AUDIO LIBRARY

Hygiene
If our rules about cleanliness don’t match our practices, why are we so interested in hygiene?
Guests:
Timothy Burke — Historian at Swarthmore College
Nayan Shah — Historian at the University of California, San Diego
originally aired September 29, 2003

Juries
In the 90’s it was the Rodney King verdict. Now it’s huge damage awards. In both criminal and civil trials, controversial verdicts have American juries under fire. Is it time to rethink our Jury System?
Guests:
Albert Alschuler — University of Chicago Law School
Stephan Landsman — Depaul University College of Law
originally aired July 30, 2003

History of Racism
Race is sometimes understood as a biological category and sometimes as a social construction. Where do we get our conceptions of race?
Guests:
Julie Ward — Philosopher at Loyola University
Charles Mills — Philosopher at the University of Illinois at Chicago
originally aired September 17, 2003

Nostalgia and Hollywood
The death of Katherine Hepburn prompted many critics to revisit her career, and the era of Classic Hollywood. Hepburn was remembered for her independent spirit and her feminism. But is this the way Hepburn appeared at the time? Or just the way we see her now? How is our picture of classic Hollywood shaped by nostalgia?
Guests:
Tom Gunning — Member of the Committee on Cinema and Media Studies at the University of Chicago
Mary Desjardins — Film and Television Studies at Dartmouth College
originally aired July 11, 2003

Modern Time
From standardized calendars to coordinated time zones, why do we organize time?
Guests:
Peter Galison — Historian of Science and Physicist at Harvard University
Mary Ann Doane — Department of Modern Culture and Media at Brown University
originally aired September 25, 2003

Morality and the Marketplace
Economist Adam Smith — like many early economic theorists — was a moral philosopher. How did Smith’s ideas about morality influence his ideas about the market? And what do they reveal about contemporary capitalism?
Guests:
Stephen Darwall — University of Michigan
Sam Fleischacker — University of Illinois at Chicago
originally aired September 8, 2003

The Courts and the War on Terror
Several months ago, federal appeals courts ruled on two cases that could dramatically alter how the Justice Department prosecutes suspected terrorists. Host Gretchen Helfrich and guests discuss the courts and the war on terror.
Guests:
Ronald Allen — Legal scholar at the Northwestern University and author Constitutional Criminal Procedure
Richard Pildes — Legal scholar at the New York University School of Law and co-author of The Law of Democracy: Legal Structure of the Political Process

The History of Juvenile Justice
The first juvenile court was established just over one hundred years ago yet debate continues over how to deal with children who commit crimes. Host Gretchen Helfrich and guests discuss the history of Juvenile Justice.
Guests:
Victoria Getis — On faculty at the Ohio State University and author of The Juvenile Court and the Progressives
David Tanenhaus — Historian at the University of Nevada and author of the forthcoming book Juvenile Justice in the Making

Acquiring New Rights
Do you know your rights? The overturning of the Massachusetts
ban on gay marriage may transform who has the right to marry. When did marriage become a right? Public opinion, politics and the law all contribute to how rights are defined and established. What does it take to get new rights?
Guests:
Andrew Koppelman — Legal scholar at the Northwestern University School of Law and author of the book The Gay Rights Question in Contemporary American Law
Cass Sunstein — Sunstein is a legal scholar at the University of Chicago Law School and author of the book Why Societies Need Law

Politics of Popular Culture
Politics and popular culture often go hand-in-hand. What is it that makes popular culture political?
Guests:
Esther Leslie — Teaches in the school of English and humanities
at the University of London and author of Hollywood Flatlands: Animation, Critical Theory and the Avant-Garde
Jane Shattuc — Teaches in the department of Visual and Media Arts at Emerson College in Boston, author of The Talking Cure:
TV Talk Shows and Women, and co-editor of Hop on Pop: The Politics and Pleasures of Popular Culture

Imagining China
China is seen by the West as both an essential trade partner and a potential threat. For much of its history, the United States has entertained hopes that China would embrace Western style democracy but those expectations have been repeatedly dashed. How do these past conceptions shape our ideas of China today?
Guests:
Richard Madsen — Sociologist at the University of California and author of China and the American Dream: A Moral Inquiry
Kenneth Pomeranz — Historian at University of California and author of the book The Great Divergence: China, Europe and the Making of the Modern World Economy

Public Sentimentality
President Bush shed tears during his Thanksgiving visit to Iraq. Was it a calculated photo-op, or a genuine expression of emotion? Host Gretchen Helfrich and guests discuss public sentimentality.
Guests:
Julie Ellison — Teaches in the Department of English and American culture at the University of Michigan and author of Cato's Tears and the Making of Anglo-American Emotion
Julia Stern — Teaches in the department of English and American studies at Northwestern University and author of The Plight of Feeling: Sympathy and Dissent in the Early American Novel

