Upcoming Inquiry Programs

AUGUST 10:

Tonight on Inquiry: a DECORDOVA ANNUAL EXHIBITION SPECIAL, featuring interviews with two of the artists and one scientist whose work is in the current show on view till August 17.

At 9PM we speak with artist, agricultural activist, and performance cook LEAH GAUTHIER, who is currently growing a bumper crop of heirloom melons at the museum that will be served to the public as artwork you can eat. Tune in and find out about Leah’s work with sculpting fall leaves, drilling pine needles into walls and the amazing spectacle of a five foot wide raspberry tart. Leah’s website is:

http://www.leahgauthier.com

Then at 9:30, we speak with artist, painter and animator EVA LEE and DR. JAMES COAN, Professor of Psychology and Director of the Virginia Affective Neuroscience Laboratory at the University of Virginia. Dr. Coan has been conducting fascinating experiments on creating images of the brains of subjects experiencing five different emotions. Eva Lee has taken Dr. Coan’s data and created beautiful and fantastic three dimensional animated “emotional” landscapes . Sound wild? Well tune in and found out all about this new and exciting partnership between art and science.

Dr. Coan’s website is: http://www.affectiveneuroscience.org

Eva Lee’s website is www.evaleestudio.com.

For more information on the DECORDOVA MUSEUM AND SCULPTURE PARK go to: http://www.decordova.org/index.html

AUGUST 17:

China is undergoing one of the most dramatic social, economic and cultural upheavals in it’s very long-history. Though still ostensibly a totalitarian state, China’s visual artists are at liberty to comment on these changes in their work, within certain ill-defined parameters. These are young artists born after Mao’s “Cultural Revolution”. Tonight on Inquiry, we speak with ROBERT ADANTO, Executive Producer and Director of the documentary THE RISING TIDE. In this exciting and thought-provoking film, contemporary Chinese artists talk about their work, what they think of “western” critics, and their complex views of Chinese consumer culture. Could these artists be the vanguard of the next Renaissance? Tune in tonight and find out what happens when totalitarianism meets unbridled capitalism.

THE RISING TIDE will be shown at the Worcester Art Museum Saturday August 23 at 6:30Pm in the Conference Room of the Higgins Education Wing. For further details, go to: www.worcesterart.org

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 speaks with intrepid journalist and dogged researcher MARY ROACH, as 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 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.

AUGUST 24:

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”.

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.

AUGUST 31:

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.

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!

SEPTEMBER 7:

A Birkin is probably the most sought-after celebrity handbag in the world. Made by Hermes, to buy one you have to get on a waiting list to get on the waiting list and you cannot even get on that list! But tonight’s guest, MICHAEL TONELLO, cracked the code on how to get these mythical accouterments and then proceeded to live a wild life as he traveled throughout Europe, Asia and South America buying Birkins and re-selling them for a client list that included billionaires and celebrities of all stripes. Along the way he ran into a novel’s worth of shady characters, almost died, found true love and lived a life James Bond would have been envious of. Not bad for a kid from Provincetown. Michael’s hilarious account of his days as a “leather liaison” is titled: BRINGING HOME THE BIRKIN: MY LIFE IN HOT PURSUIT OF THE WORLD’S MOST COVETED HANDBAG.

When you think of Niagara Falls, what comes to mind? Honeymoons? Spectacular natural wonder? Shredded Wheat? The “Maid-In-The-Mist”? Marilyn Monroe? The Three Stooges? Love Canal? Tonight, writer GINGER STRAND peaks behind the mist and booming water and finds a very different Niagara. Strand finds a natural wonder that is literally tuned up and down like a sprinkler to keep both tourists and power companies happy, a Niagara that is an important stop on the Underground Railroad as well as a key part of the Manhattan Project. Listen tonight and discover a very different Niagara Falls. Strand’s unique social history is titled: INVENTING NIAGARA: BEAUTY, POWER AND LIES.

