Patrick Bellgarde-Smith is a professor of Africology at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Today, he will place Haiti’s current political situation in a historical context, explaining the history of American involvement in Haiti. Bellgarde-Smith grew up in Haiti, at the height of the Duvalier dictatorship. His grandfather was Dantes Bellegarde, one of Haiti’s leading social philosophers.
Susan Douglas is a professor of media and American studies at Hampshire College. She has just written a book “Where the Girls Are,” that looks at women in baby-boomer pop culture. She explains how the media’s alternating images of stereotypical femininity and feminism created a kind of “schizophrenia” in American women. She talks about how this confusion has caused ambivalence in American women about what feminism means.
Rock Critic Ken Tucker reviews the Rolling Stones' new album, “Voodoo Lounge." He says their sound has been revitalized by the direction of producer Don Was
In 1986, Donna Murphy was a woman in drag in “The Mystery of Edwin Drood.” In 1991, she was introduced as “a girl who will steal your heart and then forget where she put it,” playing the amnesiac songstress in “Song of Singapore.” Having become one of Broadway’s most sought-after actresses, Murphy is now playing the lead in Stephen Sondheim’s latest musical, “Passion.” Of the role, which has her playing an ugly, hysterical woman obsessively pursuing a handsome army captain, Murphy says, “I love transformation of any kind...I want to look in the mirror and not see Donna looking back at me.”<
Dr. Fred Sheftell is founder and co-director, respectively, of the New England Center for Headache and National President for the American Council on Headache Education. He argues that chronic headache sufferers have faced stigma, often thought to have brought their condition on themselves. He says, “Unlike the pain of ulcers or colitis, the pain caused by a headache has no easily visible source. This relects more on the state of medical knowledge than on the reality of the condition.”
TV critic David Bianculli reviews the new public television sitcom “The Steven Banks Show," starring the comedian of the same name. Bianculli says it's a little like "Seinfeld," but with more music.
Journalist Christopher Joyce has just written a book, "Earthly Goods," about searching for medicinal plants in rain forests. He'll talk about the history of seeking treatments in nature and the recent attempt of pharmaceutical companies, medical researchers, and anthropologists, to preserve the rain forests while they search for cures to disease.
Josephine Humpreys and Ruthie Bolton. Humpreys is a fiction writer who won the Pen/Hemingway award in 1985 for "Dreams of Sleep." She recently transcribed and edited the life story of Bolton, who grew up in the same area of Charleston, South Carolina as Humphreys. The novel is called "Gal," and details Bolton's experiences growing up with an abusive grandfather in 1960's South Carolina.
Fred "Chico" Lager, former CEO of the Ben & Jerry's ice cream company. He joined the company in 1982, and together with Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, built the company from a small ice cream parlor to a $100 million publicly held company. Lager just wrote a book, "Ben & Jerry's: The Inside Scoop" about his experiences building a successful business while upholding the founders' original philosophy of business as a catalyst for social change.
Lise Funderburg is a journalist who has written for "Mirabella" and "New York Newsday." She is bi-racial, and recently wrote a book called "Black, White, Other," which explores the identities of Americans from racially mixed families. Do they consider themselves white, black, neither, or both? On the show with Funderburg are two other people whose interviews are featured in the book.
Linguist Geoff Nunberg talks about the computer language of the nineties, and looks at how new "information age" words sound remarkably like George Orwell's Newspeak.
Williams died on Saturday at the age of 66. Her trademark, a long-lasting high A-flat "whooo," has been adopted by most gospel singers and soul singers like Little Richard and Aretha Franklin. A pioneer of gospel music, she started singing with the Clara Ward Singers, the first gospel group to perform outside the church. A self- proclaimed "Holy Roller", in 1993 WILLIAMS received the MacArthur Foundation grant and the Kennedy Center Honars Award in Washington for her lifetime achievement in the arts.We replay out 1993 interview with her.
Ian Buruma has just written the book, "The Wages of Guilt," which explores the different ways in which the people of Germany and Japan remember World War II. He seeks to explain why Germany has a collective sense of guilt over its war crimes, while Japan tries to forget its involvement in the war. Buruma's other books include "God's Dust" and "Playing the Game."
Commentator Maureen Corrigan reviews "Criminal Convictions" by Nicholas Freeling and "Skin" by Dorothy Allison. Corrigan says that, with their vastly different perspectives, reading them together was "exhilarating."
Jazz critic Kevin Whitehead says that, amidst the apocryphal narratives circulating around the sax player's career, the Verve reissue "The Lester Young Trio" is worth checking out.
Classical Music critic Lloyd Schwartz reviews a new recording of a major Stravinsky score, "Les Noces and Village Wedding Songs" performed by the Pokrovsky Ensemble on the Elektra label. This recording presents the pieces in the style of folk singing, rather than the usual concert style.