The Democratic Party and the Left
Howard Dean has received the endorsement of Democratic party standard-bearer, Al Gore. After a decade of centrism, is the Democratic party shifting to the left? Host Gretchen Helfrich and guests discuss the Democrats and the left.
Guests:
John Aldrich. Aldrich — Political scientist at Duke University and author of Change and Continuity in the 2000 Elections
David Menefee Libey — Political scientist at Pomona College in Claremont, California and author of The Triumph of Campaign-Centered Politics

Schools in Film
Schools provide the setting for a wide variety of films. There are cult classics like Fast Times at Ridgemont High — and the films keep coming. Recent releases include School of Rock and Elephant. What kind of place is school in the movies?
Guests:
Jonathan Miller — Teaches film studies at the Illinois Institute of Technology and is a film critic for Chicago Public Radio
Ellen Seiter — Media scholar at the University of Southern California and author of the books, Television and New Media Audiences, and Sold Separately: Children and Parents in Consumer Culture

Beyond Kyoto
If Russia joins the United States in rejecting the Kyoto protocol on global warming, will the treaty be doomed?
Guests:
John Reilly — Associate director for research at the joint program on the science and policy of global change
Robert Stavins — Chairman of the environment and natural resources faculty group at Harvard University and author of Environmental Economics and Public Policy: Selected Papers of Robert N. Stavins, 1988-1999

The Power of the Muse
The muse is at once an artistic ideal and a model of feminine power. Ideas of the muse have varied from passive figures who serve to inspire male artists to women who are active participants in artistic and public life. How has the figure of the muse shaped the place of women in the arts?
Guests:
Gayle Levy — Teaches in the French department and the Women's and Gender studies departments at the University of Missouri and author of Refiguring the Muse
Elizabeth Eger — Teaches in the department of English language and literature at King's College and co-curating an exhibition at the National Gallery in London in London, England. She is also the author of the forthcoming book, Living Muses: Women of Reason from Enlightenment to Romanticism.

Prison Economics
Rural communities vie for the jobs that prisons bring while a number of states are turning to private contractors to manage prisons. What are the economic interests that drive America's corrections industry?
Guests:
Tracy Huling — Co-director of the National Resource Center on Prisons and Communities and director of the documentary Yes, In My Backyard, which examines the prison industry in rural New York
Paul Leighton — Sociologist at Eastern Michigan University and co-editor of the book Criminal Justice Ethics

Anti-Semitism in Europe
European leaders are once again contending with a wave of anti-Semitism. What is the contemporary social and political context of anti-Semitism in Europe?
Guests:
Anson Rabinbach — Historian at Princeton University and author of In the Shadow of Catastrophe: German Intellectuals Between Apocalypse and Enlightenment
David Meyers — Historian at the University of California and author of Resisting History: Historicism and its Discontents in German-Jewish Thought

The Bawdy Tradition of Burlesque
For much of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, burlesque entertainment served as a raunchy escape from American prudery. Today, burlesque is making a comeback. Why the modern interest in this old time entertainment?
Guests:
Eric Schaefer — Media scholar at Emerson College and author of Daring! Shocking! True!: A History of Exploitation Films
Rachel Shteir — Theater scholar at Depaul University in Chicago and author of the forthcoming book Grit, Glamour and the Grind:
A History of the Striptease

The History of the Imagination
Imagination is considered critical to any work of art or literature. But what the imagination consists of, how it actually works, and what it produces are questions that have long intrigued philosophers, writers, and scientists. How have we imagined the imagination?
Guests:
Claudia Swan — Art historian at Northwestern University and author of the forthcoming book, Mimesis and Imagination in Seventeenth Century Dutch Art
Forest Pyle — Teaches at University of Oregon and author of The Ideology of Imagination: Subject and Society in the discourse of Romanticism

The Power and Politics of Nuclear Weapons
The Cold War arms race may be over, but the nuclear capabilities of North Korea and Iran prove that nuclear weapons continue to shape global politics.
Guests:
Scott Sagan — Co-director of the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University. He has written extensively on nuclear weapons issues.
James Goodby — Senior advisor for the security studies program at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, former US foreign service officer, and co-author of the book The Gravest Danger: Nuclear Weapons

The History of Artificial Intelligence
It's long been a goal of science to create artificial forms of intelligence. What has the quest for A-I revealed about the human mind?
Guests:
Justine Cassell — Teaches in the program in media, technology and society at Northwestern University. She developed the Embodied Conversational Agent (ECA), a virtual human capable of interacting with humans using both language and nonverbal behavior.
Jessica Riskin — Historian of science at Stanford University and author of Science in the Age of Sensibility: The Sentimental Empiricists of the French Enlightenment and the forthcoming book The Android's I:A Joint History of Consciousness and Artificial Life

Anti-Americanism in Europe
Is European hostility toward the United States aimed solely at the Bush administration, or does it fit into a longer tradition of anti-Americanism?
Guests:
Richard Pells — Historian at the University of Texas and author of Not Like Us: How Europeans Have Love, Hated and Transformed American Culture Since World War II
Jean-Philippe Mathy — French studies scholar at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana and author of the book French Resistance: The French-American Culture Wars