Stuart Kelter interviews Patrick Parr, an historian and biographer of writers and civil rights leaders, including Martin Luther King Jr., James Baldwin, Kurt Vonnegut, Ralph Ellison, and Kato Shidzue. Teaching in Japan since 2018, he currently writes a history column for Japan Today, about historical figures or businesses coming to Japan for the first time. His new book, Malcolm Before X, provides an in-depth accounting of Malcolm X’s family history, childhood, and transformative experiences during his six year incarceration in his early 20s. The book was published this past December and was named A Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Book of 2024
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Stuart Kelter interviews Jonas Olofsson, a professor at Stockholm University in Sweden, where he directs the Sensory Cognitive Interaction Lab, with a particular focus on the sense of smell, as well as its loss, as it interacts with memory, emotion, language, and information processing. He is the author of the recent book, The Forgotten Sense: The New Science of Smell and the Extraordinary Power of the Nose, which is the subject of today’s interview.
Stuart Kelter interviews Farhad Khosrokhavar, a retired professor at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences in Paris, whose work focuses on the social movements in Iran after the Islamic Revolution, the uprisings during the Arab Spring of 2010-12, the Jihadist movements in France and the rest of Europe, and the philosophical foundations of the social sciences. He has published more than 30 books, eight of which were either translated or directly written in English, some translated into several languages, and has also written around 100 articles in French and English, which have been translated into German, Italian, Spanish, Arabic, and Persian. His latest book, Revolt Against Theocracy: The Mahsa Movement and the Feminist Uprising in Iran, is the focus of today's interview.
Stuart Kelter interviews Sadri Hassani, a professor emeritus of Physics at Illinois State University, who continues to teach courses in thermal and quantum physics as the University of Illinois. He holds a PhD in theoretical physics from Princeton University, has authored several books on mathematical physics for undergraduate and graduate students, and in addition has a strong, ongoing interest in raising the scientific awareness of the general public. We’ll be talking about his latest book, Quanta in Distress: How New Age Gurus Kidnapped Quantum Physics.
DELVING IN: Carrie Lowry Schuettpelz on the Complicated History of Native American Identity.12/8/2024
Stuart Kelter interviews Carrie Lowry Schuettpelz, who spent seven years working as a policy advisor in the Obama Administration, focusing on homelessness and Native policy. In addition to an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, she holds a Master’s in Public Policy from Harvard University and was a Fulbright Scholar in Denmark. She currently teaches public policy at the University of Iowa, and is also the Director of the Native Policy Lab. An enrolled member of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina, she was awarded the Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grant in 2023 for her debut nonfiction book, The Indian Card: Who Gets to Be Native in America, which is the subject of today’s interview.
Stuart Kelter interviews author and environmental activist, Richard Munson, who has served as senior director of the Environmental Defense Fund, and senior vice president at Recycled Energy Development. He has been a coordinator for the Northeast-Midwest Institute and Congressional and Senate Coalitions and several other environmental organizations, including bipartisan caucuses that conduct policy research and draft legislation on issues pertaining to agriculture, economic development, energy, the environment, and manufacturing. Munson has received numerous public-service awards and, has served on several boards of environmental organizations and a Public Library. His has written biographies of scientists, including Tesla: Inventor of the Modern and Cousteau: The Captain and His World. He has also written Tech to Table: 25 Innovators Reimagining Food, From Edison to Enron, and Cardinals of Capitol Hill, which traces the machinations of congressional appropriators who control government spending. We’ll be talking about his most recent book, Ingenious: A Biography of Benjamin Franklin, Scientist.
Stuart Kelter interviews Matthew Taylor, a senior scholar at the Institute for Islamic, Christian, and Jewish Studies in Baltimore, where he specializes in American Christianity, American Islam, Christian extremism, and religious politics. He also serves as an associate fellow at the Center for Peace Diplomacy in New Orleans, where he works on preventing religion-related violence surrounding U.S. elections. We’ll be talking about his new book, The Violent Take It by Force: The Christian Movement that is Threatening Our Democracy, which explores the roots, belief system, and goals of a non-denominational evangelical movement, the New Apostolic Reformation. In Taylor’s analysis, this movement is reshaping the culture of the religious right in the U.S. and was a major instigating force for the January 6th Insurrection at the U.S. Capitol building.
DELVING IN: Child of Holocaust Survivors, Elizabeth Rosner, on the Art and Science of Listening10/27/2024
Stuart Kelter interviews Elizabeth Rosner, the author of three novels, a poetry collection, and two books of nonfiction, all of which have won literary prizes. Her debut novel, The Speed of Light, published in 2001, was translated into nine languages and won literary prizes in the US and Europe. Blue Nude, her second novel, published in 2006, was selected as one of the best books of the year by the San Francisco Chronicle. Her third novel, Electric City published in 2014, was named among the best books of the year by NPR. Her poetry collection, Gravity, also published in 2014, plumbs the deep complexities of trauma inherited from her Holocaust survivor parents. Survivor Café: the Legacy of Trauma and the Labyrinth of Memory, was published in 2017 and was a finalist for a National Jewish Book Award and was featured on NPR and in The New York Times. Rosner’s new work of nonfiction, Third Ear: Reflections on the Art and Science of Listening, is the subject of today’s interview.
Stuart Kelter interviews David Noll, the former associate dean for faculty research and a professor of law at Rutgers University Law School. His scholarly work encompasses a broad set of interlocking aspects of the law, including complex litigation, governmental legislation, regulation, and administration, and the framework of constitutional law in which all of these are grounded. He has written both for major scholarly journals, as well as for general audiences in the New York Times, Politico, Slate, among other publications. He is the co-author, with UCLA law professor, Jon Michaels, of the recently published Vigilante Nation: How State-Sponsored Terror Threatens Our Democracy, which is the subject of today’s interview.
Stuart Kelter interviews Hahrie Han, a Political Science Professor at Johns Hopkins University, whose research focuses on grass-roots political activism, particularly against systemic racism. She has partnered with a wide range of civic and political organizations and movements around the world, including those in the United States, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Singapore, and Korea, helping develop the leadership skills of young scholars and practitioners, especially women and people of color. In addition to writing columns in major news publications and articles in leading scholarly journals, she has written five books. Her most recent book, Undivided: The Quest for Racial Solidarity in an American Church, is the subject of today’s interview.
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