SEPTEMBER 14:

The Po’ouli was a mysterious and unique bird only discovered in the 1970s in the dense wet rainforests on Maui. By 2006, the species was extinct. What happened in between is a complex story of habitat destruction, invasive species and the slow recovery efforts by conservationists hampered by funding challenges and internal conflicts of how to best save this species. Before anything could be done, the last bird died in captivity. Case closed. Science writer ALVIN POWELL has written a powerful and no-holds barred account of what happened to this fascinating creature that will never be seen again. His book is titled: THE RACE TO SAVE THE WORLD’S RAREST BIRD: THE DISCOVERY AND DEATH OF THE PO’OULI. To see some photographs of this bird, go to: http://www.state.hi.us/dlnr/dofaw/pubs/endgrspp/

Titan is a very unusual moon of Saturn. It is huge, larger than Pluto or Mercury. Titan has an active and complex atmosphere, and exhibits physical features that look like a world covered with lakes and rivers. But is certainly not just a colder earth-like planet, though it my harbor life. The Cassini spacecraft with the attached Huygens probe arrived at Saturn in the summer of 2004 to more closely study Titan and even attempt a soft landing. On Inquiry tonight, we talk to one of the engineers and scientists involved with this mission RALPH LORENZ, planetary scientist at the John Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. His book, which describes what has been discovered on this distant very alien world, is titled TITAN UNVEILED: SATURN’S MYSTERIOUS MOON EXPOSED.

SEPTEMBER 21:

JACKIE ORMES drew comics for newspapers in the 30s, 40s and 50s that are unique for their social and political content. She also designed a high end African American doll based on one her comic characters. Though Ormes was a dynamic force for social change and cultural education in the Chicago area, her fascinating story has only recently been brought to the light of day. Tonight on Inquiry we talk with writer and collector NANCY GOLDSTEIN who has written the definitive and illuminating biography: JACKIE ORMES: THE FIRST AFRICAN AMERICAN WOMAN CARTOONIST.

The British group Roxy Music has been critically acclaimed as one of the most original, creative and stylish bands of the 1970s, that paved the way for what was to be called “New Wave”. Tonight on Inquiry, we interview noted novelist and non-fiction writer MICHAEL BRACEWELL about the creative roots of this group. It is Bracewell’s belief that Brian Ferry and Brian Eno’s experiences in art school in the 1960s, especially studying and partying with legendary “pop” artists like Richard Hamilton, Mark Lancaster and Rita Donagh, that helped create the image of Roxy Music as a performance work of British Pop Art. Tune in tonight for a decidedly different history of art, rock, fashion, and of course: the Mods. Bracewell’s scholarly history is titled RE-MAKE/RE-MODEL: BECOMING ROXY MUSIC.

SEPTEMBER 28:

BILL THOMPSON III is the Editor of Bird Watcher’s Digest and author of a number of books about birds. His most recent effort is a wonderful and unique bird guide geared for “tweens”, young people ages 8 to 14: . To make sure his book was written for the right audience, Bill asked his eleven-year old daughter’s classmates for suggestions. The result is a natural history guide that is refreshing, funny and very age appropriate titled: THE YOUNG BIRDER’S GUIDE TO BIRDS OF EASTERN NORTH AMERICA. . Many adults will also find this guide useful. Also a guest on tonight’s show is PHOEBE THOMPSON, Bill’s daughter. Phoebe will talk about her birding experiences, her most wanted species and what it’s like to find herself pictured in a field guide dressed as the archetypical birder.

What does it take to publish a field guide? Is it as big a nightmare as it seems it would be? Tonight, Inquiry speaks with TED FLOYD, the Editor of Birding, the flagship publication of the American Birding Association and creator of the new SMITHSONIAN FIELD GUIDE TO THE BIRDS OF NORTH AMERICA. Ted talks also about why birding is so popular and if new fangled electronic devices will ever replace the printed guide.

OCTOBER 5: