “… the distant Ethiopians, the father outposts of mankind, half of whom live where the sun goes down and half where the rises.”

This interview with Davey Frankel and Rasselas Lakew, which was recorded on May 9, 2011, began when I asked them explain what prompted them to write and produce “The Athlete.”

The movie that Davey Frankel recommends is “My Life Without Me,” directed by Isabel Coixet.   The movie that Rasselas La Lakew recommends is “Living Russian, Man With A Movie Camera,” directed by Dziga Vertov.

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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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25 years before the Battle Of The Little Bighorn, 40 years before the Battle Of Wounded Knee, there was the Bloody Island Massacre in the spring of 1850 in Lake County, California, near a community which is now called Kelseyville. The massacre of the Lake County Pomo people, which was an immediate prelude to the massacre of the Mendocino County Pomo people in the Yokayo valley (where the community of Ukiah, the county seat of Mendocino County is now situated), was in retaliation for the Pomo’s murder of Charles Stone and Andrew Kelsey, brought about by the way Stone and Kelsey and other European settlers of that time treated the Pomo people. Ukiah resident Bill Walls has written a play about the events that led up to the massacres – “A Time Before Dogs: A True Tale of Two Executions That Led To The Bloody Island Massacre”. This massacre occurred in 1850, the play however ends in December 1849. Our guests in this edition of Radio Curious are Bill Walls and Denise Kawkeka, they read portions of the play and talk about the issues that led up to the massacre. I visited with Bill Walls and Denise Kawkeka in the studios of Ukiah Valley Community Television and began by asking Bill Walls what drew his attention to the background of this play.

This interview was recorded in the studios of Ukiah Valley Community Television on January 18th 2010.

The book that Denise Kawkeka recommends is “The Mutant Message Down Under,” by Marlo Morgan. Bill Walls recommends “Homer and Langley,” by E.L. Doctorow.

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From interrogating Japanese prisoners of war to working as an anti-war activist, Ukiah, California resident Charles Fogg has led a varied and fascinating life. At 91 years of age he talks through his life’s journey. After studying Oriental studies at the University of California, Berkeley and traveling through Japan and China during those studies, he was drafted into the military and attended the Monterey Language School, where his proficiency in Asian languages grew. During World War Two he interrogated Japanese prisoners of war and Chinese prisoners of war in the Korean conflict. After retiring from the U.S. army in 1966 as a Lieutenant Colonel he became active in George McGovern’s presidential campaign and the anti Vietnam war movement. I spoke with Charles Fogg in the studios of Ukiah TV on December 11th 2009 and began by asking him about his early travels in Japan and China.

The book recommended by Charles Fogg is “The Raj Quartet,” by Paul Scott.

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