Delving In with Stuart Kelter
Science & Technology News
Knowledge-seeker and psychologist Stuart Kelter shares his joy of learning and “delving in.” Ready? Let’s delve... Join Chris Churchill on the possible reasons why the search for intelligent life in the universe is coming up empty. Let’s hear from Israeli psychiatrist Pesach Lichtenberg about a promising approach to schizophrenia—going mainstream in Israel—that uses minimal drugs and maximal support through the crisis, rejecting the presumption of life-long disability. Find out what Pulitzer Prize winning historian, David Kertzer learned from recently opened Vatican records about Pius XII, the Pope During WWII. We explore the fascinating and intriguing... What did journalist Eve Fairbanks learn about race relations in post-Apartheid South Africa? Did you realize there were dozens and dozens of early women scientists? Let’s find out about them through a sampling of poems with poet Jessy Randall. How shall we grapple with the complexities of the placebo effect in drug development and medical practice? Harvard researcher Kathryn Hall confirms just how complicated it really is! But beware: increasing one’s knowledge leads to more and more questions. If that appeals to you, join us on “Delving In”! The interviews of the Delving In podcast were first broadcast on KTAL-LP, the community radio station of Las Cruces, New Mexico. The full archive of well over 100 interviews can be found at https://www.lccommunityradio.org/archives/category/delving-in. Please send questions and comments to stuartkelter@protonmail.com.
Location:
United States
Description:
Knowledge-seeker and psychologist Stuart Kelter shares his joy of learning and “delving in.” Ready? Let’s delve... Join Chris Churchill on the possible reasons why the search for intelligent life in the universe is coming up empty. Let’s hear from Israeli psychiatrist Pesach Lichtenberg about a promising approach to schizophrenia—going mainstream in Israel—that uses minimal drugs and maximal support through the crisis, rejecting the presumption of life-long disability. Find out what Pulitzer Prize winning historian, David Kertzer learned from recently opened Vatican records about Pius XII, the Pope During WWII. We explore the fascinating and intriguing... What did journalist Eve Fairbanks learn about race relations in post-Apartheid South Africa? Did you realize there were dozens and dozens of early women scientists? Let’s find out about them through a sampling of poems with poet Jessy Randall. How shall we grapple with the complexities of the placebo effect in drug development and medical practice? Harvard researcher Kathryn Hall confirms just how complicated it really is! But beware: increasing one’s knowledge leads to more and more questions. If that appeals to you, join us on “Delving In”! The interviews of the Delving In podcast were first broadcast on KTAL-LP, the community radio station of Las Cruces, New Mexico. The full archive of well over 100 interviews can be found at https://www.lccommunityradio.org/archives/category/delving-in. Please send questions and comments to stuartkelter@protonmail.com.
Language:
English
Website:
https://delving-in.captivate.fm
Episodes
#140. Malcolm Before X: Family Background, Childhood, and Incarceration
1/6/2025
Patrick Parr is 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.
Recorded 12/17/24.
Duration:00:55:43
#139. The Amazing New Science of Smell
12/31/2024
Jonas Olofsson is 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.
Recorded 12/18/24.
Duration:00:55:42
#138. The History and Enduring Effects of the 2022 Uprising in Iran
12/30/2024
Farhad Khosrokhavar is a retired professor and former Director of Studies 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.
Recorded 12/24/24.
Duration:00:55:02
#137. Science, Pseudoscience, and the Co-opting of Quantum Physics by the New Age Movement
12/15/2024
Sadri Hassani is 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.
Recorded 12/11/24.
Duration:00:54:02
#136. The Complicated History of Native American Identity
12/9/2024
For seven years Carrie Lowry Schuettpelz was 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.
Recorded 12/4/24.
Duration:00:57:02
#135. Where Does Economic Inequality Come From?
