Programs for the Week of Mar 21

We’re digging into the Here on Earth archives for some of our best shows to repeat Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday of this week while I’m at a conference on Islam in Bloomington, Indiana.

Jean’s Pick of the Week (watch video): The Year of the Hare: Pico Iyer was downright subversive in the way he laid out his formula for “enlightened truancy” based on his reading of Arto Pasaalinna’s bestseller. He’s been living what sounds to me like the perfect unmediated life with his wife in a two bedroom apartment in a quiet little out of the way town near Kyoto, sans automobile, laptop, cell phone, radio or TV. Almost unimaginable, but he claims his days stretch out like eternity. Imagine having that much time and freedom! One wonders if Japan’s multiple catastrophe are likely to intrude on his idyll.

Monday: Madre: Perilous Journeys with a Spanish Noun (Encore): What's in a word? Linguistic anthropologist Liza Bakewell spent decades chasing after the many meanings of the Spanish word "madre" as its used in Mexico. In her memoir she chronicles the relationship between religion, nationhood and language and celebrates the role of the creative female in a sexist culture. Rebroadcast from December 1, 2010.

Tuesday: The Art of Listening (Encore): British Sociologist Les Back has been thinking a lot about famous listeners like Studs Terkel, about the importance Holocaust survivor Primo Levi placed on the connectivity offered by listening, and about why, despite the central role listening plays in a healthy political sphere, it just seems to be getting harder and harder to be good at it. Rebroadcast from September 8, 2010.

Wednesday: Finding Utopia (Encore): Will utopia ever exist? JC Hallman travelled the world’s intentional communities to study our quest for a better perfect. He came back thinking that even when perfect fails, there’s something human about reaching for it. Rebroadcast from December 13, 2010.

Thursday: The Green Path: Muhammed declared "The Earth is a Mosque." Environmental Policy Advisor to the City of New York, Ibrahim Abdul-Matin makes a spiritual case for environmentalism in which humanity is compelled to care for the earth not just in response to scientific data, but because of a sacred duty.

Friday: Blood, Bones, and Butter: All eyes in the food world have turned to Gabrielle Hamilton and her new memoir, Blood, Bones & Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef. She’s never been quite at home in the food world and still has little patience for credos or picky eaters at her table. At Prune, her East Village NYCity restaurant, it’s all about real, good food that says "hospitality," like the food she encountered on backpacking trips in Greece and Turkey.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day: Think Green!

Jean