Inquiry

Inquiry: Scott Douglas - Quiet Please: Dispatches from a Public Library

karen@wicn.org — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 07:36:33 -0600

SCOTT DOUGLAS is a librarian at the Anaheim Public Library. He has written a hilarious yet touching memoir about what librarians really do, and only a little of it is about books. Mostly librarians interface with a public that includes hungry homeless families; paranoid crazy people, teenage thugs, bitter older people and kids out to hack the library PCs. It’s all in a days work if you are a real “public servant” and it’s all worthwhile because you really can help people. Douglas’ tell-all inspiring book is QUIET, PLEASE: DISPATCHES FROM A PUBLIC LIBRARIAN. Tune in and find out why Scott hates Parker Posey!

Inquiry: Fern Johnson - Imaging In Advertising

karen@wicn.org — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 09:30:36 -0600

FERN L. JOHNSON is a Professor of English and faculty member in the Communication and Culture program at Clark University. Professor Johnson believes that advertising today speaks as “one of the prominent discourses of our time”. Magazine ads, billboards and TV commercials are the folklore of our commodity culture. Advertisers today can fine-tune the language and images of an ad to better seduce niche markets to buy their products. Tune in and find out how advertisers use subtle and not so subtle imagery to sell cigarettes to urban African American communities or convince you that eyeliner is scientifically and technology superior. Professor Johnson’s thought-provoking book is IMAGING IN ADVERTISING: VERBAL AND VISUAL CODES OF COMMERCE.

Inquiry: Jonathan Rosen - THE LIFE OF THE SKIES: BIRDING AT THE END OF NATURE

karen@wicn.org — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 08:14:33 -0600

Is birding merely “sanctioned voyeurism?” Inquiry spends some time with writer, essayist and editor JONATHAN ROSEN talking about his new book THE LIFE OF THE SKIES: BIRDING AT THE END OF NATURE. In this very literate birding book, Rosen searches for the real meaning that lurks behind our impulse to watch and list birds. This is a thoughtful voyage of discovery that takes Rosen from watching spring migrants in Central Park, New York City to watching Hume’s Tawny Owl in Israel, quoting from Walt Whitman, Robert Frost, Henry David Thoreau and the story of Baal Shem Tov along the way.

Inquiry: Rajmahan Gandhi - GANDHI:THE MAN, HIS PEOPLE AND THE EMPIRE

karen@wicn.org — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 07:37:36 -0600

On this special Inquiry, we speak with RAJMOHAN GANDHI, Research Professor at the Center for South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champlain. Professor Gandhi is also a former member of the Rajya Sabha, the Upper House of the Indian parliament and has written a definitive biography of the dynamic Indian political and spiritual leader Mahatma GANDHI:THE MAN, HIS PEOPLE AND THE EMPIRE. Tonight we talk about Gandhi’s beginnings in Porbandar, his early trips to England and South Africa, and how his experiences there helped him formulate the concept of “satyagraha”. “firmness for the good”, passive resistance and Hind Swaraj, “home rule”.

Inquiry: Mary Roach - Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex

karen@wicn.org — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 09:34:56 -0600

Birds do it. Bees do it. And for well over a century, cadres of daring scientists have been trying to figure out how we do it. Tonight on Inquiry we speak with intrepid journalist and dogged researcher MARY ROACH. She looks at the work of sex researchers past and present and what they have found out about such diverse topics as the tender side of porcine insemination, the discovery of the ability to have an orgasm in people with spinal chord injuries and how to design a camera to go where no camera has gone before. Roach’s unforgettable book is titled: BONK: THE CURIOUS COUPLING OF SCIENCE AND SEX. Please note that tonight’s Inquiry is for MATURE AUDIENCES only.