12/3/2024
Jeffrey Zax is an economics professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder, whose research focuses on labor economics, public economics, and urban economics. He has served as a consultant for various public entities, including the Attorneys General of several states. He has also been a Fulbright Lecturer and has taught at the University of Ghana. This interview focuses on the economic causes and dynamics of inequality and discrimination.
Recorded 8/27/20.
Duration:00:51:19
#134. Reflecting on (an Unusally) Long Career as a Child Protective Worker
11/29/2024
Tom Russell is a retired Child Protective Services investigator and foster care worker, employed by the state of Michigan. Although this honest and thoughtful interview does not go into graphic detail about child abuse, it may nevertheless be upsetting to some. Listener discretion is advised.
Recorded 9/10/20.
Duration:00:48:17
#133. Benjamin Franklin's Scientific Dimension Underpinned Everthing Else
11/20/2024
Author and environmental activist, Richard Munson, 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.
Recorded 11/12/24.
Duration:00:52:02
#132. A Religious Movement that is Reshaping American Politics and is Threatening Our Democracy
11/3/2024
Matthew Taylor is 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.
Recorded 10/30/24.
Duration:00:57:33
#131. A Daughter of Holocaust Survivors Reflects on Intergenerational Trauma, Memory, and Listening
10/27/2024
Award-winning novelist, poet, and non-fiction writer, Elizabeth Rosner, talks about themes from Survivor Café: the Legacy of Trauma and the Labyrinth of Memory, published in 2017, and her latest book, Third Ear: Reflections on the Art and Science of Listening. The daughter of Holocaust survivors, Rosner became attuned not only to words and sounds, but to different kinds of silences, as well.
Recorded 10/22/24.
Duration:00:54:28
#130. State Laws that Promote Vigilante Intimidation
10/21/2024
David Noll is 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.
Recorded 10/14/24.
Duration:00:55:39
#129. An Evangelical Mega-Church that Fights Racism
10/6/2024
Hahrie Han is 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.
Recorded 10/1/24.
Duration:00:57:44
#128. Space, Time, and the Universe
10/6/2024
Wladimir Lyra is an astronomer at New Mexico State University, whose research focuses around high-end computer simulations of planet formation, both in our own solar system and beyond, i.e., exoplanets and their solar systems. In this interview, we discuss empirically-based theories of time and space, their relationship to each other, and current ideas about the beginning and end of time.
Recorded 9/24/20.
Duration:00:49:51
#127. White Rural Rage: The Threat to American Democracy
9/22/2024
Thomas Schaller and Paul Waldman and the co-authors of Rural White Rage: The Threat to American Democracy.
Tom Schaller, who is a professor of political science at the University of Maryland in Baltimore, is the author of The Stronghold: How Republicans Captured Congress but Surrendered the White House; Whistling Past Dixie: How Democrats Can Win Without the South; and co-author, with fellow UMBC political scientist Tyson King-Meadows, of Devolution and Black State Legislators: Challenges and Choices in the Twenty-First Century. He is a former political columnist for the Baltimore Sun and his commentaries have appeared in major newspapers, as well as in radio and television interviews. He has given lectures on American elections in 19 countries on behalf of the U.S. State Department.
Paul Waldman is a journalist and opinion writer, whose commentaries have appeared in dozen of major newspapers, magazines and digital media. He is the author or co-author of four previous books on media and politics: The Press Effect: Politicians, Journalists, and the Stories That Shape the Political World , written with Kathleen Hall Jamieson; Fraud: The Strategy Behind the Bush Lies and Why the Media Didn't Tell You; Being Right is Not Enough: What Progressives Must Learn From Conservative Success; and Free Ride: John McCain and the Media.
Recorded 9/19/24.
Duration:00:58:22
#126. The Paranoia and Drama of the McCarthy Era
9/16/2024
Historians Andrea Balis and Elizabeth Levy are co-authors of the Bringing Down a President: The Watergate Scandal, published in 2019, and Witch Hunt: The Cold War, Joe McCarthy, and the Red Scare, published just this year and the subject of today’s interview. Andrea was a professor at the City University of New York for 30 years, has worked as a theater director and playwright, and has written young adult fiction and non-fiction. Elizabeth is prolific and award-winning author of fiction and non-fiction books for children and young adults.
