Audio

Inquiry
Hugh Raffles: INSECTOPEDIA

Many people in America don’t give insects a second thought other than how to remove them from their homes. But in many other parts of the globe, human cultures have a more complex, a more intimate relationship with the hordes of six legged invertebrates. In China, cricket fighting is an arcane and beloved sport that goes back many centuries. In Japan there is a mania for raising large rhinoceros and stag beetles supported by beetle stores, magazines, manga and even a popular Sega game.

Inquiry
Charles Gross: A HOLE IN THE HEAD: MORE TALES IN THE HISTORY OF NEUROSCIENCE

The oldest known surgical procedure that we have evidence for goes back to the Neolithic period. It was not setting a broken leg or repairing a flattened nose. It was cutting a three-inch hole in the skull using primitive stone tools! Yikes!!! Trepanation or trephination, was a known surgical practice to the Indians of Cuzco, the Ancient Greeks and was done in many European countries. It is still being done in certain cultures of Africa. The amazing thing is that most patients lived!

The Business Beat
Kathy Metzger and Lynn Patterson of Fallon Community Health Plan.

NaviCare HMO is a health-care program sponsored by Fallon Community Health Plan whose aim is to help you get the most out of your Medicare and MassHealth Standard benefits and offers you extra services that can help you stay healthy at no extra cost.
Under NaviCare, your primary-care physician will work with a team to develop your own personal-care plan based on what kind of care you need.
You will have a geriatric-support-service coordinator who will help arrange for community services.

The Public Eye
Susannah Charleson: Scent of the Missing

Scent of the Missing is the true story of search and rescue
volunteer Susannah Charleson and her rescue dog Puzzle. Together they
forge a close relationship as they search for the lost, missing, and
injured.  From the earliest air-scent lessons to her final mastery of
whole-body dialog, Puzzle emerges as a fully collaborative partner in a
noble enterprise that unfolds across the forests, plains, and cityscapes
of the Southwest. Along the way Susannah and Puzzle learn to read the
clues in the field, and in each other, to accomplish together the

Inquiry
Dave Thompson: YOUR PRETTY FACE IS GOING TO HELL: THE DANGEROUS GLITTER OF DAVID BOWIE, IGGY POP AND LOU REED

The Velvet Underground, featuring Lou Reed and vocalist Nico, began as a side project of Andy Warhol’s performance art ensemble The Erupting Plastic Inevitable. Sounding like nothing else in the mid-60s, Velvet Underground went on to record only a handful of albums. But as Brian Eno once quipped, exaggerating only slightly, no more than 100 people ever saw The Velvet Underground, but everyone who did then went out and formed  a band. And those people included such rock legends as David Bowie and Iggy Pop.

Inquiry
Timothy Ferris: THE SCIENCE OF LIBERTY: DEMOCRACY, REASON AND THE LAWS OF NATURE

Are the ideas of the Scientific Revolution and the concept of a Liberal Democracy symbiotically linked? Was the democratic revolution sparked by the discoveries of science? Can science only flourish in democratic environments? And what can these ideas tell us about the future of China and Iran?

Inquiry
Deborah Ball: HOUSE OF VERSACE: THE UNTOLD STORY OF GENIUS, MURDER AND SURVIVAL

Gianni Versace revolutionized the fashion world. Starting in a poor town in southern Italy, he moved north to Milan and began producing fashions that some declared youthful and sexy, while rivals declared his dresses flashy and trashy. With his sister Donatella as his muse and his brother Santo as the man with the business plan, Gianni changed the way the public understood fashion right until his murder in 1997.

The Business Beat
Dan Thurmon - author of Off Balance On Purpose

Dan Thurmon’s new book, Off Balance On Purpose – Embrace Uncertainty and Create a Life You Love, shows us that maintaining our balance in today’s off-balance world is a never-ending challenge.

That’s why he tells us to give up trying to live our life “on balance,” and start livingOff Balance On Purpose

This, he maintains, is the only way we will experience true happiness, accomplish meaningful goals, and lead a life which has lasting significance.

Inquiry
Max Watman: CHASING THE WHITE DOG: AN AMATEUR OUTLAWS ADVENTURE IN MOONSHINE

Homemade hard “likker”, moonshine, is still made in many parts of the country. But are these moonshiners the cartoonish Appalachian hillbillies with patched genes and corncob pipes or are they romantic rednecks like in Robert Mitchem in Thunder Road?

Inquiry
David Grann: THE DEVIL AND SHERLOCK HOLMES: TALES OF MURDER, MADNESS AND OBSESSION

Tonight Inquiry welcomes staff writer for the New Yorker, DAVID GRANN. Grann’s latest collection of short non-fiction pieces focuses on intrigue and people who are obsessed. There is the twisted tale of the crazed expert on Sherlock Holmes who is found mysteriously killed while trying to uncover a legendary cache of material left by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Another piece follows a tireless and single-minded researcher trying to get a glimpse at a live Giant Squid.