Recorded 9/10/24.
Duration:00:57:08
#125. Immigrant Workers Take on America's Largest Meatpacking Company
9/10/2024
Alice Driver is a writer from the Ozark Mountains in Arkansas. She is the author of More or Less Dead: Feminicide, Haunting, and the Ethics of Representation in Mexico, published in 2015, and the translator of Abecedario de Juárez, published in 2022. Her latest book, The Life and Death of the American Worker: The Immigrants Taking on America's Largest Meatpacking Company, was published this year and won the Lukas Work-in-Progress Prize from Columbia Journalism School and the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard. Alice has also written articles for The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, Oxford American, and National Geographic.
Recorded 9/3/24.
Duration:00:53:11
#124. Hypochondria: A Personal Story and Historical Exploration
9/1/2024
Caroline Crampton is a writer and a podcaster, and the author of two books. The Way to the Sea, published in 2019, recounts the stories, literature, and history about the Thames Estuary in the U.K. Her second book, published in 2024 and the subject of today’s interview, is A Body Made of Glass: A Cultural History of Hypochondria. Crampton creates and hosts the award-winning detective fiction podcast Shedunnit, curates articles as editor-in-chief of The Browser, and writes reviews and essays for such publications as Time, Literary Hub and The Guardian.
Recorded 8/29/24.
Duration:00:57:38
#123. Space Archaeology: Preserving Artifacts on the Moon
8/25/2024
Beth O’Leary is a Professor Emerita at New Mexico State University, whose areas of interest include both cultural anthropology and archaeology. She is one of the creators and experts in Space Archaeology and Heritage, investigating the heritage status of the Apollo 11 Tranquility Base site on the Moon. In 2010, she and colleagues successfully nominated objects and structures at the Tranquility Base to the State Registers of Cultural Properties in both California and New Mexico. Her books include: The Final Mission: Preserving NASA’s Apollo Sites (co-authored with L.Westwood and M.W. Donaldson in 2017), (2015) The Archaeology and Heritage of the Human Movement into Space (co-edited with, P.J. Capelotti, in 2015); and The Handbook of Space Engineering, Archaeology and Heritage (co-edited with A. Darrin, CRC Taylor, and Francis Press in 2009). Dr. O’Leary has chaired five international symposia on Space Archaeology and Heritage. Dr. O’Leary has also conducted research on Athapaskan cultures in Canada and the U.S.
Recorded 11/17/20.
Duration:00:56:49
#122. The Life, Times, and Philosophy of Baruch Spinoza, a Founding Thinker of the Enlightenment
8/25/2024
Ian Buruma is a Professor of Human Rights and Journalism at Bard College. Originally from the Netherlands, he is a prolific writer with broad interests, including Japanese and Chinese culture and history, organized religion and religious intolerance, and intellectual and political freedom or lack thereof. He has been a regular contributor to the New York Review of Books, the New York Times Magazine, New Republic, New Yorker, and The Guardian and has also written two novels. His most recent book, published earlier this year and the subject of today’s interview, is Spinoza: Freedom’s Messiah. Buruma provides historical and biographical context to Spinoza’s life, as well as drawing out the relevance of Spinoza’s value system to current political controversies.
Recorded 8/20/24.
Duration:00:53:40
#121. Doing Philosophy with Children
8/18/2024
This interview is dedicated to Samantha Keleher Bursum, who died on March 1 of 2024 in a car accident at the age of 14. She participated in this interview, at age 11, with her mother, Lori Keleher, who is a philosophy professor at New Mexico State University. Together they share the joys and benefits of philosophical conversations with children, starting from a surprisingly early age.
Recorded 12/29/20.
Duration:00:55:16